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!

 

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.  

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