Easter eggs and cameos

Today I inadvertently came across this really cool fan made cover art homage to All Star Squadron issue 1. It was on some site called Tumpik which I've never heard of before. The Tumpik page this art work was labeled as "Art Edit Credit to Roberto Coltro" so I guess Mr. Coltro is the artist. If you're a comic book fan then it's a good chance you've seen the source material this homage is based on but if you don't recall what the original cover art looks like a Google search take care of that easy enough. But this piece has a lot going for it along with being a nice cover art homage.

Although I'm quite grateful that among this multiverse Easter eggs collection we have The Greatest of The Spaceknights present, there's a lot of other great ones as well spanning from many different genres of sci-fi and comic book pop culture. I mean look at them there's Mr. Spock, Space Ghost, Silver Hawks and even The Mandalorian just to name a few. Also, the cover art has both Flash Gordon and Star Lord in it even though that's not the MCU or even the contemporary Marvel Comics Star Lord. It reminds me of the scene from Avengers: Infinity War where Tony Stark sarcastically refers to Peter Quill as Flash Gordon in which Quill responds by letting Tony know he considers that a compliment. 

What you see here is a page from some sort of UK publication from the 90s that I think was affiliated with Marvel some how although I don't think there was any sort of official cross over story lines with the main stream Marvel Universe at the time. I'm not a big fan of the artist's caricaturist style when it comes to drawing people and the coloring needs some work. But the dire wraith is drawn quite well and having Forge's Neutralizer in the scene is a nice touch. Gotta think the artist and or writer was a ROM fan.

I was reading a copy of Incredible HULK yesterday and discovered two things. The first being that Sabra actually made a cameo appearance, meaning that technically speaking Incredible Hulk 256 was not her first Marvel Comics appearance. Considering how big of a Sabra fan I am I'm kinda embarrassed I didn't know have known that already. And the letters page also had this informal ROM promo. After reading that letter it's hard to imagine even a sub standard inker making Sal's pencils look lack luster.  

I recently found out that Marvel Comic Books is actually not the only media Sabra has appeared in. She also made a cameo appearance in the mid 90s Fantastic Four cartoon series episode 26. Her cameo was proceeded by a few others as The Silver Surfer flew through various parts of the world. I think that was a nod to Incredible Hulk 250 in which we see a similar event that gave us cameos of what was then new Marvel characters like Sabra and The Arabian knight among others.
 

October 13th Update: Ya know it really pisses me off what celebrity deaths the media chooses to give a lot of attention to and which others they hardly make any mention off. I just found out about the passing of Louise Fletcher late last month. Fletcher was best known for her antagonistic roles as Nurse Ratchet from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and as Kia Winn from Star Trek: Deep Space 9. That was a great Star Trek series and she played one of those characters you love to hate, but in a good way. When you look back at her decades old acting career you'll realize she's popped up in many other roles you may not have recognized her in at the time such as in the 80s science fiction horror classic Firestarter. Fletcher was 88 years old.

October 21st Update: Well here we go again with note worthy celebrity deaths missed by the media. I just found out that actor David Warner passed away at 80 way back in July. Ya know, it's not like his acting career consisted of just some commercials and as an extra on a few TV shows or something. TRON, Time Bandits, numerous Star Trek characters, The Titanic, Time After Time and the list just goes on forever. Rest in peace David and fuck the mainstream media for hardly saying a thing about your passing or the amazing work you did for decades but gave us 24/7 coverage of Queen Elizabeth's death for almost 2 or so goddamn weeks.

The ROM legacy Heroclix collection

Left click to enlarge

I've loved dioramas ever since I was a kid, and this one comes to us by Gary Martin Jr.who did a fine job on it. The top left silver figurine is Ikon with some gold color variants that are supposed to be some kind of standard spaceknight soldiers in the Heroclix universe. Along the bottom to the left we have Forge from The X-Men which I'm sure most of you ROM fans remember as having had a pivotal role as an ally to ROM in the final days of the Wraith War both in the pages of The X-Men as well as in ROM spaceknight. Moving to the right we've also got Turbo from The New Warriors although for nostalgia's sake I wish they had made that figure outfitted with the original Torpedo costume as opposed to the updated version as seen in the 2nd New Warriors series.
Moving on to the right we've got the bad guys starting with a standard female dire wraith along with the dire wraith queen Volx. Notice how Volx is made of the exact same mold but done in green. Last up in the top right corner we've got the worst of the worst when it comes to ROM's enemies. Arguably the best sculpt of the bunch that there is Hybrid. Spawned of a dire wraith father and human mother Hybrid was a mutant of sorts possessed of vast powers both mental and physical.

It also so happens that this past weekend I was at the latest San Jose Super Toy comic and collectibles show. I really like this con I've been to it a few times now over the past couple of years it's not as big as most other cons but it's not bad at all and for a measly $10 admission fee (plenty of free parking nearby to) you get quite a lot of bang for your buck as the saying goes. It was kinda cool to see a dealer decorate one of his comic boxes with ROM 18. Also, Sam Jones from the awesomely cheesy 1980 Flash Gordon movie and more recently from the Ted movies was there.

1989 Oakland CA Wonder Con convention program

October 7 Update: First off I wanted to say I'm disappointed to not see some words of appreciation for that ROM legacy Heroclix diorama which no doubt was a real labor of love for Gary. Ok moving on, here's a little retrospective when it comes to the local convention scene. I just found this in an old 1989 Oakland Wonder Con convention program I still had. Ofcourse I've sung the praises of Akin & Garvey's work on ROM numerous times here over the years but I hadn't realized until today that they had also done inks on the Micronauts (Vol. 2) as well. I don't know about the first ever Wonder Con in 87 but I know they were also guests at the one in 88. Looking back I wish I had made a point to see them while I was there but unfortunately back in the late 80s I was in a different head space. The names behind the comics I loved to read and collect were not that big of a deal to me as hard as that me be to believe in the here and now.