 In 2008, V-Man, along with many other characters who’d fallen into the public domain, was included in Dynamite Entertainment’s "Project Superpowers"; after decades of being trapped in the Urn of Pandora, he was now transformed in such a way that anyone who comes near him becomes fatally ill, and he has to be constantly quarantined as a result.According to writer Jim Krueger, he now represents “that person who gets out of prison but can’t live a free life.”

During World War II, American Jerry Steele freed the inmates of a German prisoner-of-war camp, but was himself captured and apparently executed; however, a peasant was able to revive him with an herbal remedy and smuggle him to a safe haven.There, a man named Father Duroc asked Steele to take an oath called the V-Pledge, after which Steele was suddenly possessed of greater physical and mental fitness and courage, and garbed in a patriotic costume.