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This guy has been gestating in my brain for some time. My kids got some rubber Marvel thumb wrestlers out of a gumball machine. They were just bullet-shaped pieces of rubber with the Marvel characters printed on them. I was thinking they'd make a great helmet for a Mego Doctor Fate. So I got one, and turns out, they didn't quite cover the whole head. But then I thought of the Guardian and his half-helmet look. The fact that the thumb wrestler I had was Captain America only pushed me on, since he was Simon and Kirby's replacement Cap when they jump shipped from Timely to DC.
The Guardian was one of my favorite aspects of the Superman comics of the late 80s, early 90s. I was also happy to see him appear, and would have liked to have seen him and the Newsboy Legion get their own book. It bummed me out that they never did.
Of course what makes the character is that badge-like shield. And I wracked my brain trying to figure out how to make one. Finally I realized I should go to one of the leading experts in Mego accessorization. So pmwasson made me an awesome LaserMego shield off the design I sent him. The shield has been drawn with a great deal of variation over the years, but Kirby tended to keep the bottom circular, so I followed his lead.
Just like his shield, Guardian's costume has been interpreted quite differently over the years...sometimes from panel to panel, even by Kirby! Sometimes his cowl is blue, sometimes it's yellow, and beginning in the late 80s, it ran into the yellow arrow shape that went over his shoulders. I decided to stick to the blue cowl which allowed me to create a second helmet to create his Golden Age look from Star-Spangled Comics. Here he is hanging with some of his fellow All-Star Squadron members, Starman and the Vigilante.
The company I work for invented the hard hat, so they make and give away tiny hard hat keychains. I have several of these floating around the house, and a quick sanding job and some paint turned it into the proper crash helmet look.
The rest of the formula was pretty basic:
Cast-A-Way head and belt, Doc Mego body and blue suit, CTVT gloves, boots and trunks.
I hate to admit this project made me think of how to make the Newsboy Legion...but I think I'll suppress those urges...
Thanks for looking!
Chris
Funnily enough, Meloni's character in MoS had the callsign Guardian. 
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