Captain America 4 and The Fantastic Four . . . you need to do better Marvel!

Over the years I've seen quite a bit of foreign cover art for reprinted ROM issues and stories. Mostly they were made up of lifted images of both clip art and cover art from the Marvel series. In other cases it was more like mediocre fan art style reproduction from the original series. But in a handful of cases they were actual original art work created for those foreign reprints. This one here, which is based on the cover art from ROM issue 20 is my favorite original art foreign cover although there's also one from Strange Magazine (French) that features ROM and The Sub-Mariner that I think is a close second . . .

https://romspaceknightart.blogspot.com/2014/04/of-spartans-spaceknights.html

  It's been a while since I've posted any public art based on comic book/science fiction pop culture. I recently discovered this pretty cool mural in downtown Oakland Califonia. Kinda surprised to find this rather patriotic Steve Rogers Captain America in such a "progressive" town like Oakland which might as well be renamed to Wokeland these days. Speaking of all things Captain America, we all know that Captain America 4 is debuting in theaters in just a couple weeks from now and it's pretty much a guaranteed box office bomb. 

  Rumor has it that the would be SABRA appearance has been stripped of her Israeli identity. Needless to say that pisses me off but it comes as no surprie that Woke Disney/Marvel Studios would cave into BDS post october 7, 2023. But it's also the least of this movie's productions problems with all the reshoots, multiple failed screen tests and the latest comments from actor Anthony Mackie. I'm really feeling like that whole MCU story arc with Steve giving Sam the shield should have just been wrapped up with the Falcon Winter Soldier mini series. It wasn't with out it's problems but overall I really enjoyed it to be honest. I'll pass on this one I can wait till it shows up on streaming.

 

As I was reading this online article from late last year about this series of variants based off the classic Marvel Two-IN-One series I realized that issue 99 was the second to the last issue of the series. So glad they decided to get ROM into the mix before it's end it was one of my favorite Marvel team ups ever.
 https://comicbook.com/comics/news/marvel-the-fantastic-four-the-thing-two-in-one-variant-cover-series/

 

Around Hanukkha last year I thought it might be fun to rework the recent ROM and THING fan art from Ron Frenz by substituting ROM for Sabra by artist Darryl Banks. I think the Banks Sabra blended pretty seamlessly into a Marvel Two-In-One issue that would have been awesome. Speaking of all related things Ben Grimm, I'm not seeing that not so Fantastic Four shit either in theaters. Sorry but not sorry Pedro, you're not Reed Richards. Because despite his work on The Mandalorian I can't stand him as a person. And on top of that, Norrin Radd is now going to be Nora Radd as I understand it. No thank you to all that!

 

I have something better then flowers for Valentine's Day this year

Although this piece has been around for well over 2 years, for reasons unknown this is still largely undiscovered by ROM fans. I'm a bit more partial to ROM fan art that's a bit more creative theme wise, but still I gotta say I've got nothing but love for this one. Not because Valentine's Day is just around corner, but because the figure composition in this piece is so perfect along with how ROM's armor looks with this artist's (Idan Knafo) particular style. And the colors, the colors are almost down right mesmerizing. This is where I found it . . .

https://twitter.com/artofidan/status/1330456189294043136 

This is actually something I threw together in photoshop several years ago with some borrowed 3D renderings  I found online but for some reason I never posted it. But back then this piece only consisted of Brandy Clark and Hybrid. Thanks to photos that have turned up on social media in the past year or so of Alberto Diaz's insanely awesome custom electronic ROM doll I now can include him in the scene. 

For those of you who have never read ROM Annual 3 or maybe it's been a while I included this clip art in order to give the art work some context. That last panel still grosses me out to this day

I just by chance discovered this cool Sabra art work which belonged to a podcast episode from early December last year. The episode covered part of the Operation Zero Tolerance story arc in which Sabra was temporarily teamed up with some members of  The X-Men (Ice-Man and Marrow) as well as with Dr. Cecilia Reyes. Hopefully most of you noticed the Giant Sized X-Men Annual 1 cover art homage in David Wynne's art piece here.

February 14th Update: A poll closed this afternoon on the BacktotheBronzeAge twitter page. They periodically have these polls and sometimes ROM shows up in one of the categories. If memory serves me right, more often then not his category gets the most votes just like it did today. ROM had an early lead but toward the end The Micronauts started to close the gap but couldn't quite catch up by the time the poll closed.

What If

What if ROM had encountered The Micronauts? What if ROM and Earth's heroes had lost the Wraith War? What If Sal Buscema had never left the series? What If Marvel had retained or at least reacquired the rights to ROM spaceknight? I know I know, so many What Ifs over the years about what could have been, should have been or just shit that was very unlikely in any reality but sure would have been cool anyways. 

Well here's one I bet that never crossed your mind. What if there was a reality where instead of an invasion of the planet Earth as we know it in the mainstream Marvel Universe of the mid twentieth century the dire wraiths invaded the dystopian future world of Judge Dredd? The apocalyptic conditions of the "Cursed Earth" would have no doubt reminded them of their Hellish home world which they were driven from by Galador's spaceknights (see ROM spaceknight 1).

The original by Brittany Michel 

https://www.etsy.com/shop/BadCarrotStudios?ref=search_shop_redirect

Wanted to see what it would look like in color so I brought it into photoshop and so here we go. Most of you I hope will recognize the source material from ROM spaceknight annual 3 (Bill Mantlo and WM Johnson).

Oh yeah and that reminds me of this. I believe it was an unpublished piece of fan art done by Scott Reed in the spirit of the great Sal Buscema's signature Marvel 80s penciling style. It came out pretty good it was on ebay and if I recall correctly it sold for $180 last year.

September 25th Update: 

https://www.jpost.com/j-spot/steve-ditko-estate-tries-to-regain-spider-man-doctor-strange-copyrights-680207

 

 

What a ROM and Daredevil 2021 team up might have looked like

 I usually don't do humor/satire based fan art but once in a great while I get inspired to come up with something. Not exactly the team up you were thinking about I bet.

And here we have some borrowed images from different fan art pieces that digitally re-purposed into a new scene.

I recently by good fortune came across this rare photo of the man that so many of us have so much to be grateful for. It really pisses me off about the shitty things that happen to good people (while still fairly young) rather we're talking about Bill Mantlo or Chadwick Boseman. And on the other hand pieces of shit like donald trump in their 70s get covid-19 and make a full recovery. That shit just ain't right, seriously.

 

Starshine Unleashed

My Greek friend Nikoskap has been hitting out of the park lately with a lot of good Starshine themed sketch art that's turned into some collaboration pieces between us which I felt deserved a little more exposure beyond twitter, farcebook and deviant art. Clearly this blog is not entirely defunct as I had intended November of last year I keep making exceptions for the occasional posting.

September 6th Update: And speaking of all things Greek, I just dropped this in the mail earlier in the week let's hope The Enigma Force and the Gods of Galador insure it's safe arrival...

A tribute to the classic

I didn't think I was gonna do any fan art for the longest time. But this week something just came over me I don't know if it's nostalgia or this chill work week I'm having so far or a combination there of. Just started sketching something last night with some of my free time and it started coming out pretty good. Earlier tonight I colored it and viola....my image montage of the classic ROM series is complete.  P.S. Fuck IDW Publishing

Gordon Henley as rebel X-Wing pilot Red Leader

I feel like I should give another recently passed away actor a little shout out here who isn't a house hold name but never the less has managed to cement their place in sci-fi history. Gordon "Drewe" Henley earlier this month died at age 75 from chocking on some food he was eating. Something of a tragic freak accident I would say especially coming on the heels of Carrie Fisher's death. For those of you who saw Rogue 1 you may have noticed him in the film appear in a couple of scenes exactly as he was back in 1977 when he led the rebel squadron that attacked and destroyed the Empire's first Death Star.
Unlike with The Grand Moff Tarkin and Princes Leia there was no well done CGI going on with Red Leader. That's because the producers of Rogue 1 actually inserted cut scenes from the Death Star battle from A New Hope into the ending space battle in Rogue 1. I absolutely loved that it made Rogue 1 feel that much more like classic vintage Star Wars and it was also great in terms of continuity. I can only hope that Henley was able to see Rogue 1 before his accident. Think about it, watching cut footage of yourself intended for a movie back in 1977 being used for a movie in 2016 I mean seriously how cool is that!? It should also be noted the same thing was done with the actor from A New Hope that played the rebel pilot with the call sign Gold Leader.

Left click to enlarge

January 28 update: My sketch card collection so far as of today.

How they could have made ROM great again

Loston Wallace

This morning I came across this cover art for one of the myriads of cover variants. This particular one is one of the few examples of the endless interpretations of ROM that IDW likes to keeping putting out there. Apparently some sense of consistency with ROM's design when it comes to these cover variants is not much of a priority. However, it so happens that this particular interpretation represents what I think would have been a good or at least acceptable updated look for a 2016 ROM spaceknight series. We'll assume he doesn't have the over sized anime feet bell bottom look going on in here but that aside what you see here is a look I could have gotten into. I'm at such a loss to understand why this kind of look couldn't have been just as marketable for a new ROM series here in 2016 same as what IDW ultimately came up with not to mention it would have gone a long way to not alienating so many of the faithful such as myself. Especially if they had stuck with the original concepts for ROM's neutralizer, analyzer and translator barring some minor design updates. And to think IDW actually had something like this at first (zero issue cover) but continued to make more design changes until they ended up with what you now see when you actually open up the zero issue and ROM #1. It just blows me away that these concepts and final decisions for this new series were made by old school ROM fans. And now, some of my favorite moments in terms of art and writing from the one and only Greatest of the spaceknights.

Damn straight!

August 11 update

Custom dire wraith figure by Chris Motito

Here's a little something from the good ol days that turned up on deviant art if you want to see more with different angles go here http://custom777.deviantart.com/ I'm sure Chris will be happy to tell us more photos about his latest custom including what he used as the base figure and so on. Also, be on the look out for a recent Rainbow spaceknight custom figure when you're in Chris's art gallery.

Always cool when your letter gets published

This past weekend I found a copy of Avengers Academy #27 which I had been made recently aware (thanks Gary) of as having letter I wrote (under the pen name "Sol Rosenberg", any other Jerky Boys fans out there?) back in 2012 to the editor William Rosemann. I had actually written two letters but completely forgot about this one until recently. This one was written after the first issue of a 3 issue story arc that included the return of one of ROM's top deadliest enemies, Hybrid. But by the time the 3rd issue came along my attitude had changed drastically when I realized marvel had failed yet to do justice to the ROM legacy. So I wrote a rather critical follow up letter which obviously didn't make it into any Avengers Academy letter columns but I did have it in a past posting along with Rosemann's reply : )
http://romspaceknightart.blogspot.com/search?q=avengers+academy

Left click to enlarge

=Oh man after posting the letter page related stuff I got a call from work letting me know I can have the day off from work because it's so slow this week. I'm so sprung right now it makes me feel like doing a another drawing I've been meaning to get to for a while now. This scene didn't quite turn out the way I envisioned at first but this is basically how I see an encounter going between ROM and Dr. Doom.

Also, I found something cool on Figure Realm today . . .
https://www.figurerealm.com/viewcustomfigure.php?FID=72162
and for fans of the Masters of the Universe mini comics . . .
http://old.he-man.org/primary_sects/comics/html/mini_comics/motu/index.shtml

BIG WOW Comic Con San Jose CA. 2015

So just this past weekend I went to the BIG WOW Comic Con in San Jose which I've gone to for the past 2 years (not counting this year's) now. Off hand it was cool this year for me because this time I was able to go sporting the ROM t-shirt I ordered from Redbubble last Fall. I had a few random people through out the day there give me my props when they saw it . . .
http://romspaceknightart.blogspot.com/2014/09/gods-of-galador-my-new-rom-t-shirt-fits.html
Ironically I didn't get a chance to take a close look at the official convention program book until just this afternoon when I noticed something under the artist guest list I didn't catch in the previous years. That's pretty cool that among the huge breadth of work Golden has had over the decades that ROM and The Micronauts was included on this short list of art credits. Same goes for The She-Hulk as far as I know like with ROM he only ever did some of the cover art for that title too.

Left click to enlarge

April 23 Update: In keeping with the local theme of this posting I decided to do something with ROM in another S.F. Bay Area city. But don't forget part of the story from ROM #48 (see August 12, 2012 posting) actually takes place in San Francisco so in a way this is something of a tribute piece to that issue.

April 26 Update: Ok one last thing before we close out this month. Last night I was doodling while in a  "fuck marvel - hasbro" kinda mood and it actually started to come out as a pretty good sketch. It makes me feel better when I just some times don't have the words or don't want to repeat myself.

Bill Mantlo enjoying his new gift from a fan

Here's one from an artist I've featured before on this blog. I've always really liked this one too but there was just one thing that still bothered me about it. And even though I colorized it that's not what bothered me about it. It's actually the same thing that I recently had to fix on another recent piece of fan art in which just about everything else on ROM looked alright except one goddamn thing. Here's the original http://kimoyancey.blogspot.com/search?q=rom

For those of you who saw this posting earlier you know that I was still waiting for some new stuff to update today's posting. Well I'm happy to say some of it has started to show up such as this photo from Michael Mantlo's most recent visit to his brother Bill. What you see in Bill's hand there is the custom Starshine II figure which I sent to Michael a couple of weeks ago after it got passed off to me by Chris who wanted it to be given to Bill as a gift. And speaking of Chris's custom spaceknight figures we've got another one coming up I hope to have something to post here within the next 24 hours stay tuned.

 

And finally, here it is! Told ya it would be worth the wait. For more images of Chris's latest custom spaceknight and other custom figure projects: http://custom777.deviantart.com/gallery/

Shit, kinda as an after thought maybe I should have made this custom it's own posting. I could have titled after my favorite Talking Heads song, "Burnin Down The House".