Tuesday, April 26, 2011

1 year anniversary for blog & latest What If cover concept



So in order to show my appreciation to all the followers I decided to treat you all to some eye candy to brighten your days. The rather sultry Turbo you see before you is not actually mine. I just happened to have found it on a site along with many other female characters from Marvel and DC who were made up from random models.
Naturally it gave me an immediate . . idea about a potential encounter and team up adventure had ROM stayed on Earth after the Wraith War conclusion. As you all should know Turbo from the New Warriors wore the Torpedo suite used by ROM's unofficial side kick the late Brock Jones. There are so many things I could have had ROM say in a super imposed dialogue or thought bubble it boggles the mind. Chief among them something having to do with needing his analyzer cause it basically acts as a pair of X-Ray glasses.
Now for all of you who would write off the digital artist of Ms. Turbo here as a guy who probably has his hands on digital woman way too much and on real women way too little (your probably right though) consider this. How she has been drawn at times in the actual comic book is not that much of a stretch from how she looks here. Let's take a little trip into the past so I can share with you all one of my earliest revelations on this blog: http://romspaceknightart.blogspot.com/2010/08/raiders-of-lost-torpedo-suite.html

Just a heads, the first of this months kicks off with some real unique stuff that will be featured here.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Michael Golden Marvel 80s poster finally perfected with the finishing touch it's always needed

A lot of names come to mind when I think of great Marvel artists of the 80's such as Sal Buscema, Mike Zeck, John Byrne and Alan Davis just to mention a few. But till this day I feel that arguably Golden was the best. And I love this poster accordingly but I always felt like something was missing that I finally got around to fixing today. And just for the record this poster is still 100% Mike Golden. Right click to magnify the image.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

ROM custom T-shirt, Rick James . . I mean Jones & links to Annihilators #2 Youtube reviews

Ok so I've edited and re-published this posting from being about the ROM clip art flash back cameo in HULK #319 to being mostly about this custom T-shirt because it seems that the cameo was mostly old news to people which kinda bummed me out. Originally I thought I had uncovered something hardly anybody knew about. Needless to say this shirt doesn't bum me out it kicks ass! Your best bet to find out more about it is to go to the previous posting and check out the ROM podcast link. That will take you to a posting on the Roboplastic Apocalypse blog where you can read the comments and contact the T-shirt's creator.


I'm leaving this clip art up of the cameo at any rate just in case for whom ever out there that may not know about it yet. But for another sort of cameo and very ingenious Rick Jones/ROM connection this video is a must see! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-TX1qku6EE
You know to be honest even though it's cool to find ROM references most anywhere, from an art stand point I was never that crazy about John Byrne's rendering of ROM. Don't get me wrong Byrne is one of the greatest artists of all time but the way he drew ROM's head and eyes reminds me a bit too much of Dikto's run on the series. Let's not even go there.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Cosmo & the sentient animals of the Marvel Universe debate


Often in the world of comics it's not always easy to understand why we find some concepts and characters appealing and why we don't care for others. Some of the last comments made in the previous posting has prompted me to address this. I had never even heard of the Cosmo character until the Thanos Devastation one shot that kicked of the Annihilators mini-series. But I liked him right away. Where as characters like Rocket Raccoon and Howard the Duck who I've been aware of since the early 80s have been of no interest to me.
First of all we have to just simply accept the whole sentient animal concept in the first place. So what's the difference between Cosmo and the ones I don't like? Well both Howard and RR are drawn to look like "cartoonish" caricatures of the animals they are. So it's kinda like seeing something that looks like Rocky the flying squirrel interacting with characters like Ikon, Gladiator or the Silver Surfer. That right there makes it hard for me to take those characters seriously in the main stream Marvel Universe. Cosmo is drawn to look like a real dog. Plus, both Howard and RR have these kinda wise guy personalities. Their intended appeal to the readers feels a little forced and contrived to me. Where as Cosmo despite his powers and intelligence has almost this sense of innocence about him and simplistic way of looking at situations that sort of befits the concept of a common dog turned sentient. I think a great example of that is the clip art provide above. He's funny with out trying to be. So that's just my honest non-ranting take on things when it comes to sentient animals of the Marvel Universe. I'm not going to get into Cosmo's origins I'll leave that up to you folks to find out using Google or whatever other search engines you prefer.
By the way, you may have heard Cosmo at one time or another cry out "BOZHE MOI!". If that sounds familiar to you it's because we've heard it a lot with Colossus of the X-Men and maybe on occasions with other Russian characters in Marvel, usually said when someone is amazed or startled. It translates literally into "my God". Speaking for myself during moments of amazement or shock I usually say holy shit. I guess that's kinda similar.

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Annihilators #2 Review continued - Rocket Raccoon, just cosmic road kill to me

WARNING! I'm about to put Christian Bale's rant on the set of Terminator 4 to shame.

What the fuck is wrong with every body as of A#2!? All I'm seeing all over the internet is all this bitching and moaning about every little thing about the Annihilator's story while at the same time there's all these circle jerks going around about Rocket Raccoon. RR is about as cool when it comes to Marvel Cosmic stories as Howard the fucken Duck is! As if the idea of a sentient raccoon being part of the mainstream Marvel Universe isn't pretty I'll conceived in the first place.
So we've seen him so far in this "Office Space" kinda rip off as a mail clerk and in this latest issue he's fighting along side with gun totting mushrooms and squirrels against killer clowns from outer space. And since the squirrel had to go ahead and use a line from the first Batman film (as in Tim Burton not Chris Nolan) it's a wonder there wasn't a mention about TPS reports in the first RR story. Oh yeah, and then of course there's the cyborg pigeons. I haven't seen anything so fucken retarded since the Batman movie that had the Penguin. Remember that army of cyborg penguins? Look, some 40 year old virgin out there actually tattooed that to his fucken arm. Who wants to bet me that dude is probably a Rocket Raccoon fan too? To illustrate what I'm talking about here is a portion of a review that makes me absolutely nauseous, the bold face stuff especially:

That's why it's so heartening to have Rocket Raccoon and Groot acting as backup. All the humor and zany energy missing from the first feature seems to have drained into the second. This segment is frequently hilarious, but also touching as the two friends reunite. And you haven't quite lived until you've seen a militant mushroom and a bazooka-toting squirrel spit action movie one-liners. Humor, heart, and balls-to-the-wall action. This is what I expect from my Cosmic Marvel stories.


I don't know weather I should get this guy a box of kleenex or a tampon. What the fuck is this? Broke Back Planet or something? It gives a whole knew meaning to the term back story. We'll let me tell ya, my back side hurts every time I have to drop $5 for 20 pages of an actual Cosmic Marvel story knowing that a large portion of that cover price is for stupid shit that makes retards like the guy who wrote that review happy.
Rocket Raccoon is lame and was a concept that was only fitting for something like Star Comics of the 1980s that featured titles like Heathcliffe, Ewoks, Planet Terry and the fucken Carebears! So for all you panzie asses that are practically having an orgasm over the RR back story I hope the next time you take out your garbage you find a raccoon waiting for you by the trash. They're not cute little cosmic super heroes, those fuckers are mean!

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Annihilators #2 Review - The return of Brandy Clark, The Quest for ROM begins and . . . enter the Wraith Queen!


Summary: If you haven't read A#1 or my review of it please do so before reading beyond this point. The Annihilators have a brief confrontation with Dr. Dredd before he makes good his escape. So with Dredd gone for the time being the Annihilators decide to head planet side and deal with by the the emergence of the Black Sun in Galador's solar system. There, they give the shell shocked Galadorians some much needed help by taking the fight to the deathwings. We learn at this point that Brandy Clark is basically the equivalent of Galador's queen. We also learn that her husband is "gone" but were gonna get back to that. Beta Ray Bill with some assistance from Quasar generates a storm specifically "designed" to blunt the rays of the Black Sun. It works which momentarily causes the deathwing threat to abate. It turns out Dredd is also on Galador and he's not happy about what just happened. Not that it matters much cause Ronan in his zeal to proof he can hang with the "alpha plus" power level members of the team basically pimp slaps Dredd despite up until now Dredd almost seemingly to be invincible. Brandy and the Annihilators later confer only to have the ever logical and rational Silver Surfer hypothesis about something that may be too terrifying to contemplate. It appears as if Dredd was not working alone and that it's quite possible his accomplice might have been a very distraught queen who is so desperate to see her husband again that she might cause a crisis of epic proportions in order to usher his return.
But before any body can really respond to that the Wraith Queen crashes their little meeting and proceeds to boast that their efforts to halt the Black Sun's power is "too little too late". The last panel shows mystic energy tendrils shooting forth from the queen dispersing everyone in the room.
REVIEW: This issue was fucken awesome! I gotta hand it to Abnett & Lanning! Ya know I thought I had this story line figured out already before I opened this book but I was wrong. As if bringing Brandy Clark into the story line wasn't cool enough the writing takes us for another tragic yet amazing turn by suggesting her role in Dredd's plan. Which is ironic because that would be the second time Dredd has managed to use Brandy's feelings for ROM to manipulate her. That really sucks but it makes for some great drama that clever plot twists like this produce. In this issue we also get to see the team coalesce into a smoother fighting unit. In fact, they almost seem to be having fun together much like co-workers who get along and love their job. Despite Ikon's antagonistic attitude toward Quasar at the beginning it appears she's starting to warm up to him. So much so that I bet by the end of the mini-series we might be finding them together in bed sharing a cigarette. I've also really been enjoying the dialogue too. Very snappy and filled with a lot of sarcastic humor. And aside from all that there's also Wraith Queen which I don't think we really know much about as of yet. Something else worth mentioning in one panel Beta Ray Bill makes a reference to having fought in the last Wraith War (ROM #65) which I sorta predicted in a previous posting: http://romspaceknightart.blogspot.com/2011/02/speculations-on-annihilators-silver.html
It sounds to me like we might be seeing ROM in the near future. It's strongly implied that ROM is not dead but merely somewhere far away. There's no reason why they can't bring him back in human form and just have people call him by his title both official ( My Lord or Prime Director perhaps?) and unofficial as Brandy would (my love/husband). It could be done and that's what I'm hoping for. It was cool that we got to see other spaceknights up close. It would have been nice to see them in action of course but then again these are not the combat veteran Spaceknights from the first Wraith War that took on Terrax the Tamer when Galactus came to Galador in ROM#26. Now that was one epic fucken battle! http://siskoid.blogspot.com/2008/10/spaceknight-saturdays-as-advertized.html Even Ikon, despite her fighting skills and fierceness doesn't posses the instincts of an experienced warrior. Blindly charging Dredd in the midst of all those mutilated Spaceknights and after the Surfer having just gotten his hand cut by Dredd's invisible "razor edge" shield was not the most tactically sound plan of attack.

Nit Picking:
I'd really like to know what sort of cyborgs this latest generation of Spaceknights are. Because in the first issue we see that IKON can remove her helmet so I assumed these new Spaceknights weren't cyborgs but Galadorians in an exoskeleton armor like Iron Man. Aside from the exterior armor is there also some sort of cybernetic implants or perhaps nanites inside their human bodies that help them interface with the armor some how kinda like the Borg? And again, how did Dredd survive from the original series in which he was choked to death by ROM's clone? Also, what do you think would happen if another sun appeared out of nowhere in our solar system? yeah, it would just kinda slightly mess up the delicate balance of orbiting objects with various gravitational fields. It would add bit of realism to the story if that were mentioned as another reason to get rid of the Black Sun asap.
I'm hoping to get some answers to these questions soon. But so far over all especially considering the licensing red tape the ROM name/armor is in this series is coming along nicely. I think it's just gonna keep getting better.