First appearance: All-American Comics#61 (October 1944)
Abilities: Super human strength, stamina, near immortal
Worst act: Murder
Quotes: "Name? I...have no name. I...was born on Monday!"
Created by: Alfred Bester (story), Paul Reiman (art)
In the tradition of Two-Face, Lex Luthor, and the Cheetah, I'll be using the 22nd to look at a favorite of the villains of the DCU. Since we're looking at the Green Lantern, why not Solomon Grundy?
Around the 1890s wealthy businessman Cyrus Gold is waylaid and murdered in Slaughter Swamp. His body lays in the swamp for the next fifty years when he suddenly arises, now as a giant zombie. He first encounters two crooks on the run. He also discovers that he's pretty bullet proof being dead. The two crooks aren't nearly as durable.
Now actually dressed, he stumbles across a hobo camp. When one of them names him Solomon Grundy (after the old nursey rhyme), Gold takes to the name and soon has a hobo army. His first fight with the Green Lantern ends with him being hit by a train and seemingly killed again.
Of course you can't keep a good undead down and he'd plague Green Lantern (among others) up to the present day. He does seem to draw some inspiration from similar monster the Heap (1942) or even Theodore Sturgeon's classic short story "It!" (1940), although most writers seem to treat Grundy like DC's Hulk.
I think it was James Robinson on Starman who brought a different take with Grundy. Basically every time he dies, he comes back with not a different personality, but rather a magnified portion of Cyrus Gold. Which explains how Grundy has been smart, dumb, kind, cruel, heroic and monstrous in equal measure. Rather neat, as you can do so much with that kind of trick.
Although as of late, it seems that DC just wants to use him as a Hulk stand-in, which is a shame.
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