Fan art that's worth a second look and The Torpedo's movie debut . . sort of

Yesterday this guy over at deviant art left a comment under one of my recent submissions about how cool a Deathlock vs ROM match up would be. Although it seems like the prevailing cybernetic throw down among comic book fans would be between Deathlock and The Teen Titan's Cyborg. Anyways, that got me thinking of this sketch art that was on deviant art for a while there but as far as I can tell it seems to be gone now. Fortunately I knew another source where I could procure this art work.

I think in the past I've resisted posting this because of the unfinished nature of this work. But in spite of that you can tell whoever did this has some serious illustration skills he/she hits all the major points: figure composition, perspective, foreshorting and shadowing it's a real pity they never finished this. If I recall correctly from when this art work was still on deviant art the other fellow in this sketch is Morbius The Living Vampire. I have no idea if this art work is still any where on social media but I'm going to also give it a home here where fans can see it.

So early yesterday morning I got an enthusiastic email from my good buddy Gary Martin Jr. (perhaps you've heard of him?) that included some screen shots taken from youtube videos of scenes from a Disney movie (Big Hero 6) he had just taken his family to recently. As you can see, someone who was involved in the making of this movie seemed to be really intent on showcasing a number of lesser known Marvel characters along with The Torpedo we can also see Orca, Black Talon and Sleepwalker. Although not seen in these screen shots Gary assures us that the actual movie scene does feature several seconds of a more full body view of The Torpedo. Good ol Brock Jones, gone but not entirely forgotten it would seem.

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Nov. 16 Update: Speaking of Easter Eggs, most of you know about ROM being scene briefly in that god awful ill fated Silver Surfer cartoon (episode 5) back in the 90s right? Well thanks to the wonders of modern technology (photoshop) we can now have ourselves a ROM easter egg in a good Saturday morning cartoon from marvel . . .
http://csuhsux.deviantart.com/art/Spiderman-and-his-Amazing-Friends-with-ROM-494916285

The custom figure that's too hot to handle!

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Well this now makes the third Micronauts cover I've strategically inserted Rom's image into and I think this is a good time to post it given that it's Bill Mantlo's birthday. Thanks to Mantlo's imagination these characters would live on for many years after their respective toy lines long since disappeared from store shelves and stock rooms. It just sucks that we never got to see them together but of course we've had that discussion already here on more then one occasion.

Here's a digital project I've had in the back of my mind ever since Chris produced this awesome Firefall custom. Aside from the custom it's self Chris had an assortment of well staged photos of it that almost begged to have something like this done to one of em. You all know about the back story for Archie Stryker and the Firefall spaceknight armor I don't need to get into that right?
Good, so with that said let me move on to presenting the last of Gary's foot notes. This one comes from Nova #10 (Vol. 2). Rom spaceknight #24 sure did have some staying power given all the flash back cameos and foot notes out there for it. The art work is done by Erik Larsen who I'm not a big fan of.

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And now my latest back issue discount box finds from earlier this week . . . 

Fantastic Four Roast special (1982)

This panel comes from the 1982 Fantastic Four Roast 1 shot spoof. Did anybody else out there know about this Torpedo appearance in it that I discovered?

Avengers Academy 25 (April 2012)

Onward to some other shit I found in the same discount box that wasn't so cool. Coming right off the heels of the massive disappointment that was The Annihilators mini-series we were then treated to a shitty 3 issue (#23, 24 and 25) story arc in Avengers Academy that featured the return of Hybrid. By the time I got done reading 24 I was getting irritated with how they hadn't explained Hybrid's return as they did in X-Man 31 (1997).
By the time issue 25 came out I decided to thumb through it first and woe and behold I came across the clip art you see here. Oh man was I ever pissed! Why couldn't he have just said something like "He left Earth years ago" or "We don't know where he is and we don't have time to try and fins him". Did ya have to say Rom is dead Marvel? really!? I didn't buy that issue nor did I buy any new Marvel comic since then up until recently with Infinity and we all know how that turned out. But I decided to pick up Avengers Academy #25 for a buck just so I could share this bullshit with you all. To all Rom fans, don't buy new marvel comics it's just rewarding bad behavior and Infinity is just the latest example.