The missing footnote

Since it's the 4th of July let me open up this month's posting with some new fan art that features the red, white and blue by Greek artist and my friend Nikolause Kapandais. Actually, it's not exactly new per se, I used photoshop to take two separate fan art pieces from Nikolause and put them together into one scene with Captain America and Sabra together.

ROM Spaceknight 43 June 1983

Avengers 253 has something about it that's bothered me a bit for a few years now but I always considered it to be too trivial to bother posting about. But, I've got some spare time on my hands this holiday weekend so why not? Ok, long time ROM fans will no doubt recall while in the soviet union how ROM had his armor hijacked by Quasimodo The Living Computer only to be then attacked by a brain washed Brandy Clark who was now merged with the Starshine armor. It wasn't until later in life that I came to understand that Quasimodo was essentially a sentient program (not so much unlike agent Smith from The Matrix) and that the idea of him fading away or whatever in the wind after being forced out of ROM's armor was kinda silly but hey . . . comics. That being said, it was an awesome story arc and I still love it today as I did back in the day, thank you Bill.

Ok fast forward about 9 months to Avengers 253 in which Vision's "conscience" encounters Quasimodo in a soviet computer network in which Quasimodo makes an obvious reference to ROM 43 which is backed up by his Official Marvel Universe Handbook page. Although there was no internet during mid 80s, there were global computer networks as seen in the movies War Games and ofcourse TRON. But even that was still pretty cutting edge computer technology at the time so that made for kind of a cool plot device in that Avengers issue. Anyways, I was always a bit annoyed that there wasn't a footnote there, especially since the issue had a about a half dozen of them else where for other Marvel titles and Avengers back issues. 

https://www.zipcomic.com/the-avengers-1963-issue-253

 

This year has seen the loss of some major talents who have contributed to all things ROM over the years in one way or another. Jim Shooter passed away at pretty much the exact half way point of 2025. A controversial figure in some ways, he never the less was a big part of what made the Marvel 80s so epic with the Secret Wars series being just one of the many examples. On one hand, Shooter greenlit Bill Mantlo's idea for the Micronauts and reached out to MEGO so ofcourse that was awesome. But at the same time we know they also had a tenuous working relationship as well and unfortunately we'll never get Mantlo's side of the story about all that for obvious reasons…

http://jimshooter.com/2011/06/coming-of-rom-knights-tale.html/

 

Earlier this year we also last Peter David and Butch Guice. Guice, who was an overall phenomenal artist (as seen in the pages of the before mentioned Micronuats) also did the cover art for at least three ROM issues (55,58 and 70) that I know of. Peter David never worked on the original series but he certainly made sure to help keep the legacy of ROM going in a big way with the Rick Jones wedding issue of The Incredible HULK. David also included  some clever ROM and Dire Wraith references in other HULK issues as well as in Captain Marvel in the 90s.

Rest in peace Kenneth Colley, you served the empire with honor & distinction