Thursday, March 31, 2016

Astonishing Tales 2009 One Shot starring Sabra part 3 of 3

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Well at this point the story pretty much speaks for it's self. Yeah that's a pretty nice perspective in that top panel like I said in part 1 of this blog posting series the art work in this issue is just absolutely amazing. I would love to see this artist pencil ROM, Hybrid, The Torpedo and the dire wraiths I know he would make them all look so awesome.

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And that city is Jerusalem, probably the most contested piece of real estate in the world. In the near future I should be doing some flying of my own to both Greece and Israel where hopefully I'll have a couple cool photo opportunity ideas that Bill Mantlo & Sal Buscema will get a kick out of. Ok one last thing . . .

Avengers 101 mighty facts
Here's something that I found in an Avengers special edition magazine by Wizard (1999) I picked up from a con in a dollar box a few weeks ago. I've been sitting on this because I wasn't sure if it was worth blogging about because quite frankly it's a bit ridiculous even within the fictitious comic book universe of ROM spaceknight. I've never read the original Avengers #10 but I'm pretty sure somebody came up with this concept long after that issue and indeed long after ROM #1 was published.

9 comments:

  1. Thanks for these posts- cool stuff.
    That is some amazing art...

    And I agree, that is totally something they came up with way after the fact!

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    1. Yeah and in case you didn't know the artist is a woman. There's something really hot about that just like when you see a chick kicking ass on a guitar or drum set.

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    2. Very nice.
      I totally agree- I had the HUGEST crush on Agent Moulder of Jack Off Jill back in the day...... and on the girls of Kittie. Oh, and Terrie B from My Ruin.
      L7, Babes in Toyland... I just have a thing for rockers apparently.

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    3. Yes, the Dire Wraiths in Avengers #10 was a retcon. And I'm pretty sure it was undone by Avengers Forever, where it was revealed most people trapped in Limbo eventually become Space Phantoms.

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    4. afaik the Avengers #10 historical figures were never identified as Dire Wraiths in any comic story, but the retcon's runaround can be followed in the Marvel Reference Library, starting with The Official Handbook Of The Marvel Universe v1 #8 (Aug1983, Merlin appendix entry) and continuing through v2 Deluxe Edition #8 (Jul1986, Merlin full entry) & v3 Master Edition #22 (Aug1992, Merlin again). The designation was reprinted in all Essential volumes, and then was more solidly explained in The Official Marvel Index to the Avengers v2 #1 (Oct1994)...it says, under the villains appearing in Avengers #10, "Dire Wraiths (first appearance; an alien race of planet Wraithworld; last in flashback in Incredible Hulk Vol. 2 #262/2; disguised as "Paul Bunyan",..."Merlin",{et al}; Dire Wraiths next in Rom #1)". Ironically it was right around the same time as the Wizard article mentioned the retcon that Avengers Forever showed an in-continuity explanation for the historical figures as Space Phantoms, as Lee points out. The Marvel Reference Library's clarifications of the retcon's reversal can be found in Immortus' entry in All-New Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A-Z #5 (Jul2006), and Avengers, Captain America, Thor: Official Index to the Marvel Universe #1 (Jun2010) which says in Avengers #10's entry: "OHMU #8, '83 identified the historical figures Immortus deploys here to be Dire Wraiths; AvFo #8, '99 confirmed Goliath, Hercules & Merlin to be Space Phantoms instead, as are, presumably, the others previously believed to be Wraiths."

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  2. btw Astonishingly beautiful art indeed, I enjoyed your review of the Sabra story, and wish you well on your overseas travels & look forward to the resulting blog posts.

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    1. well if you noticed shortly after your opening comment on today's posting i added a little more Sabra to the it so i hope you'll enjoy that to. i see you've been pretty busy and have had your finger on the pulse of all things ROM/IDW. honestly i haven't been following any of it in recent weeks the whole thing has me feeling very fatigued mentally. when the issue comes out on FCBD i'll have a look at it and well just see what's what then. as for my trip to Greece and Israel that won't be till late May. so you gonna finally give me your opinion about the design direction IDW went with when it comes to ROM and i'm not talking about the cover either because he looks quite different on the inside.

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  3. As of right now, I'm fully on board with IDW's revival. I doubt I can be convinced that fingers or a rounded helmet were "necessary" so I didn't really like those changes on the earliest reveal (the cover only). But later, when they showed us that infamous inside page of the full armor straight ahead view, I have to admit my very first knee-jerk reaction was "Coooool!" Almost immediately afterward though, I went back to lamenting the loss of the squared-off helmet & enclosed fingers. Those features were just too distinctive to jettison, I thought. As you know I then had a personal upheaval that kept me too busy with non-comics stuff, or I probably could have become fatigued with IDW ROM anticipation too. I'm only just now getting fully back on track with ROM curating, and some of the newer previews are getting better & have me genuinely excited. For example, there's a Pat Broderick cover art that I've only seen on facebook that makes the redesign look the best so far; his helmet's got all the corners! And now that we've seen the art for about 7 "ROM Month" variant covers released online today, I think it's obvious that some artists' interpretations of the new armor are going to please some of us old fans (I'm lovin' the G.I. Joe), and some are...not (IDW ROM on the Star Trek is awful). My ROM Vault will collect it all regardless and I think I'm going to have a good time with it overall, as long as the writing is respectful (that's another "story", literally). There, you've been trying to get my stream-of-consciousness on the armor re-design for a long time, glad I could oblige & I hope you're happy!!!!~!~! ;-P

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    1. ok well thank you for that Gary. i'm still in a take it as it comes kinda state of mind about it all.

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