More colorized fan art! Plus, look what Marvel is up to in October

Left click to enlarge. DO IT NOW!

 A fellow on Deviant Art who goes by the handle of Deaddog2007 just in the last week or so took this Loston Wallace line art illustration of ROM and did some really cool stuff to it in photoshop. The first obvious thing is that he gave Wallace's rendering some color and added a back ground screen of some clip art from issue 47 (first appearance of female Dire Wraiths) along with the ROM logo. This came together really nicely there's some good design work going on here. Magnify this it will fly off your monitor no 3-D glasses required!

SPACEKNIGHTS #1 (of 3)
Written by JIM STARLIN & CHRIS BATISTA
CHRIS BATISTA (A)
Cover by CHRIS BATISTA
• The planet Galador rebuilds its elite defense force, recruiting a new generation of Spaceknights!
• Can Balin and Tristan, sons of legendary Spaceknight Starshine, live up to the legend of their family name?
• Collecting SPACEKNIGHTS (2000) #1-2.
48 PGS./Rated T+ …$3.99

I'd like to give a thanks to Dan from  http://www.itsadansworld.net/ and Ptor from http://sanctumsanctorumcomix.blogspot.com/ for bringing this to my attention. Both of these gentlemen suggested this reprinting of the 2001 Spaceknights five issue mini-series may be a prelude of more ROM related things to come from Marvel. To be honest I find it hard to have any enthusiasm for this. This mini-series was a commercial failure back then (and with good reason) and since then Marvel has pretty much erased this continuity with the Annihilators story line. And in a way when I see stuff like this it makes me feel more frustrated over this whole ongoing licensing legal red tape bullshit . . . 

Left click to enlarge

By my estimation Marvel lost the licensing rights to ROM pretty much quite literally at the turn of the century. All the ROM related continuity narratives prior to 2000 were done pretty well. Most notably I'm referring to ROM & Brandy's appearance at Rick Jone's wedding, the continued legacy of the Torpedo armor in New Warriors and the short lived return of Hybrid in X-Man. As for the Dire Wraiths Marvel has managed to make good use out of them for pretty much the last 25 years now and we've been seeing a lot of them especially in the last year or so. 
But when it comes to all the ROM related stuff outside of the Dire Wraiths since the character license was lost, Marvel has largely only sullied the legacy of the greatest of the spaceknights. The best examples is the before mentioned Starlin & Bastista mini-series and more recently The Annihilators and Hybrid's return in Avengers Academy. All of which by the way I have disregarded through the wonder known as krypto-revisionism (see 2/3/12 post). But all these failures still frustrate me because it's a constant reminder that there can be no doubt were it not for this legal issue ROM would still be a regular fixture in many of Marvel's cosmic story lines today.
Marvel's continued attempts to revive the ROM franchise with out ROM himself just goes to show how there are certainly those at Marvel right now who still think very highly of the work that Bill Mantlo & Sal Buscema did. It also goes to show that they have at least some awareness of the enduring fan base out there too.
But in spite of all this Marvel still seems to think obtaining the rights somehow is still more trouble then it's worth. Marvel is a business so that's probably more a business decision then anything else. But please Marvel, moving forward here no more Manga inspired spaceknight armor or spaceknights that are easier to knock over then shopping mall security guards who are sleeping on the job.  

Coming up next, ROM vs. ROBOCOP