Golden Age Gallery - All-Star Squadron vs Degaton, Mr Atom, Solomon Grundy, Cheetah and the Villain From Valhalla

A new Golden Age Gallery commission, and there's a bit of a story behind this. When I first approached artist Mike Collins about doing a commission for me as part of my All-Star Squadron Continuation Project, he suggested the Sal Buscema cover for Avengers Annual #4, and that Solomon Grundy would be an ideal stand-in for the Hulk.

Unfortunately, as the Avengers Annual didn't feature any stories by Roy Thomas, I had to park the idea (and Mike has done a couple of other commissions for me which *did* fall within the Project parameters) - but I couldn't get it out of my head. So when the option of a Golden Age Gallery piece came up, I went back to it - and then had to work out which characters could populate it.

If the Hulk was to be Grundy - and Cap and the Black Knight pretty much had to be the Guardian and the Shining Knight - then Giant-Man had to be a villain, Radioactive Man a hero, Thor a villain, and the Melter a hero. Finding a giant golden age villain was tricky (Giganta, my original choice, wasn't a giant in the 1940s), but Fawcett villain Mr Atom fit the bill; GL, with his ring on his left hand, could substitute for the Radioactive Man; and Sandman foe the Villain From Valhalla was an obvious choice to replace Thor.

Given these characters spanned the '40s and several companies, this suggested using time-travelling villain Per Degaton - and 1951 hero Doll Girl could make her first appearance in place of the Wasp. Pulling in Wonder Woman villainess the Cheetah and the early 1940 version of the Sandman, completed the line-up.

Could this feed over to the main Continuation Project covers? Watch this space... 😉