Take a hacked backstory, preferably with dead parents to give him angst of some sort.
Have a pivitol childhood event determine his costume and gimmick. Maybe he remembers a shiny dime slowly floating through the air when he found out his parents died. Thus, the Coinsmith was born! You can insert your own moniker.
Next, throw some B-list villians at him that offset his personality. Maybe a rust-centered villian that rusts our hero's coins. Diabolical! Witty dialogue during the battles is a must.
Give him an alter-ego with a new love interest every few months to keep it interesting...our hero's a player, damnit! Alternate between his duties to the real world and his duties as a superhero.
Sidekicks are expendable. Penny, the plucky young girl dressed as a...well, penny, should quickly be decapitated. Readers will love this.
If your character fails with this formula, wait about a year after the series is cancelled then have him show up as a surprise new member to a popular team. Avengers, JLA, etc. Outsiders and/or X-Men if he's reviled. An ambiguous identity and moral compass help him seem "edgy" and he can have fights with teammates over what to do. This will make him marketable to the Wolverine crowd who enjoy a "loner", even though he's on approximately 3 new teams a year. Any more and he might lose loner status, which is important, because he's...um...a loner.
Sleep around the team, have him become a bit player with funny lines, and no writer will care enough to write him out....until, of course, the next big event. At this point he'll be killed and people will pretend like they cared about him. He'll have a touching memorial punctuated by a poignant Superman/Tony Stark comment about forgetting the roots of our heroism, and how the Coinsmith reminded us all of what we should be like.
Good luck.