Farewell 007

Roger Suave

So I'm just doing this spur of the moment posting on what is now mostly an in active blog site. Only heard the sad news about an hour ago about Roger Moore passing away at 89 from cancer. Right on the heels of Sound Garden's front man Chris Cornell no less but in his case his death was in some ways even more tragic given that he was only in his 50s. I figured I better throw something on the internet especially with all this russia/trump investigation and terror attack in Manchester drowning out all other news stories including this one. Again, what seemed to be one of those timeless celebrity icons from my child hood has left us. There's really not much of anything I can say that you don't know or haven't heard already if you know anything about Roger Moore's career so let me pivot a bit to some of the 007 toys I used to have when I was a kid.

Ya know I still see the 007 submarine car (Corgi) from time to time at comic and toy conventions, usually going for a pretty hefty price tag. Especially for the ones that are in better condition part of that being if the 007 logo sticker is still present and not too tattered and faded.

I also used to have both the large scale and smaller Moon Raker shuttle craft toys (also from Corgi). Both featured retractable landing gears and cargo bay doors that open. But the bigger shuttle also had a removable satellite which had extending solar panels where as the smaller shuttle just had a fixed molded piece in it but I loved both em just the same. I see the smaller shuttle once in a while at a con but have yet to come across the bigger one. I wonder if all these 007 toys will bump up in value now?

Left click to enlarge

Here, I'll add this to the posting even though you no commenting ingrates don't really deserve to see any new fan art. Found this on deviant art a few weeks ago and played around with it in photoshop just for fun I never had any intention of posting it. If you have a keen eye for detail you may catch the differences from the original http://www.deviantart.com/art/Marvel-Cosmic-for-Blastoff-Comics-WIP-467835104

I can't think of a good posting title for today

I neglected to mention that the fan art I posted last week as well as what you see above was passed along to me from Gary Martin Jr. so you can all thank him for that. Tell me this cool sketch piece here doesn't remind you of Bill Sienkiewicz's style. Or maybe Berni Wrightson from the early Swamp Thing days? It's by a fellow by the name of Shamus Murphy and after a closer look I think it's an interpretation of the first page of issue 1 in which Rom emerges from the impact point of his arrival.  
I suspect this one may have been around for a while now but just largely unknown. This one here has been around in variant versions in black n' white which I've posted here before but it just recently turned up as a color painting it's quite excellent from in terms of use of color and figure composition . . .
 http://www.deviantart.com/art/Rom-Spaceknight-432394852

Did you know that the Starhawk character was co-created by Sal Buscema? Which gives me reason to believe he may have had a lot to do with the character's design which I've always thought was one of the coolest in Marvel since seeing him in a copy of  issue 10 (vol.1) of The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe I had back in the day. His entry was penciled by Al Milgrom who also did the cover art for numerous issues of the Rom series.
In spite of all that I've always found Starhawk's origins a bit convoluted apparently like Firestorm he's actually two people. Also, I've never been a big fan of The Guardians of The Galaxy both in regards to the original and the current group (so sue me). Still though, cool character design and great rendering by Milgrom.

P.S. I just started another brutal work schedule like I had last month. It's gonna last the rest of this week and possibly for most of February so I may not have much time for this internet stuff for a little while.