The Saint was a twist on the detective genre, with a criminal as the hero.  It wasn't a new idea, as that is pretty much the template of the Arsene Lupin stories.  The Saint usually ends up helping people in need, even though he earns his living as a master thief.  He would leave his calling card, which was a stick figure, with a halo.  If memory serves, I read a description of the earliest Angel stories and he had a similar calling card.  It sounded like Gustavson was drawing from the Saint stories, when he started out, then it turned into more of a mystery man strip; though, I don't think i have ever run across a complete story.  Heck, aside from Rick Jones pulling people from his brain, I think the Marvels Project was the first time I saw the original being used in a story.  Most of what I knew was from the World Encyclopedia of Comics, 1st edition, which was the first place I ever saw a reference to the character.  The Saint connection is also noted at Don Markstein's Toonopedia.

The Twelve had a couple of characters who were in the detective moold, though i'm not really up on how many stories there were of any of the individual characters.  They were a bit more obscure than some of Timely's other 2nd and 3rd stringers, like Black Marvel or Citizen V. Timely seemed to have a shorter lifespan for many of their back-up strips, compared to other companies.  In the JMS series, Phantom Reporter is a detective, though how much of that is JMS' take, i don't know. 

Forget Nick Fury, @taxidriver1980 ... The Marvel best equivalent to Batman is


Night Thrasher





His parents died, has great skills in the world of martial arts unknown to man and quite Japanese style ... Expert in Computer Skills, and unreal tactician that took on the Punisher and the likes and survive the beatings. Resourceful, intelligent, and host of other abilities that has not been revealed.

Sounds like he has Restless Leg Syndrome.

He came out in Marvel Comics in the 90's and was a fan favorite in the LCS that I was going at the time and had 2 books in his credit during that time period and was a member of the New Warriors as well. I remember him because my best friend ran a Comic Book store and I had a chance to read Night Thrasher and his first appearance in Thor #411 that came out in December 1989 and he is created by Tom DeFalco (Writer) and Ron Frenz (Artist) and he had clubs similar to Daredevil and a has some kind of armor that ...

"Night Thrasher wore a special suit of light articulated combat armor composed of Kevlar/borosilicate fiber in a ceramic matrix and 8 mm and 16 mm thick layers of micro-mail titanium nitride. He designed the battle-suit to survive physical combat with Silhouette's brother Midnight's Fire. The costume cannot be penetrated by conventional bullets or knives and is fireproof. The suit includes a wafer-thin L.E.D. casing that allows the suit to camouflage itself within its surroundings. The helmet contained integral goggles with infrared sighting, telescopic lenses, magnetic resonance scanning, and a camera attachment. It also includes a breathing apparatus, voice scrambler, two-way radio communications device, parabolic sound enhancer, and a cybernetic link to armor systems."

The part in italic is found in Wikipedia and according to my knowledge of this character it is very accurate indeed.

Oh.  He's like an old, white Night Thrasher who dresses in a doofy Bat costume.