Fan art, all the different ways to "mix it up"

Sometimes I like to draw or paint something when I'm in the mood to do some fan art http://csuhsux.deviantart.com/gallery/  And other times I like to pick up some fan art done by other artists and kinda play around with it in photoshop. But I don't do that because I don't like the art work to begin with I do it because I very much do like the art work but find myself sufficiently intrigued by it so that I want to experiment with variant versions of it.
I do this at least a couple times a week as a hobby but you wouldn't know it most of the time I don't bother posting the stuff I come up with. In this case I am with this one which was originally done by artist Jeff Slemons 
http://lkseitz.blogspot.com/2011/05/spaceknight-art-by-jeff-slemons.html
Slemons has done at least 3 other Rom pieces that I know of and from it all you can see how he really likes to emphasize the interplay between light and shadow values. He's also excellent in the basic principles of good figure composition like with foreshortening, perspective and anatomical proportions giving his work a very professional look.

Gary Martin Jr. "a Rom curator" has been archiving all (both good and bad) the known Rom fan art out there from over the years. I love nothing more then well done fan art but I'm sorry to say what's turned up in the last couple weeks or so would best be described as abysmal. Unfortunately the latest pages from the Rom Remix project falls into that description for me although pg 4 and 9 are an exception but they're from last year.
http://romremix.tumblr.com/
As with anything meant to benefit Bill Mantlo I really want to be more enthusiastic about this project but the love for it just isn't there. Obviously a big part of that is all the amateurish looking work in it but after having contacted a hand full of the artists last year working on it I was surprised to find out they weren't even Rom or Bill Mantlo fans per se and in a couple of cases hadn't even heard of Rom or Bill until they got involved in the project. That gives me that feeling you get when you pick up an American flag and find the "Made In China" tag on it.

On a more upbeat note Bill Mantlo recently was given the Bill Finger Award. Never heard of that award but apparently it has to do with comic book writers who never got their due recognition during their careers. There might be something to that the owner of my local comic shop didn't know who Bill Mantlo was when I mentioned Bill to him a couple year back, go figure. For more details on the award go to . . .
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=51711

The good ol days of comic shops in the 80s

Berkeley 1988 - 1989

Of all the comic shops I've ever been to the one that stands out as my all time favorite hands down was Comics & Comix on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley California. I discovered it by chance in the mid 80s and ever since whenever I was able to get my father to take me there it was always the high light of that weekend. It's the only comic shop I've ever been too that had two floors. The first floor had all the new comics, books, magazines, toys and lot's of anime models. I still have all my Star Blazers (Space Battle ship Yamato) model ship sets that I bought there. The upstairs had all the back issue boxes including a large number of 3 for $1 comics which was how I got introduced to many Marvel characters and titles like Nova and Kobra (DC). I also got a shit load of Shogun Warriors and Godzilla issues on the cheap from those 3 for $1 racks and I know I was able to get many of the Rom tie-in issues from the back issue boxes. I wanna say at that point I already had the entire Rom run leading up to where the series was at that point. Can't remember when was the last time I went to Comics & Comics before it eventually closed but it was probably shortly after that photo of me (on the right) and my buddy was taken.

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I did a Google search for anything about Comics & Comix a couple nights ago and came across this photo. I don't know any of those people but I do know that photo was taken on the first floor because of all the anime models in the back ground like I said they had a ton of those there. Also, I couldn't help but notice that awesome poster on the left hand side. God I love the 80s, Marvel was the shit back then. Now it's just shit.

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Back cover stamp for 3 for $1 comics

About a year ago I picked up a copy of Incredible Hulk #256 from a comic shop in Fremont I was checking out. Talk about a blast from the past as I looked it over and discovered these stamp imprints all over the back cover. And they say time travel is just a thing of fiction, I beg to differ.


And now back to the present. This part of the posting is for all you people who think I'm being too mean and too critical of Marvel these days. In the last 13 years marvel can't seem to settle on what spaceknights are supposed to be or look like. We've seen everything from manga styled exo-skeletons to clone trooper look alike type spaceknights and finally the classic style (all too briefly!) just prior to Galador's destruction last year. And with the latest issue of Nova we get these chumps . . .

These are the "Disavowed of Galadoria" (thanks Gary). Or in other words a just a couple of hired goons. Here's a good question, if you were a semi-immortal self sustaining cyborg that can't eat, drink or fuck what the Hell value does money hold for you? Oh how the mighty have fallen both when it comes to the spaceknight order and to Marvel Comics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeQWfVf01_k

Rom and Captain Marvel take on the Super Skrull

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I remember seeing these comic book bag sets in liquor stores and dime shops back in the early 80s, good memories. Special thanks to Gary Martin Jr. for providing a photo image of the 3 pack bag set with Rom 45 in it.

Ya know you can never be too sure when you're gonna all of a sudden be able to just sit down and start putting pencil to paper and get something pretty good cranked out which I was able to finally do again yesterday afternoon on my day of. I guess this resulted between all the new fan art that turned up this past weekend and the nice chill day I had Sunday. This took me about 3 hours or so to do I hope you all like it.
Also, see the latest Rom and Micronauts fan art from Dann Phillips http://dannphillips.deviantart.com/

Fan art from a couple of mystery artists

It's been nearly a week since I last posted something that's a first for this blog in a very long time if I was running a business here I'd say it's been a slow week over here. But I do happen to have some cool fan art that Gary Martin Junior found that I've been sitting on for a while now. Unfortunately aside from the signatures I don't know who the artists are. I'm pretty sure you're all seeing that very sinister looking Dire Wraith sketch card for the first time but some of you may recognize the Rom fan art which I believe is from the first Floating World Comics Bill Mantlo benefit art auction. That clever interplay between negative and positive space certainly makes that one of the more unique and creative Rom fan art piece out there.

Update: By coincidence I happened to come across a photo gallery image from Floating World Comics that lists this piece as being done by Aaron Albert even though that's not consistent with the signature seen at the bottom of the art work
http://comicbooks.about.com/od/conventionsandevents/ig/Bill-Mantlo-Tribute-Gallery/Mantlo-Tribute---ROM-Art.htm

Also, speaking of those benefit auctions I just had an after thought about the fan art that was done by an artist who goes by the name Kako. I wonder if his piece was inspired by the cover art (Micheal Golden) for Rom #10? He's got the same style F-16 fighter jets in his art work as seen on the cover.

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Check out this douche bag when it comes to toy based Marvel comics

In my trolling of cool Rom related stuff over the years I've come across all sorts of stuff including what you see here. It's a portion of a page that's one of several which summerizes the history of The Micronauts toy line written and illustrated by doug chapel. Because the art work was so shitty I never paid much attention to this before while browsing the internet but something recently prompted me to take a closer look only to find that this idiot not only dumps on the Rom spaceknight comic book series, but also that of the Micronauts, Shogun Warriors and The Transformers as well.
In a separate spoof piece focusing on the Rom electronic doll he features the tag line "Based on a comic that basically went no where" 
http://www.dsquared.org/art/rom_bw.jpg  I'd say 75 issues, 4 annuals and not too mention the continued use all the way up until today of the Marvel owned characters and concepts that sprung from the series kinda contradicts that moronic statement. Plus, the comic series came from the toy not vice versa hence the phrase toy based comics. I talk plenty on this blog about Rom of course and also about The Micronauts but I've also devoted some blog space in the past to both The Transformers and Shogun Warriors as well since I loved both those toy lines and had many of the issues from their respective series back in the day. In fact, Shogun Warriors #13 was one of the very very first ever comics I ever had which was at least a couple years before I ever discovered Rom. Sure everyone is entitled to their opinion but if you're going to dump on some of my favorite late 70s and 80s comic book sci-fi stuff on social media then get ready for some pay back.

Cool late 70s Marvel house ad and new bullshit from Marvel to kick off 2014

Oh talk about a cool blast from the past I found this full page house ad in Avengers # 177 which also happens to be a great action packed issue ( November 1978). Here's the TV commercial for it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITMYl_oygRU So the deal here is if you send in some sort of proof of purchase from the packaging of a Micronauts Battle Cruiser you can get two free Marvel Comics. This was a good way of getting kids who were into The Micronauts toy line also interested in Marvel Comics assuming they weren't already which had obvious marketing benefits given that Micronauts #1 debuted January of 1979. To no surprise this was the last paragraph that appears in the Bullpen Bulletin page of that very same Avengers issue.

Alright so that was Marvel Comics back then, let's take a look at the here and now which I couldn't be less enthusiastic about.

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Well, marvel does it again. Apparently Hybrid makes a brief appearance in the first issue of the New Warriors series. As you can see he and the current Nova are having a skirmish in what appears to be some sort of govt. building in new Mexico. Needless to say we get no explanation about anything here like . . . oh let's say how Hybrid is back after having gotten blasted back to Limbo again a couple years ago in Avengers Academy. Marvel has pretty much made Hybrid into some kind of WWF fall guy now like that no name wrestler who always loses to the popular one every body roots for. We can all thank Gary Martin Jr. for taking another one for the team cuz I sure as fuck don't buy new stuff from marvel any more.

OK THIS ALSO REALLY PISSES ME OFF! I just found out that Bill Mantlo doesn't own any portion of the rights to the current White Tiger character apparently because that character is now a woman. But keep in mind the new White Tiger is actually the daughter of the original and wears pretty much the same costume and mystic amulets. Now also keep in mind that permission to conceive or use this new White Tiger was never obtained by marvel from Michael Mantlo who is Bill's legal guardian. And marvel has been using that character in both print and in it's TV cartoons for at least a couple years now if not longer. Now considering how marvel won't use the name ROM or even have Rom appear in human form you gotta ask yourself what the fuck is going on with those assholes who run marvel comics these days!?

ROBOCOP 2014, dead or alive you're seeing this awesome movie

The first thing I realized shortly after the movie started was that the whole promotional campaign for it was really piss poor. As most of you know I was quite the skeptic. If you are a big fan of the original as I am and you're worried about taking all that nostalgia baggage into this movie don't be. This movie did an amazing job of retelling the Robocop narrative in a completely contemporary setting that deals with hot topic issues today such as media spin, drones, out sourcing, terrorism and even politics both in terms of foreign policy and domestic. But of course it pays homage to the original while showing us how it can be retold in a way that doesn't make it better, just more up to date with the world we are living in today. Beyond that I don't want to say any more about the story for obvious reasons.
I will say this, the movie had much less gore then the original which may or may not be to your liking. The cast as a whole did a fantastic job, I'd say Gary Oldman especially. This movie was also a good example of how when used properly computer generated effects can enhance a film visually instead of making it tedious as did the Star Wars prequels. Again, I can't help stressing enough how this movie is not better or not as good as the original. In a way it's almost an invalid comparison because even though it deals with many of the same issues of course it also deals with many more that weren't in the public conscience back then. Yes, there are some things that the original had going for it that can never truly be topped like Peter Weller as Alex Murphy, Kurtwood Smith as Clarence Bodicker or Ronnie Cox as "Dick" Jones (just to mention a few) and we can't expect . . nor should we that exact chemistry from this movie. But you can expect to go see it and have a great time while still appreciating the original every bit today as you did back then. So for old time's sake I'm going to wrap this up with some of the Robocop stuff I've posted here before.