The Greatest of the Spaceknigts unleashed

Well just for starters I'm revisiting my ROM Spaceknight 16 cover variant (or re-cover) which is 10 years old now. It's always been one of my favorite fan art efforts.

But I also have some brand new kick ass Marvel 80s extravaganza fan art to showcase today thanks to my fellow artist in Greece (see link below). Here we have something of a mutliverse team-up cross over with G.I.Joe's Snake-Eyes and a number of Marvel superheroes. Now there's so many different story concepts that could work for what's going on in this scene but clearly these guys are getting ready to face some unseen menace. A menace that could be anything from Cobra, the Dire Wraiths, another russian invasion or for all we now the insurrectionist MAGA nut jobs from January 6th in Washington D.C. 

https://www.deviantart.com/nikoskap/gallery

June 25th Update:  I gotta tell ya, thanks to Disney Plus I've learned to love the Star Wars franchise again. Rogue 1 was clearly just a flash in the pan in what has other wise been an utterly miserable series of cinematic disasters for nearly 20 years now. I ended up liking the Kenobi series way more then I thought I would and the last two episodes just really hit it out of the park. Ofcourse I loved the Mandalorian from the very start and despite some of the belly aching from the fan base I think there was far more about The Book of Boba Fett to like then to dislike. Last night I was looking at Mandalorian fan art on deviant art and got the idea for this sketch card. I believe this is my first ever ROM Star Wars cross over fan art effort. It's about damn time!

July 7th Update:  Just did this Uncanny X-Men 222 homage cover art Wraith War sketch card on the fly last night. Getting home from work at a reasonable hour does wonders for the imagination. This dire wraith is going to be in for some serious disappointment if it tries to tongue spike Wolverine's adamantium laced skull.

Not too long after I posted my new sketch card today I found out the sad news about James Caan passing away at 82. I sure wish the media would mention some of his other movies that I really liked such as Rollerball, Alien Nation and Eraser. I enjoyed the Alien Nation TV series as well along with at least the first made for TV spin off movie. I think actors Gary Graham and Eric Pierpoint did a pretty good job of reproducing the chemistry of Caan and Patinkin.

Some new unexpeted fan art

Off the topic of my head, aside from cleaner air and less traffic there isn't other wise any upside to this corona virus pandemic nightmare. Millions of people all over the world are either not working, working much less or now don't have much of anything to do on the weekends. So, we gotta fine something to do with all this new found spare time. Most of the art work posted was dome in collaboration with https://www.deviantart.com/nikoskap

This one with Bug was done just before all this covid 19 shit but it's pretty recent so I'm going to include it in this posting.

This Mego toy line based MICRONAUTS piece is something I did way back in the late 90s but I decided to post it online for the first time just because.

Also, I'm throwing in some fan art I did of random Marvel characters that I like (Thunderbird, She-Hulk and Blade) that I did in the late 90s....

And if you also happen to be a Star Trek fan I even have something for you to. This Deep Space 9 battle scene is a water color painting I did back in 2002.

I've been re-reading a lot of G.I.Joe back issues recently and although I certainly always liked the Joes (especially Snake-Eyes) it was always the villains that were the most entertaining and intriguing characters.

Speaking of all things G.I.Joe, I recently discovered a fantastic story line that involves Israel in issue 2 of G.I. Joe Special Missions (1986). The Joes are forced to make a deal with a nazi war criminal (doctor otto totenschadel) after a WW II German bomber loaded with a deadly nerve gas is discovered stuck in a glacier in Greenland. Unfortunately they come into conflict with a Mossda (Israel intelligence) that are hunting  totensdachadel.

We learn for the first time as far as I know that a team member of the Joes is Jewish. G.I.Jew Lance Steinberg code name Clutch.

Fortunately as it turns out The Joes manage to deal with the nerve gas with out any assistance from totensdachadel despite Cobra making a play for the nerve gas for their own insidious reasons. Meanwhile in the jungles of Brazil, The Joes and Mossad manage to work together and storm a neo-nazi compound where totensdachadel's sorry ass is using as a hide out.

In the end neither The Joes or Mossad take totensdachadel into custody but instead simply decide to divulge some rather inconvenient and self serving secrets totensdachadel had been keeping from his nazi buddies that proves to be quite fatal for him. A great story full of WW II history, politics and poetic justice.

Len Wein...and now Harry Dean Stanton

Bill Sienkiewicz

Ya know it's ironic that this tragic news about Len Wein's passing should come just over a week after I fished this issue of Comics Interview 32 out of a quarter box. Which as you may have guessed I grabbed because of The Swamp Thing article inside. Cheesy as the early 80s Wes Craven film was it seemed really cool to me at the time and it was actually my introduction to The Swamp Thing character. And then one day I saw an issue at a drug store some where and that would be the beginning of what was a pretty big Swamp Thing collection. I even had this Swamp Thing action figure at one point it was actually kinda cool it had this detachable hand with a line attached to it that pulls the hand like a fisherman's reel.
As for Wolverine, I was a fan long before it was hip to be a Wolverine fan in the 80s I collected every appearance I could find. Back then a Wolverine appearance in a non-X-Men title was always guaranteed to bump up it's value but I didn't care much about that I just wanted to read more Wolverine and seeing him interact with other Marvel super heroes from Captain America to Spider-Man and even ROM was beyond awesome. Ofcourse Wein's body of work went far beyond just co-creating Swamp Thing and Wolverine and I think it's nice to know all that will still be around for future generations to enjoy.

September 15th Update: So now we have it happen again this week. Another big name from our child hood as comic book and sci-fi fans has passed away. This time it was Harry Dean Stanton who died at 91. Stanton has had a long career on both the big screen and small spanning for decades. I knew him best as Brett from ALIEN and as Brain from Escape from New York. And don't forget about Stanton's brief appearance in the first Avengers film where he plays a security guard who finds Bruce Banner amid a mass of debris caused by him falling through the roof of an abandoned building while he was The Hulk.

Making ass kicking new fan art out of the older stuff plus LOGAN this weekend

For the past couple days I've been doing some experimenting in photoshop with combining elements of past fan art projects of mine to create new scenes. I got some pretty damn good results if I do say so myself the source material is all stuff I've posted here over the years but I'll provide you with links to my deviant art gallery for easier and quick references of the before mentioned source material ...
http://csuhsux.deviantart.com/art/Rom-spaceknight-Silver-Surfer-Nova-Quasar-368979222
http://csuhsux.deviantart.com/art/Spaceknights-over-San-Francisco-528693529

http://romspaceknightart.blogspot.com/2017/02/x-men-vs-dire-wraiths-tribute-art.html
http://csuhsux.deviantart.com/art/Rom-spaceknight-and-Onyx-team-up-sketch-art-550782374
http://csuhsux.deviantart.com/art/Rom-spaceknight-Beta-Ray-Bill-team-up-sketch-art-485359416
By the way deviant art just recently was purchased by Wix which is an online do it yourself web page building site perhaps you seen their TV commercials? As I understand it it's mostly used by business owners with no web skills to build professional looking websites for their business on the cheap. Turns out Wix is an Israeli based company which I had no idea about it always makes my day to learn more about the robust business dealings between America and Israel. I'm sure deviant art will be in good hands.

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March 12 update: No you're eyes aren't playing tricks on you if you've previously visited this posting I swapped out this photo image with the finalized product. Each side panel has a mirror opposite as far as the art work goes so effectively you're actually seeing the whole thing in this one photo.

March 4th update: So first of all I just wanted to say that if you thought this movie based on the trailers was gonna be anything like the other Wolverine solo movies then you're an idiot. It most certainly was not, and I mean that in the best possible way. This was a very serious and melancholy film that at times got down right depressing. Part of that had to do with it dealing with a lot of of serious social themes such as coming to terms with growing older and the emotional challenges of caring for the elderly. Things I think more of us are dealing with these days then care to admit.
   The movie had as expected a lot good action scene which I think were the way Wolverine fight scenes should have always been portrayed all along. You don't just see him swinging his claws at someone that just falls over I mean we're talking full on dismemberment Conan The Barbarian style. We also get a lot of good trash talk humor that's anything but campy especially with Charles Xavier dropping a few "F" bombs here and there which alone is almost worth the cost of admission. At times the feel of the film was much like Steven King's Firestarter (great 80s film) with the whole little girl with super powers on the run theme in which you knew it was just not going to end on a happy final note. There are those who would say that the story line is a bit slow paced at certain points and I think there's a case to be made for that but this was a really strong character driven movie. Characters with a lot of history that we all love who are going through a crisis unlike any we've ever seen with them before you can't make that feel rushed it needed to be handled right.
   Finally, everybody in the film was great with especially powerful performances from Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart with Dafni Keen and Boyd Halbrook also handling their roles quite well. Although not the more high society sophisticated James Bond type villain as we know him from the comics I also liked how they handled the Donald Pierce character (Halbrook). He was more of a wise cracking down and dirty mercenary type but it worked pretty good for the story. Are there things I could nit pick at in the movie? Yeah sure, but nothing that serious that takes much away from what the movie has going for it. The end was kinda predictable but still managed to be fairly suspenseful and in the case of Logan himself rather ironic. If you want to discus the movie in any more detail go ahead and leave a comment, remember when you guys used to leave comments?

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April 11th Update: This fantastic comment was found under a recent Bleeding Cool article about some law suit that is or was going on between Marvel Comics and idw publishing over the legal rights for usage of the term Dire Wraiths. Personally I could give a rat's ass about the law suit since marvel hasn't done anything with the Wraiths in years that was worth a shit and don't even get me going again on idw's shitty ROM reboot.

Customizing your comic collection box lid

For many many years my dad used to work in data processing going all the way back to the tail end of the 70s. He used to bring home "computer paper" boxes like the one you see here for storage purposes and one day some where in the mid 80s I think I started using them for my growing comic collection at the time. At one point I had about 7 of these boxes filled with comics but I've down sized over the years to now only 3. In the past I've decorated my comic boxes with pasted on clip art from beat up issues that were worthless but had cool and corresponding art with whatever collection I had in that box.
So right now I have a ROM spaceknight box, a Suicide Squad box and one other newly acquired box re-purposed (I like that word) for my miscellaneous issues that didn't contain any art work on it. But it does now, although not with published clip art. Instead I wanted to personalize it a bit more by using color copies of my own fan art featuring ROM with other Marvel characters. Maybe some day I'll get around to also covering the sides of the lid and perhaps the whole box to but this will do for now.

A couple weekends ago I picked up this People magazine special on Carrie Fisher. It was really interesting especially in regards to a lot of crazy shit going on behind the scenes during the shooting of the original STAR WARS trilogy including and affair with Harrison Ford and even Fisher doing coke in between shoots. I also really liked some of the vintage photos of Fisher and felt like posting them for other fans who might not know about this issue of People.

Some undiscovered clip art from Universe X

Just can't seem to stay away from this blogging shit for long for one reason or another. This morning I was browsing on the internet as I frequently do for anything interesting or other wise cool that's ROM related both new and old. That's how I found this clip art of Captain America with ROM's neutralizer. Now I happen to have Universe X #3 and based on some other clip art on the internet from the series as well as clip art that was sent to me by Gary Martin Jr. (who I haven't heard from in over a fu&%$@ month now) some years ago I know that Captain America was featured in action with ROM's neutralizer in later issues. But this is the first time I've seen this clip art I actually couldn't get to the page it was on which belonged to some marvel comics site that you had to login to. But fortunately the Google preview image was pretty big so here we are.
For Valentine's Day my wife got me this really nice set of Supracolor Soft coloring pencils. They're so smooth the way they lay down color on paper even though I'm not feeling especially creative these days I should give them a proper "test drive". So maybe within the next couple weeks I might be able to update this posting with some new fan art.

Feb. 25th Update:
Indeed you are correct Joseph (see today's comments) the clip art above as well more clip art of alternate reality Captain America blasting away with ROM's neutralizer is located in Universe X #4. But there's more, issues 10 and 11 and even a 0 and "X" issue will also give us more dire wraiths along with a ROM flash back cameo to issue #3. Plus we also find out in a editorial mention that the Universe X Galador was consumed by Galactus as opposed to ROM having tricked Galactus into trying to consume Wraith World instead as we know it. So for all of you clamoring to get a copy of Universe X #3 it looks like you'll need to dig a little deeper into your pockets get at least 4 more issues to have the full story on the ROM and dire wraith related tidbits of Universe X. A little curating birdie gave me the low down earlier this morning but more on that later. By the way I'm still intent on giving my new coloring pencil set a try with some new fan art very soon.

Feb. 28th Update: And here it is, the finished product.This isn't one of those fan art pieces I didn't thoroughly think through while doing the sketch. It just started with ROM and then I just kept adding characters with the right color scheme to their costumes I wanted to try out my new coloring pencil set on. Obviously I already had Captain America on my mind and who doesn't like Wolverine? Although with Sabra I added her because I'd been hoping to see some new fan art of her turn up some where for a while now but some times if you want to see something get done you just gotta do it yourself.

Walnut Creek California

Ya know with all this Captain America and Sabra talk I just feel like adding this photo of a billboard that just showed up here in the San Francisco Bay Area last week.

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March 3rd Update: And getting back to more ROM spaceknight and Sabra themed fan art check out this Official Marvel Universe Handbook #9 front and back cover spread redux I just happened to come across tonight. You can see the full view here . . .
http://superadaptoid.deviantart.com/art/Marvel-Universe-Old-School-118212599

P.S. As far as all this new stuff I've updated this posting with in the past week don't everybody speak up all at once now.

New fan art, new curating and a look inside the ROM zero issue

 

Last weekend was one of those weekends where I got to chill the whole time and as a result was able to get some cool stuff done in the way of fan art and curating. Although I hate most of what marvel has come up with in recent years I always felt like the Ikon character had promise even though she was no ROM. In fact, the last time I had any hope for marvel to finally do a modicum of justice to the legacy of the greatest of the spaceknights was when we were treated to a panel in the pages of The Avengers of Ikon leading a squad of classic spaceknights to face some mysterious enemy looming over Galador. Anyways, even today I still think ROM returning and having Ikon at his side would have been pretty cool.

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Picked up this book at the library last weekend. I've seen it before but last weekend I decided to to give it a closer look to see if we might find ROM anywhere in the Marvel Comics The Untold Story. Needles to say I found the following passage rather interesting although it's hard to say how credible that claim is but I certainly hope it's true. There are two other passing references made to ROM later in the book in regards to Nova losing his powers and Secret Wars II tie-ins.

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As you can see I even did some other fan art of a satirical nature this past weekend.

ROM 2016

Alright so let's get to what you folks really want to talk about here today because everything on this posting was pretty much done by the end of this weekend. First off a big thanks to Lee Seitz for bringing this to my attention yesterday. If you haven't checked out the first few pages of the ROM zero issue for FCBD then do so now at the link below before you read on. I like how ROM makes planet fall at Pismo Beach California I was just there as part of a road trip with my wife on New Years weekend. So on another high note the art work looks great it's nothing at all like steve ditko thank god. Although I would have to say I found ROM's new design a bit jarring.
Now I don't say that because I think his new armor design sucks per se, but more because the cover art certainly didn't leave me with the impression ROM's new armor design would deviate that much from the original as seen in this clip art. It's kinda odd that a company would spend 10 years fighting through legal red tape to obtain the rights to a character and then make such drastic changes to their appearance. In fact, ROM some what resembles the watch wraith androids he used to fight in the original series. Just not sure it's the right look for him or maybe it's just a matter of getting used to it? I guess only time will tell. This has been a pretty labor intensive posting with all this art work, curating, writing and what not so this will most likely be my last one for quite a while. But I'm looking to hear from you people I want to know what's on your teeny tiny little minds about all this stuff I'm throwing at you in this posting . . . don't let me down . . .
http://www.previewsworld.com/catalogimages/STK_IMAGES_PDF/STK680001-700000/STK698017.pdf

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And a big thanks to our first commentator today for bringing some of the Micronauts cover art from IDW to my attention. This is pretty damn nice! Assuming the cover art we see here is an accurate reflection of what these characters will look like on the inside well then I gotta be honest I'm feeling a bit more optimistic here then I am about ROM. Baron Karza looks exactly the same as he did in Marvel and they gave Acroyear an updated look that's really slick but it's still in keeping with how he also looked in Marvel and also a bit like the original Mego toy.

Art by marvel and WTF Publishing

Jan. 25 Update: Two things occurred to me over the weekend. One is, that it seems like people are really squeamish about being forth coming about our first real look at ROM 2016. The second is how IDW's ROM looks more like the horrific manga inspired "spaceknights" of the 2001 mini-series then the Mantlo/Buscema series. I've always prided this blog on posting the sort of content you won't find anywhere else so here goes. I know most of you all are thinking this but I'm gonna just say it straight up, this new look for ROM sucks. After all the hype, fan support, lifting of the red tape and anticipation this is what we end up with? Well, I guess if it could happen with George Lucas then why not with Chris Ryall and Christos Gage as well?

Epic battle between Doctor Strange & Dire Wraith witches. All that and more!

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I was gonna post this Aug. 1st but screw it I feel like posting this today. This is digital art composed of found images starting with this amazing rendering of Dr. Strange by Gabriele Dell'Otto. I just thought it would be cool to have him go up against some Dire Wraiths since he was one of ROM's best allies among Earth's heroes during the Rom spaceknight series. The Dire Wraith images were picked up from Annihilators #3 (Alex Garner) and Marvel Age magazine #23 (Bill Sienkiewicz).

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 Here we have ROM along with some of the most popular Marvel characters ever. Unfortunately, of those heroes featured only Wolverine had ever had an encounter with Rom. This one was done by Gary Martin "a Rom curator" who as you can see went balls out on digitally coloring it. Nice job Gary, I happen to know a little bit about digital coloring myself : )

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  And here we have yet another from Gary. No color on this one as you can see but the scene it sets up is among one of the most imaginative I've ever seen when it comes to ROM fan art.

 Last but not least we've got one from artist Jay Potts. This one was one of those random finds on the internet. As you can see Jay took some creative liberties with ROM's armor but it looks pretty cool as an alternative concept. Plus, from a figure drawing stand point this piece is solid I love the pose he is in.