How does one going about making a proposal for a new approach for a company-owned character , TO that company , protecting yourself but dealing with the fact that it's their character ??
You know , I just might , though it would be nowhere near sendable , an idea for a character - owned by a non-Two company , not published for quite a ways , now.. - which , no further clues , came out of the comics shop-booming Eighties/Nineties period..." A good agent/lawyer " , I suppose , for one...
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Ouch!
(Good point though.)
Again, I'm truly not trying to be antagonistic, but I'm giving the same advice I'd give any of my students, be they my freshman or my honors English seniors; it's not just spelling (which is very important). You need to know comma usage, the difference between a sentence fragment and a run-on, and what makes up a solid paragraph. I've had many students who have fantastic ideas but have no clue how to present them in a written form acceptable for professional presentation. If you have some good ideas, and I have no reason to doubt that you do, then you need to really bone up on basic grammar and mechanics.
Please take this in the spirit it's intended--constructive criticism.
The big two companies -- Marvel and DC -- do not take writing samples or plot submissions from the general public (unless they're running a contest or something). Instead, they solicit submissions from previously published authors or send requests for such from literary agents.
"Previously published" authors are writers that have established some credentials in the fiction-writing business -- in TV, movies, short stories, video games, novels, webcomics and small-press publishers. Even then, you either have to be a huge success or schmooze-up the editors.
Another way is to move to NYC, get an editorial job at the company of your choice (and barely get paid) and wait for someone to miss a deadline. You write fill-ins a few times until you get a regular series.
One notable example of an alternate path to those above was hashed out by Devin Grayson. She was a fan-fic writer who so impressed the folks at DC with her fan-fic Nightwing stories that they gave her a shot. (At least that's the story to the best of my knowledge.)
Even most smaller companies, (such as Dynamite, Ardden, Devil's Due) don't allow writing submissions.
The best advice is to make your own comic/novel/game, generate a ton of interest in it and ~then~ start pestering the editors of your favorite characters.
But I still didn't answer your actual question.
The way to write stories for a defunct character/company is to have money. You give the original publisher a wad of cash for the right to publish their character again.
Chances are they don't have any interest in doing so or else they would be doing it now. Yeah, there will probably be some lawyers involved ... and yes, they might have some clauses about what you can and can't do with the character, but beyond that it would be yours to work with for a while.
So the answer to that question is "bring them money, not your story idea." They will listen.
Or, you can go further, and give the original publisher a wad of cash to buy the character or concept free and clear so it's all yours to do with as you will.
That's what John Lustig did; he was a writer for Archie who bought the old Charlton romance title First Kiss, and has made a cottage industry of writing goofy dialogue for those stories and printing them under the name Last Kiss (see here).
Likewise, Max Allan Collins, when he was doing the Ms. Tree comic, bought all the rights Johnny Dynamite, an old comic series he grew up reading that had fallen by the wayside.