What the Hellhounds!?

The source material for this piece which I put together in Adobe photoshop comes from two other artists. The Torpedo was a line art character study from Eric Jansen. All I had to do to that one was basically add some color to it. ROM is a cropped version of an original piece from Greek artist Kapandais Nikolaos. All I did to that one is add some grey tones to make him contrast from the background a bit more.  

Here's a brand new awesome fan art piece of ROM blitzing a pack of Black Nebula Hellhounds by Kapandais Nikolaos. And this time this one is all him. By the time they realize just what the Hell hit them they'll be on a one way trip to Limbo.

https://www.deviantart.com/nikoskap/art/Rom-Spaceknight-955323949

A couple months ago I was hesitant to post these pages that were part of a SABRA story pitch to Marvel Comics from writer Matt Yocum and artist Jake Bilbao because I felt they were a little too "real world" in terms of subject matter. I've recently had a change of heart. Mostly because I really just want to share this stuff with as many people as possible out there. It's really great material when it comes to the question of what could have been.

  

Almost certainly by late 2023 we will start to see official movie trailers turn up for Captain America New World Order. But before those trailers we will almost certainly by privy to production and "first look" type still images from the film. Some of those no doubt will include Shira Hass as Sabra. I can't help but wonder if all the leftist antisemites as well as the ones within the muslim world will freak out out again and act like a bunch of cry babies with dirty diapers as they did back in September when the Sabra character appearance in the MCU was first announced? The Sabra character was created by Bill Mantlo and Sal Buscema with creative input from Belinda Glass. Thank you all!

April 8th Update: For any Star Wars fans out there I've got something to share that I just started last night and completed this morning. The show down from the season one finale of Disney Plus's Kenobi was one of the best light saber duels ever in Star Wars. The exchange that Kenobi and Vader had at it's conclusion was also some great writing that was the icing on the cake. That was definitely my kinda Star Wars.

April 10th Update: We'll, just when I thought I'd seen it all when it comes to comic book/sci-fi related public art in The San Francisco Bay Area. What we have here is an amazing Miles Morales Spider-Man mural. I've been past this block in Oakland more then once in recent months so I know this mural is pretty new. It's located on 29th Avenue right before the highway 880 south bound onramp. Check it out if you're in the area.

 

ROM Spaceknght 50 tribute fan art

 

This piece is a combination of what is mostly black n white art work borrowed from 4 different artists and arranged together and colored in photoshop. The Torpedo is by Anderson Mendes, ROM is by Steve Butler, Starshine is by Kapandais Nikolaos and the Dire Wraith and Skrulls are by me. 

 

As you can see by the signature this Ron Joseph piece was done 7 years ago and although I've posted Ron's stuff here in the past I never posted this one for reasons I can't explain. Well, I'm gonna correct that little oversight right now.  

Here's another one that's been around for years now but I never posted it before for whatever reason. But I think it deserves a second look obviously. The scene here between ROM, Firefall and The X-Men's Dark Phoenix certainly suggests an interesting story going on here. Would have been nice to get artist Scott Reed's take on his inspiration for this piece.

Here's some more stuff from Ron Joseph with some embellishments from me again. In this case I added ROM to this scene of The Soviet Super Soldiers trying to take down The Hulk and added a little bit of depth with some shading effects. Check out the original source material from Joseph at these links...

 https://www.deviantart.com/ronjoseph-artist/art/THE-HULK-vs-the-SOVIET-SUPER-SOLDIERS-11x17-888596989

https://www.deviantart.com/ronjoseph-artist/art/ROM-vs-THE-HERCULOIDS-pencils-pg02-544320560

 

Here's some unpublished Michael Golden Micronauts art I came across last year. It would make for a nice coloring project. albeit a bit a labor intensive and time consuming one.

ROM the original by Tone Rodriguez

The two awesome ROM pieces by Tone Rodriguez have been around for some year now but this outstanding Torpedo fan art piece by Anderson Mendes was done just last month. And he does commissions  anders.mendes@hotmail.com

 

Calgary Herald October 22 1979

Dec.8th Update: Just came across this archival newspaper article someone posted on twitter from the Calgary Herald back in October 22, 1979. That's pretty amazing that ROM's debut issue got any kind of mention in a mainstream Canadian newspaper to say nothing about an actual full blown article. The author Patrick Tivy, may or may not still be around today but if he is it would be interesting to talk to him today in reflection to this article he wrote over 4 decades ago. The article offers some interesting insight into the comic book collecting scene at the time. It's an enjoyable read but the very last part of it annoyed me a bit.

Dec.14th Update: Seeing cool fan art from other artists almost always makes me want to do something new myself so here we go. This is a tribute to ROM 19 in which we learn of the fateful show down between Firefall and a deathwing during Galador's first spaceknight battle with the dire wraiths. Firefall's (Karas) final fate as a soul trapped in Limbo was always a loose end I wish that had been tied up by the end of the series. Could have been something cool for Marvel to use in the post ROM spaceknight series years. But instead, true to form for Marvel they've done almost nothing but shit instead for the last 20 years.

 

Ringing in the new year with some fan art that kicks ass!

I had been bitching to my good friend and fellow artist and ROM fan in Greece https://www.deviantart.com/nikoskap recently about how December was so fucken devoid of any new ROM related fan art that was worth a shit with November not having been much better. Now one of the reasons I consider this guy a friend is because he actually checks and responds to his emails on a pretty consistent basis which is rare these days even the other ROM fans I've connected with over the years are such assholes when it comes to that. So woe and behold after I woke up on New Year's day a sketch had been emailed to me from my Greek friend which I thought was great.

Didn't have to go to work today ofcourse and I had plenty of spare time on my hands so I decided to color it in photoshop. I know I'm not really blogging here any more these days but I'm pretty damn sure this will probably be the best ROM related fan art for much of . . or most of  . . or maybe for all of 2019 at this rate. So yeah I'm gonna post it here seeing as this is something of a special occasion although certainly not nearly as special as my Stan Lee posting.

Look what was just posted today. This is fucken awful...
http://gramha.com/media/1947937774984684833

Here's something I neglected to post all these years so I guess I might as well now. It's from the last couple panels from Avengers 243 (1984). Speaking of all all cool things from the 80s . . .

I saw Bumbleebee last weekend. I wouldn't say I loved it but I did like it and I think it was a much over due sea change for the franchise. Ofcourse it taking place right here in The San Francisco Bay Area during the 80s was a big plus for me. The movie wasn't with out it's problems though the story line had more then a few logic gaps and at times got a bit too tongue n' cheek for my taste. Although I appreciate how this one was closer to the source material I still really like even till this day the first Michael Bay TF movie but as ever all the sequels aren't worth a shit and I'd like to forget they ever happened.

Back to the 80s one more time with a totally awesome Back to The Future themed chalk drawing on this sandwich board sign outside of  High Scores (80s video game arcade) in downtown Hayward. Trust me, that's a good deal!

Jan 6 Update: Since I used to watch Lavern & Shirley when I was a kid I feel like I'm obligated to make a mention about the passing of Penny Marshal with only days having remained for 2018. I was kinda disappointed that it drew so little attention in the mainstream media I don;t remember seeing anything about on any major news outlets.

Also, here's a thumbnail preview of something I uploaded just this morning. Just did this on a whim and partly through the inspiration of other artists who are friends of mine. The link below will take you to the full size image . . .
https://www.deviantart.com/csuhsux/art/Transformers-and-Rom-spaceknight-recornered-779992170

Jan 15th Update: Well, we're now 2 weeks into the new year and not a single descent thing turned up when it comes to good ROM related fan art but there is this. But I did I happen to see this on the back of a van by chance as I was out and about last week. The 80s just seems to be every where I go.

Jan 26th Update:
HAPPY BIRYHDAY SAL!
https://www.deviantart.com/csuhsux/art/Happy-Birthday-Sal-Buscema-ROM-cover-concept-782841722

Jan 31st Update: Just happened to see this vintage Star Tours bumper sticker today. This really brings back some great memories from the early 90s when I first went on the Star Tours ride.

A tribute to the classic

I didn't think I was gonna do any fan art for the longest time. But this week something just came over me I don't know if it's nostalgia or this chill work week I'm having so far or a combination there of. Just started sketching something last night with some of my free time and it started coming out pretty good. Earlier tonight I colored it and viola....my image montage of the classic ROM series is complete.  P.S. Fuck IDW Publishing

Gordon Henley as rebel X-Wing pilot Red Leader

I feel like I should give another recently passed away actor a little shout out here who isn't a house hold name but never the less has managed to cement their place in sci-fi history. Gordon "Drewe" Henley earlier this month died at age 75 from chocking on some food he was eating. Something of a tragic freak accident I would say especially coming on the heels of Carrie Fisher's death. For those of you who saw Rogue 1 you may have noticed him in the film appear in a couple of scenes exactly as he was back in 1977 when he led the rebel squadron that attacked and destroyed the Empire's first Death Star.
Unlike with The Grand Moff Tarkin and Princes Leia there was no well done CGI going on with Red Leader. That's because the producers of Rogue 1 actually inserted cut scenes from the Death Star battle from A New Hope into the ending space battle in Rogue 1. I absolutely loved that it made Rogue 1 feel that much more like classic vintage Star Wars and it was also great in terms of continuity. I can only hope that Henley was able to see Rogue 1 before his accident. Think about it, watching cut footage of yourself intended for a movie back in 1977 being used for a movie in 2016 I mean seriously how cool is that!? It should also be noted the same thing was done with the actor from A New Hope that played the rebel pilot with the call sign Gold Leader.

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January 28 update: My sketch card collection so far as of today.

Welcome to Clairton West Virginia

Ya know I was thinking the other day if I keep making these sketch cards I might eventually have a enough for a deck. Kinda like those collectible of trading cards in the late 70s and 80s that used to come wrapped in that waxed paper with a strip of bubble gum inside.
In case anyone is wondering I do know about the ROM doll appearance in the recent Comic Book Men episode. It would have been nice however if they hadn't been whining so much about their conflicted adolescent feelings back in the day and maybe kept the focus more on ROM. Perhaps even share their thoughts about the new series next year? Just sayin.
So moving on, this weekend I'll be flying down to LA with my wife for a race she wants to participate in she likes running more then Forest Gump. We'll be staying in the down town area and thanks to a Google search yesterday I discovered about 3 to 4 comic shops within a five mile radius. And since we'll have a rental car and a few hours to kill I'll try to check at least a couple of them out. If I find anything new and cool that's ROM related I'll be sure to update this posting accordingly. One of the near by comic shops is called Mega City One how cool is that!?

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Oct. 25th Update: Well it just goes to show you as the old adage says "What's in a name?". Mega City One was much to do about nothing as far as good comic shops go. However, Golden Apple Comics was a pretty damn cool comic shop however, among other things they had a pretty large stash of discount back issue boxes so I had plenty to read at the airport and on the plane even though LA to Oakland is a pretty short flight. Unfortunately I didn't find anything there cool that was ROM related I didn't already have. But on a high note in regards to my visit there my ROM t-shirt which I was wearing was very warmly received by some of the staff and customers alike. All the chatter about what made the series cool and the high hopes for the 2016 re-launch was the next best thing to finding something like my letter in that Back Issue magazine earlier this month.

Rom Annual 2 cosplay cover variant courtesy of Gary Martin Jr.

Halloween weekend update: Well I hope you all had a fun and safe Halloween. Halloween is still fun but it's not quite what it used to be back in the 1980s. An all around better decade where we had a new issue of ROM to look forward to every month, Marvel didn't suck and it was safe for kids to go trick or treating with out adult supervision.

Giant size Marvel Universe heroes and villlians fan art with something for ROM fans

Hey Gary a heads up on this sure would have been nice, I'm just sayin. All I can tell you folks is that this is done by artist Brian Douglass Ahern who is also a well known ROM fan. Not only does he have ROM and The Torpedo in his heroes collection he also made sure to include ROM arch enemy Hybrid and a couple of dire wraiths among the villains.

ROM spaceknight vs The Brood

Left click to enlarge

This actually isn't finished it's a horizontal drawing. But I just don't have the time right now to finish this Sunday afternoon sketch today because as it is I should have used this time to get some studying done and or get to my fucken taxes. With everything that's going on right now I just needed a mental break and sometimes putting pen or pencil to paper does the trick. Nothing new or exciting since my last posting as far as ROM related stuff goes. None of the fan art I've seen had me saying "wow" to myself and even though some new videos have turned up it's nothing we haven't heard or seen before. They were a lot of the  . . "ROM was a Parker Brothers doll . . . the comic outlasted the toy (insert commonly found clip). . . Marvel lost the rights to the character (insert more commonly found clip) . . .and  . . huh . . zzzzzzzz..zzzzz . .zzzzz".

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Feb. 25th update: Big thanks to Gary Martin Jr. who sent me these screen shots and the following quote today . . .
"The Oscar has been awarded, the Blu-ray released, and we now have our best look at The Torpedo's treatment in the movie Big Hero 6.  While they couldn't give us a closeup on the display suit's helmet, I was surprised to notice on the latest viewing that ROM-related back story comic Marvel Premiere #39 appears prominently!"

On a side note I wanted to remind you all that the cover of ROM spaceknight 26 makes a brief appearance in an opening scene in Tron Legacy. Just this past Valentines Day Weekend I was in Santa Cruz and visited the comic shop from a scene in The Lost Boys where we catch a glimpse of ROM Annual 2.

Lost Boys comic shop scene at the 53 second mark https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZynRcyXIGKM
TRON Legacy opening scene at the 20 second mark
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEndyAOpI8A

Fan art that's worth a second look and The Torpedo's movie debut . . sort of

Yesterday this guy over at deviant art left a comment under one of my recent submissions about how cool a Deathlock vs ROM match up would be. Although it seems like the prevailing cybernetic throw down among comic book fans would be between Deathlock and The Teen Titan's Cyborg. Anyways, that got me thinking of this sketch art that was on deviant art for a while there but as far as I can tell it seems to be gone now. Fortunately I knew another source where I could procure this art work.

I think in the past I've resisted posting this because of the unfinished nature of this work. But in spite of that you can tell whoever did this has some serious illustration skills he/she hits all the major points: figure composition, perspective, foreshorting and shadowing it's a real pity they never finished this. If I recall correctly from when this art work was still on deviant art the other fellow in this sketch is Morbius The Living Vampire. I have no idea if this art work is still any where on social media but I'm going to also give it a home here where fans can see it.

So early yesterday morning I got an enthusiastic email from my good buddy Gary Martin Jr. (perhaps you've heard of him?) that included some screen shots taken from youtube videos of scenes from a Disney movie (Big Hero 6) he had just taken his family to recently. As you can see, someone who was involved in the making of this movie seemed to be really intent on showcasing a number of lesser known Marvel characters along with The Torpedo we can also see Orca, Black Talon and Sleepwalker. Although not seen in these screen shots Gary assures us that the actual movie scene does feature several seconds of a more full body view of The Torpedo. Good ol Brock Jones, gone but not entirely forgotten it would seem.

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Nov. 16 Update: Speaking of Easter Eggs, most of you know about ROM being scene briefly in that god awful ill fated Silver Surfer cartoon (episode 5) back in the 90s right? Well thanks to the wonders of modern technology (photoshop) we can now have ourselves a ROM easter egg in a good Saturday morning cartoon from marvel . . .
http://csuhsux.deviantart.com/art/Spiderman-and-his-Amazing-Friends-with-ROM-494916285

ROM spaceknight issue #22 commemorative fan art ( I really miss the 80s! )

I finally got around to  getting done the fan art that's been foremost in my collection of ideas for the past couple months.

Number 22 (1981) was the first ROM issue I ever had and in effect it started a chain reaction of fandom with me from the early 80s to today. So it seems this commemorative fan art is a good foot note to end things here. Yeah that's right, in my never ending quest to curb my time on the internet and lead a more productive life in the real world (mainly for more sleep and exercise in my schedule) I've decided to suspend writing any more of these time consuming postings indefinitely. It's no big deal I'll still be sharing all cool ROM related things with those of you I correspond with through other means outside of this blog such as on deviant art and by email, but I still don't do farcebook.

Left click to enlarge

But let me leave you with some of the cool stuff I saw last weekend while I was in Alameda for an afternoon. By the way that's the same city I ran into that guy who had the cool Nova t-shirt earlier this summer. Anyways, first up I took a photo of this cool new Star Wars window display at Toy Safari which as you can see carry's among other things vintage sci-fi and comic book based toys from the 80s.

I bet you forgot about this one : )

Only a couple retail spaces down was this new place called High Scores Arcade which is a video game arcade that features exclusively old school games from  . . . . yep you guessed it the 80s! You can get a look at the inside of the place here  http://www.highscoresarcade.com/games.html

Gods of Galador my ROM t-shirt arrived today!

Just got this baby in the mail a couple of hours ago! This is actually the first time I've ever bought any clothing online I've always had this standing rule about never buying anything I can try on first I'm a bit fussy when it comes to how stuff fits on me. But I had no choice Redbubble doesn't have any retail services from their San Francisco office. I don't know how they can get away with selling t-shirts of licensed characters with everything from Thundarr The Barbarian to The Shogun Warriors and even to The Micronauts but I gotta go back to S.F. early next week and now that I have my brand spanking new ROM t-shirt from these guys maybe I'll try to pay them another visit.

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This custom Torpedo figure has been around for a while but I felt like featuring it here basically because I really like it. The artist did a good job on making the Torpedo armor look very accurate to how it was drawn not to mention the transparent visor. I'm also a big fan of figures that have good points of articulation. Even when a figure has a good sculpt but is about as articulate as the original Star Wars action figure line well then it might as well just be a statue figurine which kinda defeats the whole point of producing an "action figure". Now here's an example of a custom Torpedo I'm not too crazy about for the before mentioned reasons . . .
http://www.figurerealm.com/viewcustomfigure.php?FID=60300

September 7 Update: A heart warming moment from the Bill Finger Awards presentation at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con with our beloved Bill spaceknight Mantlo.

Hey Torpedo look out behind you!

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I'm so sprung today I finally finished my last day of this month long of 6:30 A.M. to 10 P.M. work days. My crewmen relief period for this time is finally over it's just one job (for the time being) for a while now. And not a moment not too soon I have just enough time to throw this posting together of Chris's latest custom figure before I'm off to the night job. But at least I got all weekend to chat it up with you guys. 

The challenges of digital coloring

Here's some of the latest fan art by Dann Phillips that recently showed up on deviant art. I usually only like to color art work that primarily consists of bold and fine line work on a white back ground. Fan art that consists of heavy shading in multiple darkness to lightness values represent a lot of coloring challenges that can make what normally would take me well under an hour to taking me half the day to do.
But on a whim in between breakfast, listening to the news and working out I tried something new out on this piece. Of course I used photoshop to do this in so I'll put it in Laymens terms. Basically, it deals with making multiple copies of the entire art piece and assigning an individual color swatch to each one. Then you just lay them all on top of each other and remove what you don't want from each one until the full picture appears. And then there was a little touch up work done using the more common photoshop features like the air brush and color fill tools.
I may end up tweaking it some more over the next couple of days but for now I'll post how it came out initially.You may notice that the this new coloring method doesn't produce the more vibrant colors as seen with the type of fan art I more typically color. The U-Foes coloring job from a few postings back is a good example that. Never the less it's always good to expand your horizons a bit from time to time.

When it comes to the well fare of your children trust no one other the greatest of the spaceknights to get the job done.

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Just a little something for shits n giggles I whipped up in photoshop and decided to throw in here as an after thought. I'm sure the inspiration for this is pretty obvious.