John McClane, the hero of the blockbuster Die Hard movies, has always been the reluctant hero. He more or less stumbles into situations that require his quick thinking and lightning fast reflexes. So it really should come as no surprise that his first true adventure as an action hero was also something he largely stumbled into by accident. What was supposed to be a simple day making sure nothing went wrong on the hottest day of 1976 turned into a battle against a terrorist. But John's stumbling into the situation helped prepare him for his later adventures and unintentionally provided the foundation for a Die Hard prequel television series instead of another sequel.
John's literal beginning occurred in Die Hard: Year One #1 by Howard Chaykin, Stephen Thompson, and Ed Dukeshire. Here John was a rookie cop in New York City, having served time with the marines over in Vietnam during the war. But his time overseas is vastly different than it is in New York. If anything, John seemed to chafe more under the regulations and rules of NYPD than he did while serving as a soldier in the middle of a war, his good looks and wisecracks tending to get him into more trouble than he wanted.
John once again found trouble while acting as security onboard a yacht for the rich and famous. The rookie police officer was able to use the skills he learned from his experience in Vietnam to effectively deal with people who were used to being in control and simply taking whatever it was that they wanted.
When the boat was highjacked by a pair of crooked cops and a terrorist masquerading as hippie, John stepped up as the only person capable of stopping them from ending innocent lives. The young hero deployed a tactic often seen in the movie franchise, namely sneaking around and picking off the bad guys one by one, all while sabotaging their plans. In true movie fashion, John not only managed to stop the terrorists from blowing up the New York pier, but also managed to turn their explosives against them destroying their exit strategy in the process.
John demonstrated quick and creative thinking for a problem that no one could have prepared him for using only his wits and training. It's no wonder he was so effective in the first Die Hard movie, he had done this sort of thing before. So while Hans Gruber thought he was dealing with some lucky cop, John had experience in handling situations like this already.
Ironically enough, the very premise of this comic also could have been the foundations for a television show revolving around a much younger John McClane. The idea has been tossed around a few times within the past years. Just like its main character, the Die Hard series absolutely refuses to die and attempts have been made to retool it as a television series. There was once a plan to mix Jack Bauer from 24 with characters from Die Hard, but this idea quickly fizzled out.
In the summer of 2017, a new deal was struck to use the BOOM! comic as the basis for a new limited series of twelve episodes. The idea was to borrow heavily from the comic and perhaps alternate between the young John McClane of the 1970s and the present day John McClane from the movies. Sadly, any further news on the project stopped with the news that the script was being rewritten following Bruce Willis' refusal to endorse the previous edition and its actor.