With all the movies, toys, video games and cartoons floating around, you can't swing a pair of Hulk Hands these days without hitting something with the Avengers on it. And sure, that's all well and good for Marvel's top tier characters (and Hawkeye), but what about the more obscure heroes and villains of the Marvel Universe? When will they get their chance to shine?

Fortunately, there's someone hard at work on showing us exactly what that would look like. In a series of "What If" pieces drawn for his blog, Thomas Perkins -- a character designer for Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Green Lantern: The Animated Series and a ton of other cartoons -- is showing us what it would look like if the Avengers teamed up with some of their lesser known colleagues, from the Son of Satan to ROM, Greatest of the Spaceknights!



Captain America teams up with The 3-D Man, who has the power to exist in the third dimension. You know, like everyone:



Hank Pym gets a helping hand from Cyclops and Marvel Girl of the original X-Men:

The Hulk throws down on Steve Gerber, Mary Skrenes and Jim Mooney's cult favorite, Omega the Unknown:



Morbius, the Living Vampire saves Cap from a sinister fate at the hands of Baron Blood, a regular old dead vampire:

Damian Hellstrom, the Son of Satan will probably never appear on a cartoon for children, which is a shame considering how awesome he looks:

Shuma-Gorath, best known for his appearances in video games where he fights Ryu from Street Fighter, takes on a new challenger in the form of Adam Warlock and Thor:



The winsome Wasp is possessed by the power of Captain Universe, the super-hero who could be you (but is usually Spider-Man or somebody)!



And finally, Giant Man teams up with Captain Marvel/Photon/Monica Rambeau and Machine Man, making me want a Nextwave animated series with Perkins' designs more than anything in the entire world right now:



To see larger versions of these pieces -- which are well worth it -- and more great art, check out Perkins' website! And seriously, somebody get those ROM rights straightened out so that we can make this happen. Perkins has proven that the world needs Spaceknights, now more than ever.