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.