Friday, February 22, 2013

Firefall's rebooted spaceknight armor plus artist John Romita


By chance I came across some CGI art work named "The Last Spaceknight". You can see it here
http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=7282.60
I have no idea if it was intended to be a rebooted version of ROM or maybe that anime character Tekaman who also goes under the title of spaceknight. Regardless I thought with a little bit of fine tuning in photoshop whoever this is supposed to be would make a great rebooted Firefall. If you're a bit fuzzy on Firefall read on . . .


Karas was one of the Galadorian volunteers that became the First Generation of spaceknights to battle thedire wraith . He was one of Rom's best friends and once saved his life from drowning (as told in a flash back in Rom #4). He was given the Firefall armor to wield. When the invading Wraith warfleet approached Galador, Karas broke ranks and assaulted them by himself. He would soon after find himself facing one of the feared  Deathwing. In a desperate battle Karas was able to defeat the Deathwing but was so exhausted that he had neither will nor strength to resist when a Wraith Destroyer found him and captured him. The Dire Wraiths tried to take apart the armor and tortured Karas for nearly two centuries. When Karas realized that they were on the verge of breaching his armor, Karas used the Living Fire to rob them the satisfaction and phase his human Id to Limbo while his physical form was destroyed (as told in flash back in Rom #19).
Eventually the Dire Wraiths sent the armor to Earth where they duped petty criminal Archie Stryker into grafting into it and turned him on Rom (Rom #3 & 4). Stryker was ultimately defeated by Rom after which he learned the truth about the Dire Wraith threat on Earth and gave his life to help Rom defeat the immediate wraith threat they were both facing (Rom #5 & 11). Some time later Rom faced the Firefall armor a final time after it had been "animated" by dire wraith sorcery. With the help of Ben Grimm, Rom defeated the Firefall armor and the Dire Wraith witches that controlled it (see Marvel Two in One #99).

Left click to enlarge
How ironic, just after writing this posting I came across this vintage Marvel Comics photo of John Romita. As it happens on the wall there is the uncolored cover art for Rom#3 which also happens to be the first appearance of the Firefall armor.

5 comments:

  1. Creativity. History. Serendipity.

    This post is the epitome of why we love this blog.

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  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  3. I thought this was a new Rom design, which would have been nice. But it looks exactly like Firefall's head (I didn't know Firefall until you told me who he was). But this could be his armor.

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  4. And it would be a good revamping. It looks slightly different, but is immediately recognizable. (Well, to people that read the comic, anyway.) I think it might be a good basis in general of spaceknight armor. Each one could add or change slightly, depending on their own special preferences.

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  5. The screen shot is from the City of Heroes MMORPG (defunct) character creator

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