Bill Mantlo, more custom figures, more new fan art, just more all around cool shit

I found this photo of the Rom doll and it's Marvel house ad and it really reminded me of my days working as a  graphic designer in advertising because it looked like he was proof reading his ad. So I came up with what I thought was a funny dialogue bubble to go with the image. And don't forget Avengers Prelude to Infinity #17 comes out this up coming Wednesday let's hope we'll get to see what happens next with Galador and it's spaceknight guardians. You can bet I'll be talking about it here.

And as you can see we've got a new custom figure to show off, a dreaded Dark Nebula Hellhound. As for that Starshine II spaceknight (Brandy Clark) custom figure I've featured it here before but from a different angle. Light beams compliments of some of my handy dandy photoshop magic of course. By the way here's the best Rom custom I've ever seen I would love to get my hands on one of em: http://www.toyark.com/spaceknight-galador-4322/

Literally only minutes before I was about to publish this posting I came across another page for that Bill Mantlo benefit Rom spaceknight #1 re-creation project. Of the three pages I've found now, this one by far is the best yet not only can this guy draw like a pro but I personally really dig his style. Go ahead and check out the rest of the page here: http://www.deviantart.com/art/ROM-Spaceknight-389369223

I want to make a very good point about what made the original Micronauts series (especially the "Golden era") so awesome and why the idea of it's legacy getting turned into some kind of  "happy meal" cartoon (see previous post) makes my skin crawl. If you haven't read issue #5 of The Micronauts please take a moment to read this page it's a real eye opener . . .

Just think, this was written in 1979 and look what it was dealing with. You have some socially significant commentary being made here about everything from people living under fascistic governments to religion and even class warfare. Just look at what's going on right now in countries like North Korea and Egypt or even right here in America with our own social and economic ills. For those who might continue the Micronaut legacy either do it right or don't fucken do it at all there's already enough Ben 10 bullshit kind of cartoons out there to "dumbify" today's kids. And now, for the lighter side of life . . . .

In part 4 of The King of Thessaly's Flea Market finds we get to find out more then we ever wanted to know about what goes on under Cloak's cloak http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykZiyx7N4Kk

Rom related trading cards and recent Brian Bendis commentary

A big thanks to Rick Hansen who sent me this card along with this Facebook message: "I know you're familiar with this scene, but I thought I'd share. The owner of my LCS gave me an entire set of 1991 Hulk trading cards and this one is obviously notable." The panel used on this trading card is from Incredible Hulk 374 in which Rick Jones was being tortured by skrulls who among other things impersonated heroes he's been a side kick to.

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Most of you already know about these Over Power cards as described at Lee's site Rom Spaceknight Revisited: http://home.hiwaay.net/~lkseitz/comics/Rom/othermedia/index.shtml
Also, note worthy is the Rom electronic toy trading card by Plaidstalliones: http://www.plaidstallions.com/tradingcards.html

You may also be interested to know about Turbo having had her own Over Power card. And indeed Turbo is quite over powering here especially with her huge boobs but I'm not complaining. It appears as if these Over Power cards had original illustrations created for them. Beyond that I couldn't tell ya anything about these cards since RPG games have never been my thing. I also couldn't tell ya anything about this Dire Wraith trading card which seems to part of some sort of Magic The Gathering type card game. But I can tell you the clip art used for the card is from the first page of Rom# 49 that kicked off the Massacre Of Clareton which among other tragedies in the series was the death of Brock Jones (Torpedo II).

Brought to my attention recently by Gary Martin Jr. are 3 other Marvel trading cards that feature the covers of Marvel titles that have Rom and Dire Wraiths on them. I'm only making a text mention of the first two because neither card features any sort of distinctive decorative trim so there's nothing to see there that you all haven't seen before: Marvel 1st Covers series II (1991) -West Coast Avengers #1 / X-Men Cover Trading Cards series II (1990) - X Men #187.

Now this one from last year's Avengers Assemble trading cards series is kinda interesting. I say that because this is now the second time I know of that Marvel published Rom's name and likeness in the last couple of years. The first time I noticed it at a local comic shop in the Secret Wars II Omni Bus TPB late last year and as far as I can tell no one is screaming for a law suite over it.


Brian Michael Bendis: Sometimes it's the thought that counts the following is a quote from an iFanboy article from three weeks ago with Bendis on upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy projects:  "While all this info about the Guardian of the Galaxy is interesting, we did ask the question that was on everyone’s minds: what does this mean for ROM: SpaceKnight? After stopping laughing, Bendis responded, “Listen, no one would love the return of ROM: SpaceKnight more than myself. I have made it clear to anyone who will listen, the minute anything like that ever became available to us…” and then clarified that Marvel doesn’t own the rights to ROM: SpaceKnight, “I would stop the story I was in the middle of doing…and I said this about Avengers too. Right in the middle of any event or any storyline…when I was doing Moon Knight,  the minute I was able to write the words “ROM: SpaceKnight” into a script, he would literally just crash into the story. Boom! That would be it”.

New found Rom cameo! Plus, Dire Wraiths vs The Brood. The deadliest species!

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I found this panel by chance on a ComicVine clip art collection having to do with Dire Wraiths. I suspect this is from the Marvel Universe X issue that has an appearance of a version of ROM (human) who was stranded in Limbo and still fighting Dire Wraiths with his neutralizer. For a quick recap: http://siskoid.blogspot.com/2009/10/rom-universe-x.html One thing I'm sure about is that this clip art is from something Marvel published after the licensing rights expired. They don't use the ROM name here and notice how the details on "Rom" are obscured by the neutralizer's rays to the point where technically that could be any other spaceknight? But that's still a cool panel cause we all know who that is with or with out a copyright. Those are Dire Wraiths but it looks like Rom could be blasting John Carpenter's The Thing to Limbo with his neutralizer.

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 Who could forget this awesome panel from the now classic X-Men 187. What Storm was thinking here got me thinking too. Aside from that I love the way Storm's face is drawn here. Her expression of knee jerk fear and revulsion is perfect.

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Imagine for a moment the Dire Wraiths having invaded Brood infected space instead of the Golden Galaxy. Or perhaps imagine The Brood attempting to invade and infect the Dark Nebula. The Brood and the Dire Wraiths are arguably the most vicious and vile aliens in the Marvel Universe. But which is the most deadliest of the two species!?
Both bring plenty to the battle field when it comes to advanced weapons technology and deadly genetic adaptations. But I'm thinking Wraith sorcery might end up giving the Dire Wraiths the edge in an all out interstellar conflict between these two alien menaces. What do you think?