ROM "The Arrival" re-mastered! It was VHS video before now it's blueray

Most of you will no doubt recognize this illustration from the first page of ROM #1. To refresh your memory: http://johndouglasart.blogspot.com/2011/07/rom-spaceknight-repaneled-sort-of.html The black n white and unlettered version that you see to your left is a full page from the the Sal Buscema autobiographical book "Fast & the Furious". Interestingly enough this book was published last year and it wasn't published by Marvel. I wonder if they had to get permission to re-print the ROM production art or if the whole licensing thing didn't apply in this case? Now as some of you may have guessed I had some spare time on my hands on X-Mass weekend. This was one of those cases where after opening the image in photoshop I was just screwing around with it and one thing lead to another and before you know it I eventually ended up with what you see above.

Next we kick off the beginning of 2012 with a look at Forge's neutrilizer. But be careful, "you'll shoot your eye out kid."

Defenders for a Day: spotlight on The Torpedo & Paladin. Plus, Marvel publishes "ROM Spaceknigtht"

As it happens I found this rendering by Gabriel Harderman (damn I wish that was my last name!) just before I picked up Defenders: Strange Heroes which is basically a Marvel Universe one shot of heroes affiliated with The Defenders both past and present. Both The Torpedo and Paladin made relatively brief appearances in a some what tongue n cheek story line that spanned 2 or 3 issues in which a series of A and B list heroes had try outs for joining the Defenders. This illustration would have made an awesome cover for a Marvel Team Up issue. Be sure to magnify the image it looks way better when it's bigger. Yeah, size matters.
I was a bit bummed out that the book only published clip art (aside from the cover) of The Torpedo that showed up in past editions of the Official Marvel Universe Handbooks. But to my surprise in The Torpedo bio page they printed the words "ROM Spaceknight" which I thought was also prohibited along with having Rom's likeness in Marvel books these days? I dunno go figure. The Torpedo I'm quite familiar with of course but Paladin is a character I knew next to nothing about for many years up until recently with him being a regular now in the Heroes For Hire series. And I must say his character has grown on me quite a bit in a fairly short time especially given the interplay and pop culture quips between him, Spiderman and Misty Night.
Sadly though we'll never get to see this team up as suggested in Hardman's illustration given the ill fated Brock Jones who perished during the dire wraith massacre of Clariton. He fought valiantly but he made the mistake of letting his emotions distract him during battle making it possible for a dire wraith to sneak up on him and tongue spike him in the back of his head. Most of you know by now I'm sure that the Torpedo armor would later be worn by Michoko Musashi who was part of The New Warriors under the super heroes alias of Turbo. Later the Dire Wraith queen Volx would appropriate the armor in a grand scheme against Earth's heroes. While in her possession we would learn that the armor had many more capabilities such as microwave and electrical energy manipulation. This posting is probably gonna do it for me for the rest of this year but rest assured I'll be back in January when Avengers Academy #24 comes out and we get to see what Hybrid is up to now that he's back. Hopefully we'll also get to find out exactly how he was brought back as well. And who knows maybe something cool and post worthy will come along before that.

New Youtube video! ROM: A Spaceknight's Tale

Well, with 2011 coming to an end in a couple of weeks I thought I'd put together a collection of images of characters and story lines related to the ROM legacy that have been published this year by Marvel Comics. And let's not forget the DarkStar Winter Guard mini-series which came out in late 2010 with a story line that revolved around an abandoned Dire Wraiths base from ROM's adventures in the Soviet Union. So Marvel has not forgotten about ROM but we just need to goad them into taking that final step.

So in that vein I offer the next installment of my ROM Youtube slide show videos. One more thing, I dropped a package in the mail today consisting of print outs of the submitted fan art as well some other things I wanted to share with Bill Mantlo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH3pw-xZlw8&feature=youtube_gdata

THE RETURN OF HYBRID!

Martin from the Too Dangerous For A Girl blog http://dangermart.blogspot.com/ gave me a heads up earlier today about Avengers Academy #23 having something I would find of interest. Thanks for the heads up on this mate!
So basically some members of the Avengers go out on a call to save an orphan mutant boy (Jimmy Marks) by some anti-mutant religious fanatics called the Purifiers. Jimmy is adamant about not being sent to the X-Men so the Avengers allow him to stay at Avengers Academy. Toward the end of the issue Jimmy reveals himself to be Hybrid to Reptil sensing that Reptil knows the truth about him. It also turns out that Hybrid knows that the psyche of Reptil's future self is inhabiting the body of the current much younger Reptil and that Reptil facilitated Hybrid's return (we don't know how exactly yet) for his own agenda. Hybird agrees to cooperate with Reptil (for now) under the promise of getting dominion over some of the Avenger cadets. Avenger Academy #24 will continue the Hybrid story line.
The last time we saw hybrid in the Marvel Universe (1997) was back when he battled X-Man (Nate Grey) and was psi-blasted into atoms. For a recap of the issue: http://romspaceknightart.blogspot.com/2010/11/finally-x-man-32-extended-review-return.html

Awesome Torpedo illustration by artists Bobby Kro & Matt Web

Here we have an absolutely perfect work of art! When it comes to fan art this kind of thing is really what I like to see. That is too say that it looks anything but amateurish. The action pose, the movement your eyes feel and the figure composition you see here is exactly what is meant when it comes to things drawn the "Marvel way". Penciled by Bobby Kro and colored by Matt Webb. The illustration looks even more awesome magnified. Yes, regardless of all my ex girlfriends trying reassure me it wasn't so we all know bigger is better!