Tuesday, September 6, 2011

The ROM copyright problem solved! Firefall, Starshine & Rom with Ikon for the 1st time. Also, more fan art colored by me.

I'm just feeling kinda sentimental these days so please enjoy my latest bit of digital "trickeration". From what I've been reading out there about the Annihilators Earthfall mini-series I'm not sure I'll be doing any reviews for it. Other then IKON's membership on the team, I feel like there really isn't anything especially relevant about the series that I should post about here. What ever I can say about it in general will certainly be easily found in a dozen reviews out there with the bloggers and on Youtube. But as long as the story is entertaining I'll be picking it up especially if it offers some good character development for Ikon. I'm interested to see how she reacts to being on Earth for the first time and to it's heroes considering the inevitable rumble between the two teams. I imagine Earth must be something of a legend to Galadorians by now. Other cool stuff with Ikon I'd like to see is if she and Quasar hook up or perhaps even her commending Ronin for demonstrating to her in their adventures thus far that there's more qualities then one's raw power level that makes for a great warrior. So those are certainly some possible things I might feel inclined to post about in the coming months.
It's funny, even though I've read the panel art online already over a year ago ever since buying HULK #418 (1994) a few weeks back in which ROM and Brandy show up at Rick Jones's wedding as a happy couple I find myself kinda wishing they had left the whole Galador/Spaceknight thing alone at that point. It just goes to show you how reading ink on paper can make for a different experience and let you connect better with the content. Or maybe they could have at least brought back Galador and the Spaceknights with out Brandy Clark being in the forefront of the story. That way so that they could have just made a couple references to the King & Queen of Galador and leave us to assume ROM & Brandy are fine and just working behind the scenes on whatever is going on. Continuing the Dire Wraith threat would have been fine of course under any story line especially since Marvel has been using them off and on for many years now including recently in Future Foundations and Darkstar: Winter Guard.
Anybody remember this portion of the panel that introduced Brandy in Annihilators #2? She's obviously looking at a portrait of ROM wearing armor in human form. For reasons which I can't imagine I'm pretty sure it was drawn with part of the decor in the chamber obscuring his face as you see here. Knowing that we're gonna probably be subjected to Marvel tiptoeing around the ROM name for years to come makes me feel a lot like Brandy here in this panel. Just feeln bummed out right now about the whole thing cause if it wasn't for this licensing shit I know Marvel would have brought him back by now. Probably not as a monthly series but surely in guest appearances here and there especially when it came to cosmic adventures.

How Marvel can have ROM back with getting sued here it is : In regards to the Annihilators and the continuation of the Galador/Spaceknights mythology in the Marvel Universe did it ever occur to them to just have ROM back in human form and just print his name as "ROMM"? Or even "RAHM" (actually pronounced as "Rom") as in Rahm Emanuel the former White House chief of staff. Galadorians are humanoid and can pass as human so who knows maybe some are Jewish too (just kidding). Anyways, how could Marvel possibly be sued for going that route!? As it is they do stuff like that all the time with brands that show up in comic book stories like when somebody is holding what is obviously a Coke can but their fingers are covering part of the wording. Ok now how do we get my brilliant idea to Marvel and or Abnett & Lanning?
I recently got around to establishing a Deviant Art account and ran into some dude named Jason Heichel who is the only other person I know of who has done some IKON fan art. It was great but it was uncolored and it was just calling out to me. Please magnify the image it's even better in detail.

7 comments:

  1. Nice one! Jason's art was sweet enough just in B&W but you really did a great job on the crayolas mr! Especially the cloud - all the colours you got goin on there are awesome.

    Nice job!

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  2. I agree with the sentiments concerning the "King Rom" painting that Brandy is pining over. You would have thought that Marvel has made enough money on all the movies lately to pony up for the rights again especially with all the cosmic stuff they've pumped out. You have to wonder if some Dire Wraith is actually the head of Hasbro. What did you do the coloration in, PhotoShop?

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  3. Peter David had an "ask me a question" session on his blog last month. I asked if anyone said anything about Rom's appearance in HULK #418. He said, "Nobody said anything, probably because I had him in human form rather than as a robot." I don't know why they obscured the portrait in ANNIHILATORS. They didn't have any problems showing his human (but bearded) form in SPACENKIGHTS or UNIVERSE X (although they also avoided his name in the latter).

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  4. thanks for those comments guys i sure wish i knew how to get a hold of someone at marvel whom we could get some straight answers from. and on a side note i didn't know Peter David had a blog site that's good to know. David did a big solid for ROM fans by giving us that final actual appearance of ROM. it almost acted like an epilogue to the final issue of ROM (#75) where he and Brandy walk off into the sunset together. i wonder if Abnett or Lanning have a blog site too?

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  5. Great Post Dave! And the picture is wonderful! You know I love Ikon, and I can't wait to read more with her in it. And it does make you wonder if there isn't more going on, doesn't it? It just doesn't make any sense the way either Hasbro or Marvel has handled the whole thing. Of course, I'm not a lawyer.

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  6. i left a comment about this on Peter David's blog along with a thank you for putting ROM in HULK #418 but he pretty much snubbed me. i think i'll just leave one more farewell comment in that case.

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  7. You did blend the colors perfectly on this! It truly brings the original piece to life! Well now that I've got my login to work properly I thought I would comment on job well done thanks David for the invite, there's some cool incites here!

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