The Invaders (plus The Liberty Legion and guests) homage to All-Star Squadron issue #31

Confession time: this wasn't actually what I thought I'd be doing next.

Though my main commission interests are the science fiction subjects (Babylon 5, Adam Strange, Guardians Of The Galaxy), I've been a fan of the Golden Age characters since discovering Roy Thomas' Invaders and the All-Star Comics revival pretty much simultaneously in the mid-1970s - and Roy's move to DC, and particularly his All-Star Squadron, cemented them as firm favourites.

For some time I've been thinking it would be a good idea to get some new All-Star Squadron covers done, and I have what I think is a nice hook to unify them, so I've been gradually re-reading the "Bronze Age Golden Age" material --- and it was after going through Roy's Earth-X story in All-Star Squadron #31-35 that it struck me that Jerry Ordway's cover for issue #31 had potential to be adapted to feature Marvel's World War 2 super-team.

Most of this fell into place quickly - the Uncle Sam/Cap, Hawkman/Red Raven, Plastic Man/Thin Man, Robin/Bucky, Ray/Torch and Johnny Quick/Toro figures were obvious, but I did at one point consider swapping the Golden Age Vision for Superman, Sub-Mariner for Black Condor, Miss America for Liberty Belle, and had that continued, then The Mighty Destroyer would have been excluded - but I think the end result was the right one. And I'm still grinning at the decision to substitute The Patriot for the Star-Spangled Kid...

As ever, Brendon and Brian Fraim did a great job for me on this - fast, responsive and amazingly reasonably priced. Use 'em if you can!