ROM #76 - "If you will it, it is no dream"

He awoke to the sound of machines, his conscious mind peeling away layers of reality that had filled his mind for what seemed like an eternity. Was it all a dream? Gone were the visions of his life which he had come to accept as reality, yet not completely. Even now, bathed in the dim glow of fading electronic light, he somehow had always known his world was not real. Some intangible urgency had pressed at the back of his mind, forcing him to secretly question everything around him. The dreamer had awoken and sat motionless as the dream faded away. What of his home world Galador? What of his wife and children? And where are they now? “I am . . .Quasimodo,” a mechanical voiced breathed away weakly from the darkness. Feeling the energy slowly returning to his body. “I,” the dreamer spoke in an attempt to respond. “am ROM. Greatest of the Spaceknights”.

The following is the hypothetical opening in a plot line by Rush Montgomery for a continuation of the ROM anthology, beginning with issue 76 entitled ‘Reboot”. ROM discovers that the life he "lived" since striking the bargain with Quasimodo (see issue 42) was not reality. That "life" was merely the result of Quasimodo's computer manipulations of ROM's subconscious. Now ROM is awake, and in desperate need of answers to make sense of it all.
We are hoping for feedback from YOU ALL for the possibility of the ROM 76 project. Please leave a comment and share your opinions for this hypothetical premise ( likes, dislikes, ups, downs, pros, cons we want to hear it all from you ). Artists who might be able to contribute are also encouraged to contact us to find out more. For a recap of ROM #42 go to: http://siskoid.blogspot.com/2009/02/spaceknight-saturdays-dream-come-true.html

Claudio Cavallote presents - ROM, aside from beautiful women one more reason why Brazil rocks!

Just wanted to open up this posting by letting everyone know I've been to Brazil 3 times and each trip was a blast! Now I'm happy to say that one of the followers of this blog is from Brazil. Sao Paulo (St. Paul) specifically which is a huge city that I spent a lot of time in and had some adventures. One time in particular comes to mind when I almost got into a fist fight with some drunk guy from New Zealand who was being a real dick at this party in high rise building in downtown Sao Paulo.
But I digress, what your seeing here is the comic book issue that began Claudio's life changing experience of becoming a ROM fan. And also what you are looking at is some drawings that he did as a kid obviously inspired by reading ROM. Much better stuff then the crap I was drawing back then I might add. Now I know what you all are thinking, what does that cover say?
My Portuguese (no they don't speak Spanish there) is a bit rusty but I can make out pretty much all the words. But the grammar presents a bit of challenge and I'm afraid if I try to write it in English something might get lost in translation. So hopefully we can all expect to see a comment from Claudio soon who can help us out with that cover and share with us any other info. about this stuff like how old was he when he got that comic and did those drawings.

Hey ladies, win a date with HYBRID!

I sketched this ultimate "bad boy" to pass the time during a black out in my town Saturday night. Later after the power came back I scanned the sketch and colored it in photoshop. When I think of Hybrid I think of that famous line by Arnold in the first Predator movie after the Predator removes his helmet and starts kicking Arnold's ass. Out of all of ROM's enemies arguably Hybrid had to be the most deadly. Born of a human mother and Dire Wraith father he possessed incredible power. Power enough that he could go toe to toe with ROM with out the use of Wraith science or magic. He survived getting blasted by ROM's neutralizer more then once and took out Colossus of the X-Men with out lifting a finger. He basically pimp slapped the Torpedo away after the Torpedo collided into him at full speed. Later in a confrontation with the Brother Hood of Evil Mutants he almost literally made Rogue his you know what despite Rogue possessing Ms. Marvel's powers and having just recently beat the crap single handily out of most of the Avengers ( see Avengers Annual #10). Hybrid had a thing for ladies of the mutant persuasion but from what we could see he was about as equipped for some "lovin" as a Ken doll, so maybe that explains why he had so many issues with women. During Hybrid's final appearance he made a joke of the New Mutants (well that's no big deal even I could take them I've been working out) and even overwhelmed professor Xavier in the mental department (ok now that's impressive!). And for his final and best trick he reversed the spell that made Brandy Clark Starshine and put her in some sexy lingerie. All along he had kinda this Joker (Heathe Ledger - R.I.P) way about him the way he taunted and toyed with his victims in a humorous manner. Just close your eyes for a minute and picture lines like these coming from Hybrid, "You remind me of my father . . . I hated my father!" or " Why-so-serious!?" It's a shame the Hybrid character never crossed over into other Marvel titles that could have been something given how formidable he was. Even a What If story about him could have been promising. Oh the possibilities.

Bill Mantlo Tribute Piece by Andrew Cosson

Here we have one other brave soul who has stepped forward and offered to grace my blog with some cool art. More specifically art that was sold to help raise money for Bill Mantlo's medical care which as I understand it he will be needing for the rest of his life. I would have really liked to have done something of my own for Bill's health care but unfortunately I was largely out of the loop at that time in regards to the goings on in the comic book biz.
From what I can see here we have The HULK, Box & Snowbird from Alpha Flight. There's ROM & Starshine of course. Next to them is Bug, Marionette, Acroyar and Huntarr from the Micronauts along with Microverse aliens Antron & Membros complete with glowing brains. And then we have a purple female Dire Wraith looking like she's ready to party with these guys. And just below Acroyar's sword arm we've got Hybrid who's got a thing for single women from the mutant community. Now don't quote me on this but I believe the purple winged fellow is an artificial creature known as Dragon Man.
When I first posted Andrew's piece I provided some inaccuracies in my summery. The comments section for this posting covers that and also provides additional information about how Andrew put this awesome rendering together.

Now this is what I call "change we can believe in"

Who better then Greatest of the Spaceknights to not just save the Earth from the Dire Wraiths but to also clean up Washington D.C. from other menaces such as lobbyist and corrupt politicians. Yep, he is just the man . . . er i mean cyborg we need to neutralize the bureaucracy and banish all those assholes from both parties who spend more time fighting each other then trying to get shit done for the country. A special thanks to Tony for inadvertently giving me the idea for this campaign art work in a comment he made in my ROM "What If" posting. This is one of those rare times where I was able to come up with something more abstract or otherwise outside the box artistically speaking as opposed to the more straight forward type of stuff I tend to do.

The ROM "What If" issue . . . what if?

If Marvel had ever done a What If issue for ROM I think it would have been over the final showdown for Earth in issue 65.
And who knows maybe the cover would have looked something like this photoshop hatchet job I did tonight. For a very comprehensive and funny recap of ROM 65 "The Final Conflict" go to:

http://siskoid.blogspot.com/2009/08/spaceknight-saturdays-lets-get-this.html

Of course there are a lot of other What If themes from the ROM anthology that would have been interesting to see ( What If Brandy Clark had never become Starshine or What If FireFall had become Greatest of the Spaceknights ) but with out a doubt the events in issue 65 had the biggest impact on the mainstream Marvel Universe.
So if the Wraiths had gotten the drop on ROM and put him down, would Earth's heroes have been able to the task of thwarting the Wraith's "World Merge" apocalypse plan? A plan that would have brought Wraith World and it's black sun into Earth's orbit causing horrific environmental damage that would make BP & Exxon look like green energy companies. And don't forget, back in ROM # 27 Galactus ( "The big G" ) tried and failed to devour Wraithworld and it's sun and received an ass pounding as a result that would have made a stay in federal prison look like a trip to Disneyland. As always, if you have any thoughts on other ROM "What If" scenarios or on my cover concept please do share them.

There's no 72 virgins in Limbo!

As you all know the Dire Wraiths are alien invaders with the goal of conquering the earth. As shape shifters they hide among us and when they strike it usually results in death and destruction of innocent people. Unfortunately, there is an enemy in the real world that has much in common with the Dire Wraiths. And there's no such thing as ROM's energy analyzer ( used to detect Wraiths regardless of what shape they assume ) to reassure us who is a terrorist and who isn't. Sometimes we discover that too late such as in the Fort Hood massacre or the Oklahoma City bombing . But when we do discover these terrorists it would be nice to banish them to Limbo ( an inter-dimensional hell hole of a prison ) just like ROM does with the Wraiths and let them spend eternity reflecting on their past misdeeds and enjoy the company of alike minded vile creatures. I usually wouldn't think of mixing politics with something like a blog about the world of sci-fi and comics. But I'm making an exception in light of it being the first 911 since I started this blog for ROM fans who aren't dicks.

The zero issue that never was

With the use of Photoshop & Illustrator I dressed up some original art by Scott Rosema in order to create a cover concept for what might have been a zero issue. I'ts too bad Marvel never did something like this after the series finale before the Parker Bro's licensing was yanked. Some kind of issue back tracking to tie up some loose ends would have been nice.
Especially explaining crap like that "snow globe" sphere thing that was salvaged from Termintor and magically turns ROM from a cyborg into human form. Or maybe something that explains how ROM and Brandy start to repopulate Galador from their . . . ahem limited gene pool shall we say? It seemed plausible to me that other Galadorians could have been hiding out in other parts of the planet. Kinda like in the Terminator films in which there were pockets of human resistance hiding through out the world.
In ROM #14 there is a cut away story about how ROM's girlfriend (Ray-na) was killed on the the planet Agricon during the Wraith invasion of the Golden Galaxy. So apparently Galadorians lived on off world colonies which makes sense. It's a common theme in science fiction concepts that deal with technologically advanced space faring civilizations. It would have stood to reason that many of those Galadorians would have wanted to return to Galador to help rebuild. Also maybe to help figure out those surviving spaceknights who's humanity got trashed might be able to become human again. Did these brilliant Galadorian scientists ever think about cloning perhaps!? I mean I know the process that Quasimodo used was some what less then perfect but cloning worked pretty good in that mediocre sci-fi flick with Arnold ( The Governator ) "The Sixth Day". Like I said before it would have been nice to have something wrap all that up in light of the rag tag ending I felt the series had. And by the Gods of Galador have any body else pencil it but Steve Dikto please!

I'm tired of all these mutha$#@%&* wraiths on this mutha$#@%&* planet!

Take a second to read the dialogue in this panel to the left . . . . . . . It's from issue #41 (1983) in which ROM with the aid of Dr.Strange takes on some manifestation of Wraith magic known as the Dweller on the Threshold. Now I don't know if someone at Marvel was temporarily possessed by Samuel L. Jackson or just decided to indulge in some office humor at the time. Who can say for sure? However, as I understand it an X amount of these issues made it to press before the mistake was discovered and corrected. As such, a limited number of these "misprints" made it to comic shops, corner stores and several 7-11 locations alike. I'm at a loss how any of these made it past the Comic Code Authority but there you have it. Rather you think this is B.S. or not I suggest any of you out there who have this issue in your collection might want to find it and check it out. This could redefine the whole concept of what makes any particular issue a "classic".

It's time to play guess that Spaceknight!

Left click to enlarge

I was just making some sketches to pass the time tonight and woe and behold a pretty good drawing started to materialize. The two Spaceknights in the foreground are easy to figure out. The 3rd one in the background might be a bit tougher unless your a a nerd of epic proportions and I mean that in the nicest way really. And just so you know this indeed is a Spaceknight with a name that made an appearance in the original ROM series. First correct guess gets a door prize!