Legacies

So from time to time I like to post public art I discover that's related to the comic book/sci-fi/fantasy genre that I discover by chance. Well here's the latest on, which I found in San Francisco recently. As you can see it's clearly derived from TRON Legacy. A really beautiful mural especially on the details on her face it's just too bad it wasn't done on a smoother surface instead of a corrugated roll up door.

And I just wanted to also remind you that the TRON Legacy trailer 2 included a brief shot of ROM spaceknight 26 along with some other cool 80s Easter eggs.

Speaking of all things TRON and 80s this seems like a good time to share photo of me from back in the day playing with my Castle Greyskull playset in my TRON pajamas. What a decade!

In this latest sketch card fan art, an unknown spaceknight takes center stage in repelling a dire wraith invasion war fleet. 

Fan art . . .the good, the bad and the bizarre

Think of this posting as a public service announcement. Kinda like an emergency broadcast on your TV once in a while.

https://www.deviantart.com/nikoskap

The two works above are examples of the good. Well illustrated and creative while also being faithful to the source material. Everything below, would be good examples of the bad and the bizarre which unfortunately are far more commonly found then the good stuff. Yeah I know I'm kinda of being a dick by doing a posting like this but truth be told I had wanted to do this since early last year but had always felt it was kinda of crossing a line. But now, with this being a semi-retired blog these days I'm not really too worried about making new friends or my reputation. I'm just so very happy to finally really make this point.

All this shit should be banished to Limbo

I really love it when I come across some kind of ROM related fan art that reminds me of the good ol days of when I had a new issue of ROM or some kind of tie-in to look forward to every month. None of that kind of shit does that for me. When I see that stuff it's like that feeling you get when you see a dead animal on the road or people who spit in public all the time.

San Francisco's Mission District

March 30th Update: And speaking of good art. Here's some local stuff of a more large scale and public nature.

Oakland's China Town

June 12th Update:  I wanted to do something different for a change and feature ROM with his translator. I always thought that was a cool reveal from issue 50 so I imagine at some point ROM would have had to use his translator during his time hunting down the dire wraiths within the Skrull empire.

Rom spaceknight 50

June 20th Update: It recently occurred to me that I've never done any fan art of the male dire wraiths so here we go.

June 22nd Update: The greatest of the spaceknights vs Deathwing, nuff said. You might say this was a David and Goliath kinda match up.

June 29nd Update: Here's something from artist Lou Russo worth having a look at if you're a ROM fan who also happens to like Star Trek and ALIENS (the first two movie only) like I am. I'm not a big fan how he draws ROM most of the time but he came out ok here and as always I give Russo high Marks for creativity. The link below has the full size image...
https://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=1559313

July 18th Update:  Looks like I had one last sketch card up my sleeve as the saying goes.

Envelope fan art by David Holsey

August 14th Update: I really love envelope art especially when it arrives to it;s final destination still looking ok.

 

 

Legion of Marvel 80s action figure super heroes and a candid look at what's going on in America

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Recently came across some cool photos of some pretty bad ass collections of Marvel 80s themed super hero action figures. You look up there at the top and they've got the ROM Hasbro figure along Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends. They even have their pet dog from the Saturday morning cartoon (probably the best of all the Saturday morning cartoons with The Hulk being a close second) can any body out there remember her name? And to the left we've got a couple nice customs of ROM and of Acroyear from The Micronauts.

This is kinda interesting. This might be some sort of concept or promo art by Al Milgrom that was never published for what ever reason. It's obviously based on the whole Archie Stryker Firefall story arc early on in the series. Curious about the two distinctively different looks for the dire wraiths.

It's certainly been a while since I've come across some new Sabra fan art. This beautifully illustrated piece comes from artist Leo David who also goes by Leo Jr. on deviant art.

Did you all get a load of the insanely juvenile twitter tirade that trump went on last weekend? My God he went after every body from Oprah Winfrey to Hillary (yet again) to the FBI (also yet again) and even his own National Security Advisor for daring to publicly acknowledge the fact that russia fucked with the 2016 election. What the Hell is wrong with this guy he really reminds me of one of those eccentric James Bond villains. I mean what ever happened to the days where we argued about emotional issues like same sex marriage and abortion instead of fundamental facts such as something like if the world is round or flat.
I some times feel like trump supporters live in this alternate reality where all this crazy shit coming from The White House is some how normal and that the internet some how provides some kind of bubble between realities where these trump supporters can communicate with non trump supporters who see all this crazy shit like from this past weekend as the crazy shit that it is. And I say all this as someone who disdains the radical left and is well aware that they inhabit another kind of alternate reality that is largely devoid of facts. All these anarchists, communists and 911 conspiracy moron social parasites who glorify every islamic terrorist as a freedom fighter and every 3rd world tyrant as a defender against "American imperialism" fuck them to.
Rather it comes from CNN or FOX news, we should all care about the truth above all. And don't just care about the facts that fit into your comfort zone have the courage to accept all the facts surrounding a given issue rather you like them or not. Remember all those women's marches addressing gender equality issues right after trump took office last year? CNN covered em quite a bit and that's fine with me the protesters had a lot of legitimate grievances both toward trump and with society as a whole. But CNN dropped the ball on an important fact that FOX pounced on. Did you know that one of the main organizers of the marches was a convicted palestinian terrorist (rasmea odeh) who was freed from an Israeli jail in a prisoner swap and later lied on her entry visa about her criminal record in order to get into the United States? She got busted last year and in a plea deal to avoid jail time in a federal prison she agreed to deportation.

If you care about America, then trump's unwillingness to accept the fact that russia fucked with our election should bother you every bit as much as Obama's inability to utter the words "radical islamic terror". But if you only have a problem with one and not the other, well then you're just a hypocrite not a patriot. You can't have it both ways on that matter.
But getting back to you trump supporters, I just don't get you people. How long can you people keep looking at yourselves in the mirror and telling yourselves that a lie is the truth? Rather it's petty shit like the crowd size at his inauguration ceremony or the accusation about Obama having wire tapped trump tower that he promised he'd provide proof of but never did I mean seriously where is your breaking point when it comes to your intelligence constantly being insulted? Remember "alternative facts"? I mean seriously WTF!? Are you capable at all of being at least somewhat objective when you look at and analyse what comes out of trump's mouth or on his twitter account or is it just easier for you to write off all the criticism of trump as simply just "left wing media spin"? What happened to critical thinking!? And it's not just my fellow Americans who are guilty of this, some of my friends in Israel are just as overly simplistic in their thinking just because trump is not Obama.

Yes, critical thinking. Like the kind that allows me to see at least a couple of bright spots in the trump administration despite my loathing for trump himself. Nikki Haley, who was not shy about her sharp criticism of trump during the election and probably still doesn't like him much on a personal level today never the less has been hitting it out the park as the United States Ambassador to the United Nazis, or just U.N. for short. The U.N. is a deeply flawed organization loaded with self interest agendas, hypocrites like you wouldn't believe and almost complete ineptitude and it's well past time we had an ambassador who called em out on all of that in plain language.
And if you're a trump supporter that read the original ROM series did you learn nothing from Bill Mantlo's writing? The dire wraiths didn't have twitter but they had their shape shifting powers and sorcery to distort the truth to others. Based on what you know about the ROM character just ask yourself, what would the greatest of the spaceknights think of president trump? Or Mantlo for that matter if he still had his health today? Let that sink into your brain for a while.

It may be 2018 but here it's always the totally awesome 1980s

Happy New Year from ROM's man cave (location unknown).

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January 2nd Update: Speaking of totally awesome 80s stuff let's get back to Star Wars when it was good. My rebel fleet has gotten a bit bigger today with the arrival of my hammerhead corvette in the mail from ebay. Now I'm ready to ram the nearest and preferably disabled star destroyer. I'm sure most of you remember that epic scene from what as far as I'm concerned now is the only good Star Wars movie made since 1983.

January 3rd Update: I wanted to throw something else unto this posting more on the comics end of the 80s as well. Marvel Team-Up 130 (1983) features some really fantastic classic Sal Buscema art. If you're wondering what's going on here The Vision's android body has been temporarily taken over by some villain named Necrodamus. Not to be confused with Dave Chapelle's Negrodamus mind you. The clip art I posted here is just a sample of the action packed dynamic pencils by Buscema as Spider-Man and Scarlet Witch trade blows with the possessed Vision until they finally figure out a way to drive Necrodamus out of Vision's body.

I LOVE THE 80s...and the late 70s

I know I've said this before but I'll say it again anyways but where does all the time go!? Here it is November first already and you know damn well Christmas is gonna be here before you know it. The late 70s and the entire decade of the 80s was so awesome for so many reasons even though we didn't have the internet or smart phones back then. But there was so much other cool stuff not to mention the original ROM spaceknight series. And even though some of that stuff may be a bit dated here in the early 21st century it's still cool in a vintage kinda way if you know what I mean.
There's some cool things that came my way last month I felt like sharing. I was watching an episode of The Greatest American Hero on one of those retro TV show channels last weekend and it was an episode I don't remember seeing back in the day. I even at one point had the vinyl 45 record of the show's theme song (Joey Scarbury) which every body loved back then. Cheesy as it was by today's standards I still had fun watching it as William Katt takes on some neo-nazis conspiring to sink a U.S. naval vessel bound for Israel with an arms shipment. That plan didn't work out for them thanks to our hero so they went to plan B which was to see that donald trump get elected to the White House and after wards go for a walk in Charlottesville with tiki torches.

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Also, on something of a whim a couple of weeks ago I bought on ebay the Hotwheels version of KIT from the iconic 80s TV show Knight Rider starring The Hoff. Never hassle The Hoff.

There's an artist I've run into on more then one occasion at the San Jose Super Toy Comic and Collectibles show. I saw this awesome Godzilla vs Mothra piece at a September show but opted to buy it later on which was last week after I found out the artist lives in the same city as I do. There's a certain somebody I know who loves Godzilla that I think this will make a great holiday gift for. Although I think I should see about getting it framed.

Godzilla vs Mothra and ROM vs Dire Wraith art by Gazbot

Even though this is one of those idw fan art mock covers I still like it though since Gazbot went with the original ROM spaceknight. I also really like the classic dire wraith here, he did an especially good job on that part of this piece. Over all it makes me miss the original series again while at the same time driving home why the reboot sucks so bad. By the way I'm sure you all by now have heard that the upcoming issue 14 of idw's woefully disappointing ROM reboot series will be the last one. Not the last time we're going to see this ROM in name only character in the pages of idw comics. They're gonna milk that shit for all it's worth after all they need to get a return on their investment. Along with the specific contract details wouldn't you just love to know how much exactly it cost idw to acquire the rights to publish ROM (or at least their shitty version of him) from Hasbro?

I Love The 80s...except when IDW reboots it

So a couple of months ago I saw this at the library and figured what the Hell I'd give it a read all I had to lose was time. And indeed I did, and those precious couple hours or so of my life are now lost for ever. I was thinking I'd do a review back then but just never got around to it. Going into it I already had issues with ROM and The Micronauts as you all know.
But I also didn't like some of the Autobot line up I would have stuck with Autobots that were just from the first two generation of toys as opposed to these other later and more obscure Autobot characters (Windblade was it?) and I was never into the whole concept of female cybertronians even back in the 80s. And then ofcourse they had to make the Matt Tracker character from M.A.S.K into a black guy. I mean I understand the whole socially progressive thought process behind that but it didn't work for this M.A.S.K reboot in the same way that it did for the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Nick Fury character. I guess G.I.Joe was handled ok but I didn't give a rat's ass about Action Man.
Ya know when I finished reading this trade I could hardly remember what the story was about it, the whole thing just seemed like a series of splash pages with an incoherent story line. Or maybe it just seemed that way because I just wasn't that into it for the before mentioned reasons and it didn't hardly at all invoke any sense of that 80s nostalgia with me. Kinda like all the Transformers movie after the first one. This whole thing was one big hot mess and felt like IDW threw all these 80s properties into a blender and poured out the hack job results on a printing press.

Even when you're knee deep in mud on the shores of The Dead Sea (Israel) it's still a good time to read some classic ROM spaceknight. I'm still trying to figure out my iphone I just found this photo from summer last year in some obscure location in it (the cloud maybe?). So I figured I might as well throw that into the mix here. Aside from the original ROM I sure do miss all things authentic 80s which brings me to the next items in this posting.

I found this cool Gobots fan art on deviant art a couple weeks ago. Pathfinder was always one of my favorites he looked cool in his robot mode and transformed into one of the coolest vehicles in the collection by far. That was a good 80s toy line it's a shame they never gave them a good back story and on top of that they had a God awful shitty cartoon series.

Speaking of authentic 80s awesomeness, remember Choose Your Own Adventure books? They used to have these books in the class rooms of my elementary school. On a whim I bought a copy of Underground Kingdom and it finally showed up in the mail yesterday. Not exactly great literature but still kinda fun to read with a strong dose of nostalgia.

One last thing I wanted to add to this posting. Just saw Wonder Woman today and I just gotta say, I love Gal! I wrote a brief spoiler free review over at The Suicide Squad blog for anyone who's interested....
http://suicidesquadtaskforcex.blogspot.com/2017/06/wonder-woman-review.html

FAN ART FURY!

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I know most of you have seen this stuff already but I've met some nice people on deviant art in recent weeks and along with some of the stuff I've done recently I'm gonna give their work a bit more brag space by posting it here which I think this blog is still a good resource for once in a while now that I think about it. The ROM vs Thanos was a 20 minute sketch art piece and the other one below it was done by a nice lady up in Canada who found my recent work and got nostalgic enough to do some ROM fan art of her own.

Nice, this one just turned up yesterday (Oct. 19) on DA . . .

Ok I gotta add this also to the posting even though now it's Oct. 24. We've seen a lot of Torpedo customs over the years but this is the first packaged one I believe. According to Gary Martin Jr. this sold on ebay for only a measly 50 bucks! The altered packaging comes from Hasbro's Avengers action figure line which pisses me off to know that the two companies currently have a number merchandising deals but all ROM fans get is some stupid heromugg.

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.

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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