My scathing letter to IDW found in ROM (in name only) issue 4

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Well you can all thank ROM curator Gary Martin Jr. for this weekend's blog posting. This letter page that Gary sent me is from a digital copy of "Rom the spacknight" issue 4. Gotta say I was pretty surprised IDW printed that one. Well I'll tell you this Mr. Ryall, I'll take the "knee high metal disco boots" over the anime style metal snow boots you came up with for your ROM in name only series. I think Ryalls reasoning for having ditched ROM's classic hardware was also bullshit. Prior to this letter being published I had several correspondences earlier this year with IDW by email in regards to my ROM re-design grievances. And each time their responses becameare more baffling I feel like we're really talking two different languages just as you see here with chris ryall's reply to my letter. I mean we might as well be a Clinton and Trump supporter debating political-ideological differences which as you can imagine would be as pointless as a tic tac toe game or a dog chasing it's own tail.
Have you seen the cover variants for that issue yet? Most of em look like shit, all these cover variants idw keep doing are the same thing over and over again do you think it would kill em to make a cover that's a reflection of the story inside the issue for a change? So now I have to deal with the dilemma of "to buy or not to buy" ROM in name only number 4. I vowed to never buy any of IDW's shit ever again after the shitty Micronauts #1 but I might have to make an exception for this issue given that it does have a letter from me giving me now a total of 4 different titles I've now had my letters published in.

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Also from Gary we've got some old school stuff. This here comes from a Comics Buyer's Guide special on HULK back issues complete with a price guide and brief review on all the issues it covered. The special also included an entry for Incredible Hulk 262 (dire wraith back story) but I'm just featuring the entry for 296 because this one has a been of interesting commentary. Gary also found some entries for X-Men 187 and 188 for an X-Men Comics Buyer's Guide Presents special. But the asshole who did those entry write ups was a real dick head with his smart ass remarks about how the dire wraiths were some kinda second rate villains and what not. I'm not posting his shit fuck him.

November 5 update: Buying a copy for the IDW Rom in name only series for me is a lot like casting a ballot in the 2016 presidential election. Most people don't want to do it but feel like they have to in order to keep the option they hate even more out of the Oval Office. In my case I don't want to give IDW any of my money but not having a copy of my letter might be a worse option then this one time only purchase. Figures my LCS (CRUSH COMICS) only had one of the shitty cover art variants in stock. Apparently the ROM in name only series is selling better then the shitty Micronauts reboot from IDW according to the owner of CRUSH.

November 6 update: This is why I like people who leave comments I basically had no idea the cover variant I picked up yesterday was done by Al Milgrom and was a homage piece to Iron Man 80. Although I think it worked much better on the Iron Man cover. And just for the record I'm not just beating up on Al I've also pooped on cover variants done by Sal Buscema and Michael Golden it just seems to me that these cover variants from IDW lately don't bring out the best in these iconic Marvel 80s artsists. Although I betcha if Milgrom had done this homage cover in the RTO (Rom the original) series it would have come out much better then this RINO crap (Rom in name only).

2015 The Arrival!

I recently discovered what appears to be a digital mock up on comicartfans.com and it seemed like a nice posting to open up 2015. Hopefully you're having a "Fabulous 1st" day of  2015. The back story behind it is that apparently the Marvel Master Piece bonus Pin up page in the back of ROM spaceknight #3 by Al Milgrom was originally done as the cover art for issue #1. I can't confirm that at this time but never the less that pin up page sure makes for a great cover.

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And speaking of art here's my latest envelope fan art for a certain somebody out there who I know loves Crystar. But I also had fun drawing this, back in the day I used have the Moltar and Crystar figures and issues 4, 5 and 6 of the series.

Well, through out all the ups and downs of 2014 I hope if nothing else you all had at least a relatively nice holiday season. That goes especially for the Mantlo family but hasbro and marvel can still kiss my ass. I wouldn't care to speculate how 2015 will go but I'd like to thank you all for making last year another fun one over here for all things ROM and Marvel 80s related. Stay tuned I anticipate having some updates for this posting within the next week or so . . .

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Jan. 5th Update: A big thanks to johnmiic for sending me this farcebook screen shot of this unofficial Marvel team up with the 80s god of muscle rock THOR and ROM. Now that's what I call heavy metal, most likely with the assistance of photoshop. You can check out Thor here http://www.thorcentral.com/

I can't think of a good posting title for today

I neglected to mention that the fan art I posted last week as well as what you see above was passed along to me from Gary Martin Jr. so you can all thank him for that. Tell me this cool sketch piece here doesn't remind you of Bill Sienkiewicz's style. Or maybe Berni Wrightson from the early Swamp Thing days? It's by a fellow by the name of Shamus Murphy and after a closer look I think it's an interpretation of the first page of issue 1 in which Rom emerges from the impact point of his arrival.  
I suspect this one may have been around for a while now but just largely unknown. This one here has been around in variant versions in black n' white which I've posted here before but it just recently turned up as a color painting it's quite excellent from in terms of use of color and figure composition . . .
 http://www.deviantart.com/art/Rom-Spaceknight-432394852

Did you know that the Starhawk character was co-created by Sal Buscema? Which gives me reason to believe he may have had a lot to do with the character's design which I've always thought was one of the coolest in Marvel since seeing him in a copy of  issue 10 (vol.1) of The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe I had back in the day. His entry was penciled by Al Milgrom who also did the cover art for numerous issues of the Rom series.
In spite of all that I've always found Starhawk's origins a bit convoluted apparently like Firestorm he's actually two people. Also, I've never been a big fan of The Guardians of The Galaxy both in regards to the original and the current group (so sue me). Still though, cool character design and great rendering by Milgrom.

P.S. I just started another brutal work schedule like I had last month. It's gonna last the rest of this week and possibly for most of February so I may not have much time for this internet stuff for a little while.

Just like I said, Marvel still loves ROM and they know about the fans but . . .

 Apparently early this year this wasn't the only blog out there that was discussing the matter of the the ROM name and likeness licensing issue which was prompted by the return of  Hybrid in Avengers Academy back in March. The slamonstrobot blog authored by Snell posted on the topic with more feed back from Marvel. What you see here is from the Christos Gage in the Avengers Academy letter column.
For those of you who have been following this blog you pretty much know all of this. So really, here this information to the left is just more not so positive reinforcement on the ugly reality of the situation. And there's more:  http://slaymonstrobot.blogspot.com/2012/03/donald-duck-spacekinght.html

It's not that I disbelieve Gage in this letter column but Marvel has found a way in the past to fudge that legality as shown in Universe X #3 (2000) http://siskoid.blogspot.com/2009/10/rom-universe-x.html

 Yeah I know that blows. So I endeavor to keep digging into the past to bring ROM fans today something to smile about. Although sometimes even the stuff from the past doesn't make me entirely happy. Here's a good example. I forgot I used to have this issue of Secret Wars II until I saw an entry for it in Lee's Rom Spaceknight Revisited data base site. I think the reason why I didn't keep the series or this issue was for two reasons. One is that the Secret Wars II was massively inferior to the original. As to this issue of course it was cool that they had a ROM cameo/reference to ROM#72 but it pissed me off that Al Milgrom who did some of the original ROM covers back in the day drew ROM in that horrible Steve Dikto style. God! I especially hated the way Dikto drew ROM's eyes.

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Look what else I found at RSR. This is something I didn't know about before. Here's a Rom head shot from Web of Spiderman #7 during a dream sequence Peter Parker is having.

You can see the full page here:

 http://www.supermegamonkey.net/chronocomic/entries/web_of_spider-man_7.shtml

 Just found Avengers 268 in a $1 bin recently. I remember when this issue first came out I happened to see it on the shelf at some dime store in San Francisco back in the day. After I thumbed through it I kinda waffled for a bit but ended up not buying it. I guess at the time this loose ROM tie-in didn't seem like that big of a deal to me since this issue came out in June of 1986 which was just a few months after the last ROM issue (#75 Feb. 1986) It featured a few pages of all these suicidal Dire Wraiths attacking some of the Avengers who had been kidnapped and temporarily stranded in Limbo by the timelord Kang. Now of course, finding something like this now is a bigger deal then it was over 25 years ago. I'm a sentimental kinda guy and for just a half a buck it was money well spent.

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As you may have figured The Avengers didn't kill all the Limbo dwelling Dire Wraiths in this issue. Many others were still there and they would eventually find themselves in conflict and ultimately subjugated by another timelord in Limbo by the name of  Immortus as told in the pages of the Darkstar Winter Guard mini-series (2010).