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.

You know a Mantlo and Buscema fan was just in Greece and Israel when you see pics like these

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This is not Sparta, this is Athens. Sporting my ROM t-shirt in Greece may not be quite as epic as King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans holding off thousands of invading persian scum at the Hot Gates of Thermoplyae or even the naval campaign the Athenian general Themistocles carried out against the persians in that war effort but I still think it's still kinda cool.

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And this is Israel's eternal and undivided capital Jerusalem. And that is a copy of Incredible Hulk 256 which is the first appearance of Marvel's premier Israeli superhero Sabra. Written by Bill Mantlo and penciled by Sal Buscema in 1980 which was a better time in history for comic books as IDW's Micronauts #1 and ROM "the" spaceknight 0 issue have proven to us once again. Here's a little something else from later that day in Jerusalem  . . . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ww-PSW4afKw

A real life Sabra

Also wanted to give a big thanks to deviant artist nikoskap for doing this awesome Sabra fan art during my time in Greece. Niko lives on the island of Crete which I unfortunately didn't get a chance to visit but at least we were able to communicate electronically while in the same time zone for a change which was nice. Thanks for this great surprise which I'm honored to post here and for standing with the people of Israel. Sabra is a fictional character ofcourse but in the real world there are many brave women in Israel putting their lives on the line for The Holy Land and it's people. Military service in Israel is compulsory, 3 years for men and 2 years for women. Left click the image to magnify.

On a side note here I wanted to say something about podcasts these days. Is it just me or do they ALL suck? Some of the plane service had Wi-Fi and at one point I tried to listen to some podcasts having to do with the sort of thing we comic book sci-fi nerds are into and everyone I tired to listen to was boring as Hell. In fact it's been years since I last heard one that was any good at all. At one point I tried to give a listen to some having to do with The Suicide Squad and then one having to do with Free Comic Book Day and it was all about as much interesting as watching your computer buffering a video stream.

DAMN! That looks good in color!

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A little while ago I came across this awesome coloring job for this Sal Buscema HULK vs THOR line art
http://www.deviantart.com/art/Hulk-Vs-Thor-By-Sal-Buscema-327576237 So of course I left my compliments and gave the artist a heads up about the recent commission piece that Sal Buscema did earlier this year (my April 4th posting) and suggested it would make for a great coloring job project. As you can see our friend here (who's from Portugal) turned out another fantastic piece so let's here it for this labor of love as someone who has done a lot of coloring work this was a pretty time consuming effort.

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Here's something cool I found that looked like it might have been intended as some sort of cover concept. Unfortunately I don't know who the artist is but seeing this makes me really wish there had been a Sabra mini-series or at least some sort of one shot special. I dunno maybe one of these days I'll do something with this when I have some time. Sabra was created by Bill Mantlo, Sal Buscema and Belinda Glass.


X-MEN Days of Future Past: Just wanted to share with you all that I saw the movie last night. I thought it was pretty good and arguably the best film of a franchise that never quite reached a level that could be described as great. Yeah there were some logic gaps, some discontinuities and even a running time that was a bit too long. But all that aside it was still a well thought out story line complimented with some fantastic acting and plenty of homages to 60s / 70s American pop culture. In a lot of ways Quicksilver is the sleeper high light of the movie I wish we could have seen more of him then we did.

Other cool stuff from my Memorial Day weekend included some temporary exhibits at The Oakland Museum of California that I checked out. The first one was on the history of the San Diego/International Comic Con (since 1970!) in which I learned that the Comic Con has become the biggest event The San Diego Convention Center holds every year and as you may have guessed it generates far more revenue for the local economy then any other annual event in the San Diego area.
http://museumca.org/exhibit/sunshine-and-superheroes-san-diego-comic-con
Also at the Oakland Museum was the Art and Giant Robot exhibit which featured among other things this awesome display of the classic giant size Shogun Warriors. It's really cool to see how over the years all this one time obscure comic book/sci-fi nerd stuff become so mainstream.

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Step into the NOVA Year with some SABRA

I'm going to open up the New Year with something of a recap. I get the distinct impression that no one bothered to check out the Marvel Age 89 link to the Fred Hembeck two page spread for the Nova chronology a couple postings ago. That's a shame because when I read it I discovered some interesting things I probably should have known already.
Did you know that the original Nova series only lasted for 25 issues? Hard to believe considering the character's popularity today. It also puts things in perspective with Rom who's series lasted for 75 issues. The story line in Nova 25 (damn! I used to have that issue) didn't end with that issue but was actually continued in the pages of The Fantastic 4 and about a year and half later Richard Rider's adventures as Nova would come to an end (for the time being) in Rom 24 as you all know.

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Hat tip to Rick Hansen for sharing this with me. At first I wondered if this was some kind of photoshop none sense but after taking a closer look I'm more inclined to believe this is legit. No other information on this unfortunately.
 

Here we have Sabra rockin the Jew fro look. Along with Misty Knight, Sabra is the only other heroine in the Marvel Universe who can make that style look good. The posting I found this cool fan art at was a fun read. The artist isn't that familiar with the Sabra character apparently but was never the less inspired to draw her anyways because of all the Bill Mantlo related stuff I'm always posting on this blog. What you see here is probably the easiest digital coloring job I've ever done but of course you can see the original line art at the posting link below. This is a good example of the sort of art work that's easy to color unlike that Torpedo piece I did a few postings ago.
http://kimoyancey.blogspot.com/search?q=rom+

Behold, The King of Thessaly (K.o.T) has returned. On your knees dog!

Captain Marvel guest appearence, nuff said!

Here's another great cosmic team up that would have been right up there with The Silver Surfer and Rom . . .well almost as great. The artist who I lifted this awesome Captain Marvel rendering from doesn't appear to be responding to comments left under their work so I didn't even bother to ask about using it. So the best thing I can do is to make sure this artist gets due credit is to leave a link to their deviant art page. I guarantee you'll be blown away with the work you see there especially when it comes to the Marvel Cosmic, Transformers and Masters of the Universe illustrations: http://espeng.deviantart.com/gallery/

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Here's another sort of team up I would have liked to have seen back in the day when Marvel didn't suck like it does now.

Just a heads up folks, Bill Mantlo's birthday is November 9th. I'll be sending his brother Michael copies of some of the latest fan art that I've drawn. If you have anything for Bill rather it be some fan art of your own, a b-day card or even a donation (you'll make the check out to Michael) I'll be happy to include it with my package for the mail.

 Speaking of B-days I'd like to extend a happy birthday weekend to one of my most regular commentators Joseph who turned___ yesterday.

After having read some of your comments earlier today and then taking a second look with fresh eyes I finally realized this is a fake. Sorry folks looks like we got bamboozled that is not an actual copy of Rom spaceknight #8 that Rahm Emanuel is holding. How could this have happened!? To me, the photoshop ninja.

The ebay connection and some new fan art!

So I finally got my copy of Marvel Team Up Annual #3 which I bought on ebay from a seller who really took their sweet time getting it into the mail. As such you may have noticed I just updated the clip art in the previous posting (The Delmar Connection) Brock Jone's meeting with Power Man & Iron Fist check it out. And you may have also noticed that over the weekend the addition of some clip art from Machine Man #19 of a cameo appearance by Brock Jones compliments of Gary Martin Jr. "a Rom curator".
Poor Brock, longing for the good ol days of his football career stardom having to do the 9 to 5 routine in a business suite behind a desk at Delmar never really settled well for him. The random happenstance of having the Torpedo armor handed off to him like a baton from one runner to another gave him an opportunity he couldn't resist despite the danger to himself and even his family. Unfortunately on the heels of him finally being ready to hang up the super hero gig and go back to being a full time husband and father he had a first time encounter with the sorceress female Dire Wraiths and we all know how that story ended.

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And speaking of all things ebay I guess this is a good a time as any to share these two large scale sketch cards that I saw on ebay some time ago. I seem to remember the full body one going for about $70 and the other for $40. Pretty reasonable prices for some well done original art. Just for the record I didn't buy em I'm just featuring a jpeg file I made out of the ebay ads of them here for this posting.

Some Rom fan art that's down right biblical & some over due Sabra fan art (Plus more!)

By Iszy Iszard

I dunno about the rest of you all out there but when I first saw this piece it had a biblical feel to it kinda like the way sunlight pierces through cloud formations some times at that perfect point int he day. Rom almost has a messianic way about him here as one who is coming down from the heavens to cleanse us of our sins or more specifically of Wraith kind on Earth. All that aside this is good from a figure composition stand point and I like the muted use of colors they work well here. Rom's ignited rocket pods look especially awesome too.
This piece was done late last year but as I said before hardly a month doesn't go by where I don't discover any where from 3 - 4 newly created works of Rom fan art. Just as an example here are just a few links to some of the stuff from May alone. And we're not even quite half way through this month yet. Also, keep in mind these links are not the stuff I've featured here on this blog (both mine and others) from the month of May so all together that constitutes even more new Rom fan art.
http://browse.deviantart.com/art/Rom-368623770
http://browse.deviantart.com/art/Rom-370590321
http://browse.deviantart.com/art/Rom-367366991
http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=1009527&GSub=76187

And speaking of some of my own fan art here's some stuff I'm playing around with this weekend . . .

Yeah I know, one of those issues that sadly never was. It's too bad it would have been epic!

 

And speaking of all things biblical here's Marvel's greatest superhero from The Promise Land. After having been telling myself I'm going to be doing some Sabra fan art for months now I finally got my shit together this weekend and got it done. Check out all these different versions of Marvel MicroHeroes there are for Sabra: http://marvel-microheroes.wikia.com/wiki/Sabra_%28Ruth_Bat-Seraph%29

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Next up I'd like to talk about here is that among other things I've been watching the Dredd DVD this weekend. As I was watching the Extras (Mega-City Masters: 35 Years of Judge Dredd) look who I happened to notice among other commentators. IDW writer and Rom fan Chris Ryall who as many of you know has been in collaboration with the legendary Sal Buscema and helped make the recent Rom bonus pin up page a reality.

Alright I've got one more thing I'm going to add here that just got uploaded by K.O.T (ThekingofThessaly). Check out this cool Cloak N' Dagger tin that K.O.T uses for storage of his "herbal medicines". Plus, enjoy his latest back issue haul and him ripping on the Ghost Rider movies: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I0YBZTHsKg