Well here we go I'm happy to have discovered some new ROM fan art again so soon after my last posting. Fan art that is really well illustrated and conceptually creative as well I might add. As a kid I really liked The Black Hole but it doesn't hold up well in the here and now but never the less it's still classic late 70s sci-fi with a merchandising campaign that went well into the early 80s. Back in the day I had a number of Black Hole stuff including a couple of the figures, a puzzle and the read along record book.
I still think Maximilian was pretty bad ass and back then to a kid who was only around 8 or 9 he was so imposing and menacing. I even featured my old action figure of him in a previous posting http://romspaceknightart.blogspot.com/2017/01/shogun-warriors-13.html He was big, had the scary red visor panel and the whirling blades but in spite of all that not really a match for the greatest of the spaceknights in an actual show down.
A quick same day update here. Saw this tweet about 7 hours after I published this posting and felt like I needed to address the statement made in it. No dude, ROM is the guy in the Slemons art work. You're the fake ROM "the" spaceknight from idw. The same fake ROM that didn't make it past 14 issues and one annual where as the real ROM ran for 75 issues and 4 annuals. But all that aside thanks for posting the link.
Speaking of cool 80s memories here's a couple of gems I recently dug up from my child hood as something of a continuation from update of the previous posting. Look at all those M.U.S.C.L.S packs not to mention the G.I.Joe Mauler tanks. You can't see it well in this photo but on my left wrist I'm wearing one of the many CASIO digital watches I owned through out the decade I really wish I had kept at least one even with a dead battery.
Oh how I used to love my Castle Greyskull play set and those lazy Saturday mornings in my TRON pajamas. God bless the 80s.
Left click to enlarge
One last thing, Blade Runner 2049 comes out tomorrow although I'll have to wait to see it until this weekend for which I may add a short review (please don't suck!) to this posting. If you happen to be wondering why I have this here old cassette tape insert (love the art) from Iron Maiden's Somewhere In Time Album (1986) it's because of the band photo. If you look carefully they have one of the flying police spinners in it from the original Blade Runner film. All that aside it's one Hell of a great album.
Since this is a heavily awesome 80s themed posting and in light of the recent tragic celebrity death I gotta have something in here for Tom Petty who just passed away at 66. This video was one of those classic MTV 80s magic moments.
Sometimes I like to draw or paint something when I'm in the mood to do some fan art http://csuhsux.deviantart.com/gallery/ And other times I like to pick up some fan art done by other artists and kinda play around with it in photoshop. But I don't do that because I don't like the art work to begin with I do it because I very much do like the art work but find myself sufficiently intrigued by it so that I want to experiment with variant versions of it.
I do this at least a couple times a week as a hobby but you wouldn't know it most of the time I don't bother posting the stuff I come up with. In this case I am with this one which was originally done by artist Jeff Slemons http://lkseitz.blogspot.com/2011/05/spaceknight-art-by-jeff-slemons.html
Slemons has done at least 3 other Rom pieces that I know of and from it all you can see how he really likes to emphasize the interplay between light and shadow values. He's also excellent in the basic principles of good figure composition like with foreshortening, perspective and anatomical proportions giving his work a very professional look.
Gary Martin Jr. "a Rom curator" has been archiving all (both good and bad) the known Rom fan art out there from over the years. I love nothing more then well done fan art but I'm sorry to say what's turned up in the last couple weeks or so would best be described as abysmal. Unfortunately the latest pages from the Rom Remix project falls into that description for me although pg 4 and 9 are an exception but they're from last year. http://romremix.tumblr.com/
As with anything meant to benefit Bill Mantlo I really want to be more enthusiastic about this project but the love for it just isn't there. Obviously a big part of that is all the amateurish looking work in it but after having contacted a hand full of the artists last year working on it I was surprised to find out they weren't even Rom or Bill Mantlo fans per se and in a couple of cases hadn't even heard of Rom or Bill until they got involved in the project. That gives me that feeling you get when you pick up an American flag and find the "Made In China" tag on it.
On a more upbeat note Bill Mantlo recently was given the Bill Finger Award. Never heard of that award but apparently it has to do with comic book writers who never got their due recognition during their careers. There might be something to that the owner of my local comic shop didn't know who Bill Mantlo was when I mentioned Bill to him a couple year back, go figure. For more details on the award go to . . . http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=51711
