Marvel Comics, Hasbro and The MCU have in part redeemd themselves

Clearly the ROM Marvel Legends figure is a big hit with both ROM fans and action figure collectors alike and for good reason it is among other things a masterpiece of manufacturing. People out there who have gotten there's have come up with some great scenes to stage them in that pays tribute to the original series and it's tie-ins, these are some of my favorites. A nice fella over on Farcebook was telling me earlier that that a local Target store sold out more then once of their ROM figures which certainly suggests ROM has broader appeal then I might have originally suspected and that overall the figures are selling well both online and at whatever retail locations they may be at. The Omnibus collection along with all the other reprint iterations also appear to be fairly successful as well despite the hefty price tag in some cases.

On an interesting side note, back in the early 2010s it seems like what ROM fans were mostly clamoring for was a return of ROM to the Marvel Universe but I think that changed during the next decade. There's a number of reasons for that I think stemming from the legal red tape. A lot of it is due to the poorly handled ROM related continuity Marvel Comics had been doing but also in general it's because of an overall dissatisfaction with comic book stories these days. I think IDW's short lived and divisive reboot also was a contributing factor. In short, I think ROM fans ultimately gave up somewhere along the lines of ever getting what they really wanted when it comes to new comic stories with their favorite spaceknight and shifted their focus more on pushing for high end reprints of the original series and for articulate action figures. And that's what they ended up getting which is more then I ever expected to happen to be honest.

Well, this is probably the first time in over a year that I've come across some fan art by an unknown artist to me. I like the movement and the energy here with the line work it really conveys this action scene well. I came across this on Threads posted last year by artist Wayne Brian Hughe. He has a youtube channel of his work go check it out . . .

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtFybT9rYC8T_ViNs3Za8byCyOmpJyS73

Well, I finally got around to seeing Captain America Brave New World now that it's on streaming. Yeah it pretty much lived up to all the mediocre reviews but it also had a bit of a silver lining for me at least. After what, nearly two years of of all these leftist antisemites trying to get "Sabra" removed from the movie I finally get to see the finished product for myself. Given that Shira Hass was cast as Ruth Bat Seraph you knew right away this wasn't going to be a very comic accurate representation although it would have gone a long way for a number of reasons to still at least make her a mutant or perhaps some other manner of enhanced individual. 

As someone who was part of president Ross's security detail she never went by the code name Sabra but at least it was established in the movie that she was born in Israel so that was a big plus. No mention of her being russian or otherwise stripping her of her Israeli identity as was rumored on social media despite it also being established she was an ex black widow. With all the re-shoots, re-edits and endless other productions problems it's hard to know for sure how they originally envisioned Ruth Bat Seraph a.k.a Sabra for this film. But I would say the antisemitic BDS losers out there definitely did not get their way on this one given that this movie still had an Israeli actress playing an Israeli born character named Ruth Bat Seraph. So thank you MCU for basically giving all those BDS assholes the middle finger.

June 15th Update: If you're at paying attention to the news you may have heard about the latest and worst round of open warfare between ISRAEL and the filthy terrorist iranian regime. It's times like this I really really wish we lived in a world of real superheroes. All that being said the fighting men and women of Israel's armed forces are among some of the most amazing people in the world and this latest fan art of mine is dedicated to them and to Operation Rising Lion.

And in my latest comic book sci-fi pop culture public art discovery. I spotted this classic Ditko style Spider-Man mural in San Jose California on the side of some smoke shop/novelty store. Although I am not a fan of Ditko's later work in the late 70s, 80s and 90s I can still appreciate him as an artist for his time.

The Marvel Team Up issue you never saw coming

It's been a long time since any brand new ROM related fan art has come along that I thought was pretty good outside of the collaborative efforts of myself and my Greek friend  https://www.deviantart.com/nikoskap. This fan art piece by Lou Russo is essentially what the opening page might look like in some sort of Marvel Team-Up issue with ROM, Spider-Man and The Micronauts going up against the combined evil of Baron Karza and The Dire Wraiths. A really creative piece with some obvious Marvel 80s nostalgia. ROM could use a bit of tweaking from a figure composition stand point but still overall this is some nice fan art. Wish something like this would come along more often then just a couple times a year.

https://brainstomping.com/2017/03/08/rom-el-mas-grande-de-los-caballeros-del-espacio-y-bill-rayos-beta-separados-al-nacer/

 

                

June15th Update: Revisiting some random fan art of my own from over the years that I recently realized I hadn't never posted on this blog for reasons unknown. 

Can't think of a good posting title

I was going to save all this stuff for a New Year's Day posting but screw it I just feeling like posting it tonight instead. For openers, this Bill Mantlo tribute fan art envelope is something I mailed off about 3 weeks ago (from California to Greece) but as of this blog posting it still hasn't arrived. The last time it took a whole month for one of my fan art envelopes to get to Greece but the one before that never arrived at all so who knows this time around? Good thing I always take a picture of these at the post office.  

As in my last posting here's something else I've had for a while but never featured on this blog. It comes from The Micromails letter page of issue 40. It's a wonder ROM was not mentioned more then a couple times or so in the published fan letter pages of The Micronauts given that Bill Mantlo was the writer on both titles but we'll take what we can get. Look at that last sentence. Might as well have been another life time ago when you had a new issue of ROM, Micronauts (the real thing, not that fake shit from idw publishing) and The X-Men to look forward to every month. 

A while ago somebody mentioned something on social media about a dire wraith appearance on something having to do with Marvel Legends Darkstar. They didn't include a photo so I had no idea what they were talking about and I just dismissed it as internet noise. Bet then I saw this packaging art lifted from the cover art of Darkstar Winter Gaurd #3 at a big box store recently and it suddenly all made sense. That's pretty cool I'm fairly certain this is the first time the dire wraith have appeared on any published media outside of a comic book or magazine format. The Darkstar Winter Gaurd mini-series is just about the only decent thing Marvel has done when it comes to any ROM related continuity in the past 20 years.

And I also have some newly discovered comic book/sci-fi related public art from The Bay Area to share. I found these murals at Ochoa Middle School in Hayward. How frigging cool that would have been to go to a school back in the day and have these to look at all the time.

Speaking of Iron Man, I was reading issue 164 online recently. This guy who is from what was then (1982) West Germany wrote a pretty long letter to the staff working on Iron Man at the time. As you can see he had no shortage of ideas and suggestions including a couple good ones when it came to all things ROM.

Revisiting some good ROM fan art by Preston Asevedo and Rich Wentworth

The following fan art is stuff that's been on social media for years now so you might have seen it before but tonight I felt like it was time for these works to take their place on this blog. Up top from Preston Asevedo we have a rather creative "What If" themed concept of what a cross over between The Spider-Man and ROM story lines might have looked like. Creative, interesting and well illustrated from basic drawing principles stand point. Just the kind of fan art I love to see. Plus, with the Venom sequel having recently come out it seemed fitting to feature this one from Asevedo here.

Now these 3 by Rich Wentworth are also cool for many of the same reasons. Although they each scene deosn't have as much going on in them as the Asevedo piece they still feature ROM in some sort of setting that kinda plays with your imagination and in general they have a certain style to em that I like.

October 13th Update: I'm making a late addition to this posting with this here fan art by Lou Russo. I can't imagine what sort of "what if mutliverse" kind of scenario that would have brought together these three franchises. But given that I love Star Trek, the first two ALIEN films (the rest sucked) and ofcourse ROM, I can't help but be intrigued. Seems appropriate to update this posting with this piece from Russo's today given that William Shatner a.k.a Captain Kirk was actually just in space today.

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

 

 

Pick the ROM issue Spidey!

I asked the dude who posted this on twitter where this came from but he never responded so unfortunately I can't tell you if this is some sort of fan art or if it came out any publication.

So today I bought a brand new Marvel comic for first time in almost years. Marvel's treatment of the ROM spaceknight legacy has prompted me toward a personal boycott of new comics to say nothing of the cover prices these days. But I finally made an exception for this one shot issue of Magneto & The Mutant Force which has Sabra among the cast of characters. I'd say it's been around 3 years since she last made an appearance in any Marvel title so I had to check this out.

In this alternate reality there are no Avengers and Sabra is part of a mutant rebellion led by a paraplegic Magneto against the government which Squadron Supreme are agents of.  It would have been nice had there been a bit more of her in the issue but over all I thought it was ok. Been out of the loop for quite a while when it comes to all things going on in the published Marvel Universe so I'm sure there's some context to the story I'm missing here.

And here we have the latest commission piece from our pal Sal. Unfortunately I don't have any details about about who it was for or how much whoever paid for it which I think we all are curious about. I think this is the best commission form Sal in quite a while.

Totally awesome fan art by Dakota Alexander

 

 

After coming across this fan art on social media I reached out to the artist and had a nice chat with him. According to Dakota, ROM is a visaully fascinating and challenging character to draw and very symbolic of the 80s. Which as we all know is the greatest decade in human history. He wanted to give this piece a sci-fi movie poster feel bolstered with some Akin & Garvey style line art. I'd say it all came together quite nicely which is why it gets a spot on blog site for ROM fans who aren't dicks. Dakota's Instagram account @drumsoftheserpent

 

Also very cool, but unfortunately just a fake. But it looks pretty damn real though, wish I had one.

Here's something else cool I just found on farcebook. Unfortunately I don't know the original source material for this old promotional Marvel superheroes photo but I as you can see it's at Rockefeller Square in New York City.