For this 4th of July 2025

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 Kapandais Nikolause. 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. I think Contest of Champions and Incredible Hulk 279 were the only times where these two characters appeared together in the same comic book story lines.

Now if there's any writer in Marvel that can get the hopes up of ROM fans only to shoot that hope down in flames it's the asshole known as Jonathan Hickman and this is exactly the kinda shit I talked about last month (*see previous posting). This panel featuring Ikon looking like a has been spaceknight suffering from depression in an alien dive bar is from Imperial issue 1 which is a new cosmic series. Now in Hickman's mind he might have actually believed he's paying tribute to the ROM legacy with sorry ass shit like but in reality he's doing it a disservice. It's shit like this along with IDW's ill conceived reboot is what made ROM fans give up on any sort of hopes for a return of The Greatest of The Spaceknights in contemporary story lines and instead pivot thier hopes toward stuff like Omnibus reprints and an articulate action figure which they finally got as of this year. One last thing, I'd like to give a not so honorary mention to writers Abnett & Lanning who gave us The Annihilators which was yet another big let down for the fans base.

THE COMING OF ROM: A Knight's Tale by Jim Shooter June 2011 http://jimshooter.com/2011/06/coming-of-rom-knights-tale.html/

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 helped get greenlit Bill Mantlo's idea for the Micronauts and reached out to MEGO so ofcourse that was awesome. And ofocurse he was instrumental to getting the ROM series launched. 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.

 

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

 

Captain America 4 and The Fantastic Four . . . you need to do better Marvel!

Over the years I've seen quite a bit of foreign cover art for reprinted ROM issues and stories. Mostly they were made up of lifted images of both clip art and cover art from the Marvel series. In other cases it was more like mediocre fan art style reproduction from the original series. But in a handful of cases they were actual original art work created for those foreign reprints. This one here, which is based on the cover art from ROM issue 20 is my favorite original art foreign cover although there's also one from Strange Magazine (French) that features ROM and The Sub-Mariner that I think is a close second . . .

https://romspaceknightart.blogspot.com/2014/04/of-spartans-spaceknights.html

  It's been a while since I've posted any public art based on comic book/science fiction pop culture. I recently discovered this pretty cool mural in downtown Oakland Califonia. Kinda surprised to find this rather patriotic Steve Rogers Captain America in such a "progressive" town like Oakland which might as well be renamed to Wokeland these days. Speaking of all things Captain America, we all know that Captain America 4 is debuting in theaters in just a couple weeks from now and it's pretty much a guaranteed box office bomb. 

  Rumor has it that the would be SABRA appearance has been stripped of her Israeli identity. Needless to say that pisses me off but it comes as no surprie that Woke Disney/Marvel Studios would cave into BDS post october 7, 2023. But it's also the least of this movie's productions problems with all the reshoots, multiple failed screen tests and the latest comments from actor Anthony Mackie. I'm really feeling like that whole MCU story arc with Steve giving Sam the shield should have just been wrapped up with the Falcon Winter Soldier mini series. It wasn't with out it's problems but overall I really enjoyed it to be honest. I'll pass on this one I can wait till it shows up on streaming.

 

As I was reading this online article from late last year about this series of variants based off the classic Marvel Two-IN-One series I realized that issue 99 was the second to the last issue of the series. So glad they decided to get ROM into the mix before it's end it was one of my favorite Marvel team ups ever.
 https://comicbook.com/comics/news/marvel-the-fantastic-four-the-thing-two-in-one-variant-cover-series/

 

Around Hanukkha last year I thought it might be fun to rework the recent ROM and THING fan art from Ron Frenz by substituting ROM for Sabra by artist Darryl Banks. I think the Banks Sabra blended pretty seamlessly into a Marvel Two-In-One issue that would have been awesome. Speaking of all related things Ben Grimm, I'm not seeing that not so Fantastic Four shit either in theaters. Sorry but not sorry Pedro, you're not Reed Richards. Because despite his work on The Mandalorian I can't stand him as a person. And on top of that, Norrin Radd is now going to be Nora Radd as I understand it. No thank you to all that!

 

HEAVY METAL

About two or three weeks ago I stumbled upon some new ROM fan art on social media but unfortunately thus far I haven't had any luck finding out who the artist is. Now I don't know if the setting is original art or if it was lifted from some other source but ROM himself was directly taken from the final page of ROM annual 2. Usually I'm not big on facsimile fan art because of its inherent unimaginative nature but this one was some what of an exception to me. It kinda had this 70s/80s sci-fi fantasy art style to it that had me feeling a bit nostalgic. Then I got to thinking about what it would have looked like on the cover of HEAVY METAL Magazine.

And speaking of nostalgic mock covers, this Strange Magazine cover art is apparently a convention sketch by Bob Layton who is in Lyon France. I'm almost certain that's ROM's neutrilizer in his right hand ... or at least it was. I guess there must still be some ROM fans in France.

This digital fan art of Sabra vs antisemitic dumbass ruffalo Hulk is actually from last year I just didn't post it here at the time for what ever reason. Anyways, fuck mark ruffalo. And as stated so pointedly by front man David Draiman at a Disturbed concert in Tel Aviv a couple nights ago "FUCK roger waters" to . . .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSKzoC5xxMQ

4 of July Update: Someone posted this (Hembeck ofcourse) on Farcebook recently and I'm always happy to discover some new archival ROM related stuff out there. I remember an old interview with Stan Lee in which he explains the HULK was originally intended to be grey but because of some glitch they couldn't fix at the printers he ended up being green so Stan basically just went with it. In regards to ROM, I did notice how his armor was introduced as grey but shortly later took on a more blue look but I never really gave it any thought for some reason. I do like the blue tone a bit better but at the same time when I see the more "Grey ROM" it kinda feels more classic Marvel 80s.

July 9th Update: I don't know about the 3 or 4 of you out there who have read this posting but I'm loving The Secret Invasion series on Disney Plus. Woke up this morning in the mood to draw something having to do with The Skrulls here we are. I ended up doing this sketch card which is based on the history of the Dire Wraith and Skrull conflict as explained in ROM Spaceknight 50.

https://marvelcrossovers.blogspot.com/2018/10/wraith-war-1984-1985.html?sc=1691337863733