New commission fan art from our pal Sal!

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I just found this on comicartfans.com last night. I tell ya, I don't know what's more tragic sometimes. The fact that Bill and Sal couldn't finish up the ROM spaceknight series together (creative differences apparently) or marvel and hasbro not having been thus far been able to work out a Rom return deal.
This is probably the best chance we'll ever get in a very long time to make a push at marvel and hasbro to put their heads together on getting ROM back into the Marvel Universe. If you have any means you have to contact anybody at either company I'd say go for it. In the past I was successful in contacting the editor of Avengers Academy during the Hybrid story line a couple of years ago. Email him at  mheroes@marvel.com and be sure to write "Ok to Print" in the subject line. keep your message short and too the point but feel free to email the same thing from more then one address if you can.

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And this was found on farcebook just earlier this morning. Actually Gary Martin Jr. gave me a heads up on this as well as an Ikon spaceknight HeroClix figure a couple of days ago but we just couldn't locate any good images to post. I couldn't tell ya anything about this whole HeroClix thing other that some of the figurines are kinda cool. I see loose ones here and there a from time to time I'll definitely grab a Dire Wraith and Ikon if I ever come across them.

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Holy shit look what else I just turned up on farcebook! This amazing piece of digital fan art comes to us from professional artist Hal Laren. This is pretty impressive for a number of reasons. First of all it the image pops I mean it really dazzles your eyes with the use of color and lighting. Second, the guy has a good grip on figure composition that pose looks really good and it's dynamic. The image is slightly stylized but not overly so to the point where it looks too abstract. Pretty much my kinda fan art in every way.

7/29 Update: I just got this message in response to an email I sent earlier this morning about hasbro revisiting the idea of a deal with marvel comics for Rom spaceknight and or new collectibles for him from hasbro. If nothing else at least this shows they actually read their mail. But if more people were to email them ya never know what might come of it (hint hint).

CustomerService@HasbroToyShop.com

If Piccaso had ever done some ROM fan art

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This photo from farcebook comes to us from Joe Fellman who drew this fan art on a long box some 30 years ago. It reminds me of something I did back in the day when I got my hands on my 1st ROM issue (#22) but I unfortunately it disappeared over the years. It might be all the art history I took back in college but this kinda reminds me of Picasso's Guernica.

2014 Comic-Con

7/26 Update:  Gary Martin Jr. sent this to me a couple of days ago from the Hasbro area of the Comic-Con. Ya know with Hasbro and marvel being at the same con and this Rom Mighty Mugg promo poster up you'd think somebody would get the fucken idea to talk to someone else about revisiting an old business arrangement. 

New Our Pal Sal Tribute video

When I first found this video I was pleased to see that it included some Rom clip art among the collection of Sal's awesome work. And after chatting with this guy who made the video in the comments section I was also pleased to find that he also thought dikto was a bad choice to replace Sal on ROM spaceknight. Now this video is a fairly recent upload and I couldn't help but think as cool as it is (especially with the porno music soundtrack) how even cooler it would have been to have also included some of the more recent stuff from Sal like the Rom vs Mars Attacks bonus pin up page from IDW and the Sal at his drafting table with numerous Marvel superheros present commission art that turned up earlier this year and was later digitally colored by a big time Sal fan from Portugal.

Damn! Now that's what I call some good fan art!

Looks like things are picking up here again at least for the time being. I want to open up this posting by thanking Gary Martin Jr. for not giving me a heads up about this newly discovered fan art. Fortunately, I know about his secret hiding place he squirrels away all the Rom related art work he finds. But that's ok I can always go help myself to the stuff he finds that I've missed. Anyways, here's a new one by Yildiary Cinar. Talk about a solid illustration this is my kinda fan art, dynamic, slightly stylized and especially well done from a figure composition stand point.

Here we have the 3rd in a line of fan art I've seen so far when it comes to a ROM spaceknight / Green Lantern theme. Rom's head is a bit small in proportion to the rest of his body but this is otherwise a really solid illustration it's done by this guy
http://leolaino76.deviantart.com/

Ok a couple more things I want to get to here. The Vision of Comics gave me a heads up about this new novel (not graphic novel) by Dan Abnett about Rocket Raccoon & Groot that among other things featured a spaceknight by the name of Roamer. I passed that info along to our resident Rom curator Gary Martin Jr. who in turned asked me if I'd mention it on the blog. As you all know I don't care for Rocket or Groot but because I'm such a stand up guy so here I am mentioning it for Gary.
And just so you all know I also mentioned the Hasbro Rom doll to Dan Abnett on farcebook this morning in the hopes it might help get things moving along as far as what we all really want to see which is a return of ROM to the marvel universe and an end to these badly mishandled half ass continuities we've had to endure for years now.

Hasbro celebrates ROM's 35th Anniversary?

So this just turned up earlier today. According to a source at MTV's website Hasbro is releasing some sort of  Rom doll commemorating 35 years of ROM. Of course the concept of 35 years of Rom is relative but I'm assuming we're not just talking about the time the series was in print or even up until when marvel lost the copy rights to the character but also the ROM fan cult that followed . . . that would be us.
Now I don't really care about the doll it's self cuz I think it's kinda stupid but if this news is legit it raises some interesting points. The first one being that we now know for certain who owns the rights to ROM spaceknight and we also now know that all the related documents and material to that copy right isn't just simply in the back of some dusty filing cabinet in a basement or warehouse filled with archival paper work Hasbro never bothers with. In effect that means there's a little less red tape then had been previously assumed which in turn makes me hate Marvel even more then I do now. You'd think by now somebody from Marvel or Hasbro would have gotten the idea to approach the other company and raise the issue of some manner of revival by now. Anyways, here's the MTV article let me know what you think . . .
http://www.mtv.com/news/1862227/rom-the-space-knight-hasbro-sdcc-exclusive/?utm_content=buffer91b85&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

In light of the comments left here I just wanted to make this posting update. Now if Hasbro was offering something like this I'd be all over that shit no matter how it was. And by the way Evil King Macrocranios I'm so down with what you said in your podcast about how the 2001 "spaceknights" mini-series is not part of the ROM continuity as far as you're concerned. I also really liked your interview with Al Milgrom it was cool hearing him talk about ROM and The Micronauts from back in the day although I don't share Milgron's words of praise for steve ditko's work
http://pleasesavemerobots.blogspot.com/

Damn, What a difference some color makes for this ROM & Starshine fan art!

Pencil and inks by Jeff Slemons & colors by  Ian Sokoliswki 

The posting title pretty much says it all but in case you might want to see the uncolored version go here . . .
http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=971922&GSub=156008

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Update 7/07: We've also got a new custom spaceknight figure that turned up from Chris yesterday. With the addition of Seeker Chris now has made every final member of the Spaceknight Squadron among other spaceknights and characters from the Rom series. I believe most of those figures have been sold off but you can still view them in his deviant art gallery
http://custom777.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=0