Enter 2024

I usually don't care much for character study type fan art. I much prefer fan art that involves some sort of scene that tells a story or pays tribute to an awesome moment comic book or sci-fi fandom. But once in a while I make an exception and this would be one of those times. This is just excellent from a figure composition stand point and in general really encapsulates that greatest of the spaceknights vibe. Compliments of artist Patrick Goddard 

That's a pretty good deal when you consider that the ROM Spaceknight 1 facsimile goes for 5 bucks. With that TPB you get 4 ROM issues for just a little more. Get your copy in 2024. 

Once again, it was nice to see a ROM publication on a new comic shelf. And even though it was a reprint, at least this time it was something that featured new original cover art unlike in the case of the facsimile. Perhaps we're inching ever closer to the day where we will have new stories of the one and only Greatest of The Spaceknights appearing every month on new comic book day?

Although I'm always on the look out for anything ROM related that's cool I've had other matters on my mind in recent weeks and it's not looking like that's gonna change any time soon. Are sick and tired of seeing this so called flag and all the propaganda, thuggery, mayhem and vandalism that comes with it? Then this part of the posting is for you my friend. 

 

 January 13th Update: So as with all my postings for many months now I had to add some Sabra into this one. That aside I was long over due to do something with Sabra fighting islamic terror this one became my first fan art piece of 2024.

January 23rd Update: Today a buddy of mine texted me the sad news about Gary Graham having passed away. I met Gary at a con in San Jose California about 7 or 8 years ago. He was at a booth with the late sci-fi legend Richard Hatch (Apollo from Battle Star Galactica ofcourse, RIP) promoting Star Trek Axanar. I told him how at first I was skeptical about him playing a Vulcan diplomat on Star Trek Enterprise after having enjoyed him several years before as a smart mouth but street smart detective on ALIEN NATION. But he pulled it off brilliantly, and he seemed to be quite delighted by my compliment. Ofcourse I was also sure to let him know that I was a faithful viewer of both shows and that I felt they ended long before their time. Gary Graham was only 73 and reportedly died of a cardiac arrest. 

February 3rd Update: Carl Weathers is dead at 76, and It's hard to even write that as a statement of fact as of yesterday. So many great 80s memories (Rocky and Predator ofcourse) going back with this guy to say nothing about his more recent notable work in the Star Wars franchise. Been finding out a lot of interesting stuff about Weathers that I didn't know in recent hours about his time as a professional athlete as well as his work in films and TV both in front and behind the camera. Way too much to write about here but I did want to make a mention of his appearance on The SHIELD which is probably my all time favorite cop drama TV show. 

Marvel Universe fan art trading cards by Greek artist Kapandais Nikolaos

It seems years of nagging my fellow artist and friend about trying out doing some sketch card fan art has finally paid off, and in a big way. He cranked out a bunch of these awesome kick ass business card sized fan art pieces over the course of just a couple weeks. You might say the ones you see above are the Bill Mantlo subset collection but there's many many more . . .

What I posted here are just a few samples, there's nearly a dozen in all check em out over at his deviant art gallery...

https://www.deviantart.com/nikoskap/gallery

I was browsing at one of those over sized hard bound Marvel encyclopedia books a couple weeks ago when something occurred me when I was looking at Sabra's bio. Writers for comic books actually have a better grip on reality then leftist antisemites do. You see up there where it reads "BASE Jerusalem Israel"? One of the things antisemites love to ramble on about on social media is how Jerusalem is actually in "palestine". And that's despite "palestine" not being listed on virtually any geographic map or even on whatever GPS app that is on your phone. Ya see even within the fictional world of The Marvel Universe there are certain basic facts that are a reflection of the real world such as the existence of gravity or that the planet earth is round and not flat. Another basic fact, Jerusalem ISRAEL nuff said.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/sabra-ruth-batseraph-x-men--308707749468370811/

If you're any kind of Marvel 80s fan then you shouldn't have too much trouble figuring out the cover art this commission fan art piece by artist Carlos Franco is based on. 

August 9th Update: A big thanks to Eclectic Lee for the heads up on this dire wraith reference made in the pages of Avengers Annual 13 (1984). I love it when this kinda nostalgic 80s stuff turns up, it's right up there with the discovery of great new ROM related fan art. 

 

ROM Spaceknight fan art rewind and more!

 

Pretty much put this ROM vs Hybrid scene together in the same way I did the one in the previous posting. Moving on we're going to be revisiting some really professional looking past fan art piece from years ago that for reasons I can't remember I didn't feature here at the time. So let's get to it...

And speaking of beautiful custom figures related to the ROM series, this Torpedo one has gotta be one of the very best I've ever seen and I've seen quite a few over the years.  

This one come from artist Eteuati J Lalau. I'm assuming that's Galactus's hand that ROM is either perhaps materializing from or away to where ever Star Trek transporter style.

 This one is from artist Nalldo Ribeiro. Now normally ROM wouldn't have much to worry about from a single dire wraith trying to get the drop on him but this one looks like it's jacked up on roids or something. I also like this spaceship type corridor this scene is taking place in. It tells a story that your imagination can run with.

This cool space battle scene comes from artist Brian Douglas Ahern (a.k.a Brizy) who's work is no stranger to this blog. 

This sketch card scene taking place in the skies of Israel's capital of Jerusalem was inspired by a splash page in Incredible Hulk 250 (1980) in which The Silver Surfer flies all over Earth lamenting his terrestrial imprisonment by Galactus. In the process he has these scant encounters with various international characters (like Sabra ofcourse) which acted as a prelude to their eventual Marvel Comics full appearance in upcoming issues of The Hulk...

 https://earthsmightiestblog.com/hulk-250-1980/

But, in 1996 a Fantastic Four animated series would utilize that same Silver Surfer story line which gave us an animated version of Sabra's encounter with the surfer as seen here...

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWKyH94Ie9g

 It's been awhile since I've posted any local cool comic book/sci-fi pop culture public art. Here we have a fantastic mural of Godzilla, King Kong, Voltron and Ultraman playing the NES game system on Mecha Godzilla. It can be found in San Jose's Japan Town here in The San Francisco Bay Area. 

March 15th Update: Well we're only about half way through March and already we've had a pretty long list of celebrities that have passed away this year. For me, Raquel Welch, Tom Sizemore (died too young) and Jewish Israeli actor Topol have been the ones that have saddened me the most. I go way back with Raquel Welch with films like Fantastic Voyage and Topol in Flash Gordon. Tom Sizemore came along later and although his sci-fi stuff like Red Planet wasn't bad, HEAT, Black Hawk Down and Saving Private Ryan were his best moments as an actor.  

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

 

 

Welcome to Galador

  Some dire wraith infestation perhaps. But no Covid-19 pandemic or IDW at least. Long live the 80s!

"ROM original" accept no substitute

 I posted this from Comic Scene Magazine issue 2 (1982) back in September of 2013. But in honor of Joe Sinnott who recently past away I think it would be fitting to post again.

 July 4th Update:  I recently discovered a number of cool San Francisco murals of Marvel superheroes so I decided to post my favorite ones. They were mostly located in the North Beach district but a couple were also downtown.

Commission art by Steven Butler

  
July 24th Update:  Finally, something has come along worth posting here from an artist other then myself and my friend Nikoskap. This is absolutely every thing I like to see when it comes to fan art (commission or other wise). It's creative, professional in quality and takes me back to the 80s in the way good nostalgia fan art should do. Hats off to artist Steven Butler and his master piece. You've done the ROM Spaceknight legacy justice.

by Jeff Slemons

 And look at this ROM 27 homage piece by artist Jeff Slemmons. Two awesome pieces of ROM fan art in one week, this is truly unprecedented. The Gods of Galador be praised!

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.

The ROM legacy Heroclix collection

Left click to enlarge

I've loved dioramas ever since I was a kid, and this one comes to us by Gary Martin Jr.who did a fine job on it. The top left silver figurine is Ikon with some gold color variants that are supposed to be some kind of standard spaceknight soldiers in the Heroclix universe. Along the bottom to the left we have Forge from The X-Men which I'm sure most of you ROM fans remember as having had a pivotal role as an ally to ROM in the final days of the Wraith War both in the pages of The X-Men as well as in ROM spaceknight. Moving to the right we've also got Turbo from The New Warriors although for nostalgia's sake I wish they had made that figure outfitted with the original Torpedo costume as opposed to the updated version as seen in the 2nd New Warriors series.
Moving on to the right we've got the bad guys starting with a standard female dire wraith along with the dire wraith queen Volx. Notice how Volx is made of the exact same mold but done in green. Last up in the top right corner we've got the worst of the worst when it comes to ROM's enemies. Arguably the best sculpt of the bunch that there is Hybrid. Spawned of a dire wraith father and human mother Hybrid was a mutant of sorts possessed of vast powers both mental and physical.

It also so happens that this past weekend I was at the latest San Jose Super Toy comic and collectibles show. I really like this con I've been to it a few times now over the past couple of years it's not as big as most other cons but it's not bad at all and for a measly $10 admission fee (plenty of free parking nearby to) you get quite a lot of bang for your buck as the saying goes. It was kinda cool to see a dealer decorate one of his comic boxes with ROM 18. Also, Sam Jones from the awesomely cheesy 1980 Flash Gordon movie and more recently from the Ted movies was there.

1989 Oakland CA Wonder Con convention program

October 7 Update: First off I wanted to say I'm disappointed to not see some words of appreciation for that ROM legacy Heroclix diorama which no doubt was a real labor of love for Gary. Ok moving on, here's a little retrospective when it comes to the local convention scene. I just found this in an old 1989 Oakland Wonder Con convention program I still had. Ofcourse I've sung the praises of Akin & Garvey's work on ROM numerous times here over the years but I hadn't realized until today that they had also done inks on the Micronauts (Vol. 2) as well. I don't know about the first ever Wonder Con in 87 but I know they were also guests at the one in 88. Looking back I wish I had made a point to see them while I was there but unfortunately back in the late 80s I was in a different head space. The names behind the comics I loved to read and collect were not that big of a deal to me as hard as that me be to believe in the here and now.

One more card up my sleeve

I totally wasn't expecting to do another sketch card any time soon but I saw something recently that gave me almost instant inspiration. But first things first. The closest thing we ever got to see in terms of some kind of ROM and Spider Man cross over was a cameo in ROM spaceknight 23. No doubt some kind of team up story between the greatest of the spaceknights and arguably Marvel's most popular character would have been nothing short of epic for ROM fans. So getting back to my inspiration it came when I saw this black suite Spider Man fan art by my good friend from Greece. It was one of the coolest and most creative web swinging poses I've ever seen and I knew almost right away I wanted to use it some how with ROM. I hammered this sketch card out it just one evening. Don't forget to check out part of the source material from Nikoskap ...
http://nikoskap.deviantart.com/art/Web-swinger-634802666

Left click to enlarge

And speaking of all things cool and Spider Man have a look at what I passed by just last week. This can be found in the city of Hayward at a custom plastics fabrication business called Bell Plastics (2020 National Ave.). But I'm also happy to say that Hayward has been home before to other public art of our friendly neighborhood Spider this can be found on Tennyson Road  Man http://www.itsadansworld.net/2010/09/united-by-style-marvel-takes-dc-to.html

The giant sized Micronauts ROM cross over annual that never was

A big thanks to Gary for giving me a heads up about this commission piece by Brian Douglas Ahern for what I would assume is for a big time ROM and Micronauts fan. Most long time ROM fans will recognize the guy who's menacing the Micronauts as marvel's first evil spaceknight, Mentus. I like the creative aspect of this as a concept (taken from Micronauts 8) although I do have one little bit of criticism as far as the art work goes. I think the inking on ROM and The Micronauts is a bit too lite they lack depth but this is other wise a solid piece. There's also an interior page to go with this cover concept to help give it a bit more context  . . .
http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=1258857&GSub=104286

Sept. 24th Update: Also just in from Gary who found this in the October issue of PREVIEWS comic book catalog magazine. Some of you may remember Christos Gage as the writer of the ill conceived 3 issue Hybrid return story arc from Avengers Academy a few years back. Well at least his heart was in the right place because he is something of a ROM fan. Plus we've seen this sort of thing before among marvel writers who like ROM like Abnett & Landing (The Annihilators) and Johnathan Hickman (Infinity).

Rom spaceknight 32

Giant size Marvel Universe heroes and villlians fan art with something for ROM fans

Hey Gary a heads up on this sure would have been nice, I'm just sayin. All I can tell you folks is that this is done by artist Brian Douglass Ahern who is also a well known ROM fan. Not only does he have ROM and The Torpedo in his heroes collection he also made sure to include ROM arch enemy Hybrid and a couple of dire wraiths among the villains.