Neal Adams, the passing of a titan 1941-2022

With William Hurt's reoccurring role as General "Thunderbolt" Ross, this is now the second time this year someone who made their mark on the comic book genre industry has passed away. In honor of Neal Adams legacy in all aspects (as an artist and advocate for artist rights) of the comic book industry I'm posting this mind blowing splash page of Armor 2 from Continuity Comics that Adams penciled. This scene definitely gives new meaning to the splash in splash page. His art work is really timeless. You could take anything he did like on Batman or in The X-Men of the late 70s and it'll hold up to anything in contemporary comic book art. Unlike Ditko, Adams would have made a great replacement for Sal Buscema on the ROM Spaceknight series. On an interesting side note I just learned that Neal Adams was Jewish although as far as I can tell Adams is the family name he was born with.

And speaking of all things ROM, here's the latest envelope fan art for my friend and artistic collaborator in Greece. Turns out aside from our mutual love of science fiction and comics we're also on the same page politically on most things so bonus points to the 4 or 5 people who will see this posting and get the significance of ROM and company attacking the military forces that this tank belongs to. 

It's been quite a while since I've had something to post outside of fan art so today is a pleasant change of pace. This is no doubt one of the most obscure ROM Easter eggs I've ever come across. This panel is from issue 11 of the mid to late 80s comic book series X-Thieves published by COMICS Interview Publications. From what I've seen of it online it's a rather quirky and all around bizarre story line that probably is best enjoyed if the reader doesn't expend too much time and energy trying to make sense of it. I don't think it's any coincidence that right next to the ROM mask is another one of a toaster oven.

 May 7th Update: It's down right creepy how the death of yet another legendary artist from the comic book industry (George Perez ofcourse) should not only happen basically a week after Neal Adams passing but also on this year's Free Comic Book Day. As an artist, pretty much all the words of praise I gave to Adams also applies to Perez. His work was timeless in it's quality and appeal. Rest In Peace George.

June 5th Update: I just got back from a weekend in Sacramento California and I saw this Thanos mural in the downtown area so I was like...."yeah I need to do one more update to this posting". It's a real pleasure to post some little known sci-fi or comic book based public art once in a while. I have no idea who did this all I can tell you is that upon a closer look I could see this was painted on two separate horizontal pieces of plywood like boards.

Revisiting some great fan art

Ron Joseph

 

Rich Wentworth

 Andrew Cosson

Jeff Slemmons

Digital artist unknown

Nothing new really in terms of fan art or anything else ROM related that's interesting in recent weeks so I decided to post some good fan art that's been around for a while on other social media sites. Their is however one piece out there that's turned up in recent weeks that's at least worth having a look at. It's not on the same level as the stuff I'm featuring in this posting but like I said it's at least worth having a look at Rom Serpentyne by c-lee-b on DeviantArt

April 12th Update: Looks like I may have spoken a bit too soon about nothing new that was ROM related worth looking at. Here's a treat for anyone looking at this posting who may be watching the Disney Plus Moon Knight series or otherwise a Moon Knight fan. Also, here's a really cool animated Moon Knight Gif by the same artist . . https://www.deviantart.com/nikoskap/art/Moon-Knight-849786336
 

April 17th Update: And we even have something new for Micronauts fans out there. This is the latest from Chris Batista. A great concept and an all around solid piece of art and nostalgia. 

 

Captain Ukraine

This is one of those rare occasions where I'm doing a post here that's not at all ROM related because obviously I have some pretty strong feelings about putin's (tyrant, megalomaniac, war criminal, KGB scum, fool . . .etc.)  idiotic and horrific invasion of Ukraine. When it comes to war time quotes for the history books I'm pretty sure "russian warship go fuck your self" is now among them.

Electronic billboard with US-Ukraine solidarity display off of highway 580 between Castro Valley and Dublin in The San Francisco Bay Area.

 

San Francisco

March 19th Update: I wanted to make a mention about some other sad news from last weekend. William Hurt's passing last week is now the 3rd actor (Stan Lee & Chadwick Boseman) from the MCU that has passed away. And it happened only a week short of what would have been his 72nd birthday no less. Ofcourse Hurt had a successful career in films spanning decades and he was excellent as Thunderbolt Ross starting with the Edward Norton HULK film and later in the Avengers.

ROM Spaceknght 50 tribute fan art

 

This piece is a combination of what is mostly black n white art work borrowed from 4 different artists and arranged together and colored in photoshop. The Torpedo is by Anderson Mendes, ROM is by Steve Butler, Starshine is by Kapandais Nikolaos and the Dire Wraith and Skrulls are by me. 

 

As you can see by the signature this Ron Joseph piece was done 7 years ago and although I've posted Ron's stuff here in the past I never posted this one for reasons I can't explain. Well, I'm gonna correct that little oversight right now.  

Here's another one that's been around for years now but I never posted it before for whatever reason. But I think it deserves a second look obviously. The scene here between ROM, Firefall and The X-Men's Dark Phoenix certainly suggests an interesting story going on here. Would have been nice to get artist Scott Reed's take on his inspiration for this piece.

Here's some more stuff from Ron Joseph with some embellishments from me again. In this case I added ROM to this scene of The Soviet Super Soldiers trying to take down The Hulk and added a little bit of depth with some shading effects. Check out the original source material from Joseph at these links...

 https://www.deviantart.com/ronjoseph-artist/art/THE-HULK-vs-the-SOVIET-SUPER-SOLDIERS-11x17-888596989

https://www.deviantart.com/ronjoseph-artist/art/ROM-vs-THE-HERCULOIDS-pencils-pg02-544320560

 

Here's some unpublished Michael Golden Micronauts art I came across last year. It would make for a nice coloring project. albeit a bit a labor intensive and time consuming one.

ROM the original by Tone Rodriguez

The two awesome ROM pieces by Tone Rodriguez have been around for some year now but this outstanding Torpedo fan art piece by Anderson Mendes was done just last month. And he does commissions  anders.mendes@hotmail.com

 

Calgary Herald October 22 1979

Dec.8th Update: Just came across this archival newspaper article someone posted on twitter from the Calgary Herald back in October 22, 1979. That's pretty amazing that ROM's debut issue got any kind of mention in a mainstream Canadian newspaper to say nothing about an actual full blown article. The author Patrick Tivy, may or may not still be around today but if he is it would be interesting to talk to him today in reflection to this article he wrote over 4 decades ago. The article offers some interesting insight into the comic book collecting scene at the time. It's an enjoyable read but the very last part of it annoyed me a bit.

Dec.14th Update: Seeing cool fan art from other artists almost always makes me want to do something new myself so here we go. This is a tribute to ROM 19 in which we learn of the fateful show down between Firefall and a deathwing during Galador's first spaceknight battle with the dire wraiths. Firefall's (Karas) final fate as a soul trapped in Limbo was always a loose end I wish that had been tied up by the end of the series. Could have been something cool for Marvel to use in the post ROM spaceknight series years. But instead, true to form for Marvel they've done almost nothing but shit instead for the last 20 years.

 

Can't think of a good posting title

I was going to save all this stuff for a New Year's Day posting but screw it I just feeling like posting it tonight instead. For openers, this Bill Mantlo tribute fan art envelope is something I mailed off about 3 weeks ago (from California to Greece) but as of this blog posting it still hasn't arrived. The last time it took a whole month for one of my fan art envelopes to get to Greece but the one before that never arrived at all so who knows this time around? Good thing I always take a picture of these at the post office.  

As in my last posting here's something else I've had for a while but never featured on this blog. It comes from The Micromails letter page of issue 40. It's a wonder ROM was not mentioned more then a couple times or so in the published fan letter pages of The Micronauts given that Bill Mantlo was the writer on both titles but we'll take what we can get. Look at that last sentence. Might as well have been another life time ago when you had a new issue of ROM, Micronauts (the real thing, not that fake shit from idw publishing) and The X-Men to look forward to every month. 

A while ago somebody mentioned something on social media about a dire wraith appearance on something having to do with Marvel Legends Darkstar. They didn't include a photo so I had no idea what they were talking about and I just dismissed it as internet noise. Bet then I saw this packaging art lifted from the cover art of Darkstar Winter Gaurd #3 at a big box store recently and it suddenly all made sense. That's pretty cool I'm fairly certain this is the first time the dire wraith have appeared on any published media outside of a comic book or magazine format. The Darkstar Winter Gaurd mini-series is just about the only decent thing Marvel has done when it comes to any ROM related continuity in the past 20 years.

And I also have some newly discovered comic book/sci-fi related public art from The Bay Area to share. I found these murals at Ochoa Middle School in Hayward. How frigging cool that would have been to go to a school back in the day and have these to look at all the time.

Speaking of Iron Man, I was reading issue 164 online recently. This guy who is from what was then (1982) West Germany wrote a pretty long letter to the staff working on Iron Man at the time. As you can see he had no shortage of ideas and suggestions including a couple good ones when it came to all things ROM.

Galadorian Horror Story variant

 So hopefully you've also seen the original version of this fan art in the previous posting. This past weekend I decided to try out some other ROM related fan art source material from the same artist and photoshop it into the piece in the last posting. I think it turned out pretty good, we now have a version of the Galadorian Horror Story in which ROM is facing a more defined and familiar threat.

Well I supposed with Thanksgiving being a bit later this week I should make a mention of what I'm thankful for this year. There's the obvious stuff ofcourse such as having my health and gainful employment in the midst of this never ending pandemic. But I'm also thankful for BILL MANTLO who just turned 70 earlier this month. Without Mantlo, the 80s would have been a bit less awesome and his legacy makes it possible for us to still enjoy reading and re-reading his stuff today not to mention the inspiration for all this ROM related fan art that's still being put out in the here and now. 

 

 I'm gonna make another addition to this posting. Here's something I've been sitting on for a while now that I never got around to posting for whatever reason. It comes from New Warriors 35 (1993). I only came across this as a back issue a few years ago but when I read it I realized how much more abilities the torpedo armor gave it's user then we knew of when Brock Jones was using it in the ROM series. As the reader you can draw your own conclusions why that may have been but I'm guessing the writers of New Warriors came up with some of that for the sake of making Turbo a bit more interesting and or formidable.