I don't want this to vanish from the net after it sells on ebay

So as the posting title suggests I'm just throwing this custom Heroclix figurine up here because this is a really nice crafted work of art (especially when you consider how small it must be!) that should remain some where on the internet because quite frankly once it sells on ebay I don't know what will happen to the image in the long run. An articulate action figure would have been ideal to commemorate 35 years of ROM but I wish hasbro had at least done a small figurine like this just like those PVC ones you see in those plastic blister packages in stores sometimes.

I guess I might as well throw this new fan art up here too while I'm at it which I posted on deviant art a few days ago. ROM spaceknight 65, how much more awesome that epic issue would have been had it been penciled by ANY artist other then steve ditko working for Marvel at the time.

The emperor's new clothes

Let's open up this posting with a big happy 78th birthday to Sal Buscema! Can't say enough good things about this guy's work other then that it is timeless it would look as impressive in today's comics as it did 20 or 30 years ago as seen here in this clip art from ROM 24 and his ROM/Mars Attacks bonus pin up page from IDW last year. Blasting away with his neutrilizer while simultaneously bitch slapping skrulls and chocking the shit out of Martians now that's just bad ass all the way.

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Speaking of artists from Marvel Comics in the 1980s . . . .

When it comes to Steve Dikto's work in the 80s and 90s it's like the Emperor's new clothes. That is to say that no matter how lame the emperor's new clothes are because it's the emperor the people around him will always say he looks great. Now at least I got you all to admit (albeit begrudgingly) that Dikto's run on Rom was far inferior to Buscema's but there's always a bullshit caveat that comes with that admission like "but I'm still glad he worked on the book" or "but I still liked it".

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Ya know what I say about that? That's fucken BULLSHIT because if that same art work was attached to any other name other then Steve Dikto and you were taking it at face value none of you would have any problem saying straight up this sucks and we both know it.
But hey, why should I have all the fun here? One of my favorite videos from The King of Thessaly (K.o.T) actually has a review of a Speedball issue (at 6:50 into the video) written and drawn by Steve Dikto. May the Gods of Galador smile upon you bro for this one I miss your vids. Aside from that how can you not love a guy who stores his _____ in a tin adorned with anti-drug super heroes like Cloak & Dagger?

Bill Mantlo stacking the deck

Today I was looking at a back issue review of Avengers 76 vol.3 (2004) at Mr. Morbids House of Fun http://dbsuniverse.blogspot.com/2013/03/back-issue-spotlight-avengersvol376.html It turns out this is the issue where the Jack of Hearts dies. I'd heard a while back that he had been killed off but I always wondered how exactly that happened so this was a cool find. I hopefully I'll come across the issue in a back issue bin some day. I have to say I really like the updated look he had at the time. I really prefer the more streamlined less detailed costume/armor design and I also think he looks cooler with out his head being covered too. I wonder if Bill Mantlo ever saw the new look and if so what he thought of it?
 http://diversionsofthegroovykind.blogspot.com/2012/11/grooves-faves-jack-of-hearts-by-mantlo.html

So look what I found from a photo of some of the wall art at Floating Worlds Comics for the Bill Mantlo benefit auctions. Unfortunately this is the best I can do as far as pulling a decent image off the net but as you can see this is one nice piece of art. It really sucks how so much of the good stuff from those auctions is no where to be found except in poor formats like this where as many of the less then stellar pieces seem to be every where.

Speaking of which I finally finished reading Bill Mantlo A Lifetime In Comics. Boy that was good! I especially liked the behind the scenes information about why some of the projects he worked on like The Human Fly didn't last as long as others such as Rom and The Micronuats. I was a bit saddening to find out that it was creative differences with Sal Buscema and Bill that prompted Sal to leave Rom giving way to the Ditko era which displeased me to say the least. And then of course there was the Micronauts and all the artists that came and went during it's 58 issue run because of again creative differences with Bill. In some ways that was the most interesting part of the book. But let's not forget about his rather tenuous relationship with Jim Shooter. It seems Jim Shooter may have been as big of a dick as the rumors suggest.

Marvel 80s house ads & promos with ROM appearances part 2 of 3

Sometimes I like to think that perhaps on another Earth in a parallel universe Steve Dikto had never taken over as the pencilar on Rom.  Maybe Sal Buscema was the pencilar for the entire 75 issue run. Or perhaps another pencilar had taken over like Mike Zeck, Michael Golden or John Byrne. Oh well at least there's always photoshop to help with a pleasant fantasy even though it flys in the face of reality.

Part 3 will have some actual house ads & promos again I promise.

Just like I said, Marvel still loves ROM and they know about the fans but . . .

 Apparently early this year this wasn't the only blog out there that was discussing the matter of the the ROM name and likeness licensing issue which was prompted by the return of  Hybrid in Avengers Academy back in March. The slamonstrobot blog authored by Snell posted on the topic with more feed back from Marvel. What you see here is from the Christos Gage in the Avengers Academy letter column.
For those of you who have been following this blog you pretty much know all of this. So really, here this information to the left is just more not so positive reinforcement on the ugly reality of the situation. And there's more:  http://slaymonstrobot.blogspot.com/2012/03/donald-duck-spacekinght.html

It's not that I disbelieve Gage in this letter column but Marvel has found a way in the past to fudge that legality as shown in Universe X #3 (2000) http://siskoid.blogspot.com/2009/10/rom-universe-x.html

 Yeah I know that blows. So I endeavor to keep digging into the past to bring ROM fans today something to smile about. Although sometimes even the stuff from the past doesn't make me entirely happy. Here's a good example. I forgot I used to have this issue of Secret Wars II until I saw an entry for it in Lee's Rom Spaceknight Revisited data base site. I think the reason why I didn't keep the series or this issue was for two reasons. One is that the Secret Wars II was massively inferior to the original. As to this issue of course it was cool that they had a ROM cameo/reference to ROM#72 but it pissed me off that Al Milgrom who did some of the original ROM covers back in the day drew ROM in that horrible Steve Dikto style. God! I especially hated the way Dikto drew ROM's eyes.

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Look what else I found at RSR. This is something I didn't know about before. Here's a Rom head shot from Web of Spiderman #7 during a dream sequence Peter Parker is having.

You can see the full page here:

 http://www.supermegamonkey.net/chronocomic/entries/web_of_spider-man_7.shtml

 Just found Avengers 268 in a $1 bin recently. I remember when this issue first came out I happened to see it on the shelf at some dime store in San Francisco back in the day. After I thumbed through it I kinda waffled for a bit but ended up not buying it. I guess at the time this loose ROM tie-in didn't seem like that big of a deal to me since this issue came out in June of 1986 which was just a few months after the last ROM issue (#75 Feb. 1986) It featured a few pages of all these suicidal Dire Wraiths attacking some of the Avengers who had been kidnapped and temporarily stranded in Limbo by the timelord Kang. Now of course, finding something like this now is a bigger deal then it was over 25 years ago. I'm a sentimental kinda guy and for just a half a buck it was money well spent.

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As you may have figured The Avengers didn't kill all the Limbo dwelling Dire Wraiths in this issue. Many others were still there and they would eventually find themselves in conflict and ultimately subjugated by another timelord in Limbo by the name of  Immortus as told in the pages of the Darkstar Winter Guard mini-series (2010).