Damn, What a difference some color makes for this ROM & Starshine fan art!

Pencil and inks by Jeff Slemons & colors by  Ian Sokoliswki 

The posting title pretty much says it all but in case you might want to see the uncolored version go here . . .
http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=971922&GSub=156008

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Update 7/07: We've also got a new custom spaceknight figure that turned up from Chris yesterday. With the addition of Seeker Chris now has made every final member of the Spaceknight Squadron among other spaceknights and characters from the Rom series. I believe most of those figures have been sold off but you can still view them in his deviant art gallery
http://custom777.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=0

A portrait of Bill and friends

I found this really nice illustration of Bill while doing some random browsing on the net. It apparently was in the back pages of a Howard The Duck magazine from 1980. I then started to experiment a bit with various selected images from the fan art based on Bill's work I've done over the past couple of years and I think it turned out alright.
Update: And speaking of fan art of all sorts here's some stuff that's appeared recently that's worth taking a look at:
http://sh4d0vvkn1ght.deviantart.com/art/Rom-The-Greatest-Spaceknight-462666478
http://www.deviantart.com/art/Marvel-In-The-70s-Selfie-456455254
http://wrathcomics.tumblr.com/post/86617127750/starshine-sketch

This one turned up just a couple days after I published this posting you guys are gonna want to see this http://dannphillips.deviantart.com/art/ROM-takes-on-EVERYONE-463615019

The 80s Easter egg I totally forgot about!

Rom spaceknight #5 (Space Notes page) 

For those of you who have been reading Marvel Comics since the early 80s ask your self how many times you've seen this little editorial cartoon by Al Milgrom? I know I have! Although I'm pretty sure it's been years since I last saw it and I certainly didn't make the whole Bill Mantlo/Rom - Micronauts Easter egg connection at the time and until it just turned up on farcebook earlier today I had totally forgotten about all together. According to Michael Mantlo, "this pretty much sums up bill's reputation at marvel in the late 1970's"

Also, here's something I bet many of you haven't seen yet despite me having posted on this blog before. It's a fun little slide show check it out when you have a few minutes.
http://www.slideshare.net/romspaceknight/etter-about-rom-spaceknight-sento-to-hasbro-marvel-and-disney

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sketch card

For those of you who saw my note here earlier I want to let you know that this new fan art from Dann Phillips I'm posting here today (June 17th) is not what I was anticipating. It's just coincidental that it turned up recently but who cares I'm just happy to post some sweet ass fan art whenever I get the chance. But with any luck I'll have even more to add here from some one else in what I hope will be within the next 48 hours (hint hint).

The Rom and Crystar team up that sadly never happened

No, this isn't the fan art I've been anticipating getting for the past couple of days either we're still waiting for that. I just whipped this up this very morning for a good friend I haven't seen in a while until recently. It's probably no much bigger then that ROM sketch card by Phillips.

The hunt for related ROM artifacts, a team effort

Just as Moses was given the responsibility of bringing the ten commandments to the world so have The Gods of Galador given Gary Martin Jr. the awesome responsibility of curating all Rom related published references most of which you've seen at this blog over the years. So here's a nice little back story I'd like to share with you all since it is rare that I find anything that Gary doesn't have or at least know about already.
I came across this boxed Hawkeye doll at the Big WOW Fest I was at recently. I gave Gary a heads up about it and the vendor's contact information because the packaging has the cover art of West Coast Avengers #1. As it turned out Gary didn't know about this and so given the Rom head shot among all the other floating heads of Marvel superheroes it has since then become part of ($20 later) his Hall of Science along with all the other curated Rom related collectibles he has. Now on the flip side here's something Gary shared with me which I didn't know about which is usually how our networking situation goes . . . .

Starlog Magazine #96 July 1985

You all remember Starlog Magazine right? It was the premier monthly publication on all things sci-fi and action adventure with a primary focus on movies and television. But the magazine did cover sci-fi and action adventure in other media as well. It ran from 1976 till 2009 with a grand total of 375 issues!
Our ever vigilant curator Gary Martin Jr. spotted this little Rom reference here along with other 80s Marvel titles that Bill Mantlo wrote and some he didn't. On a side note here, issue #24 of Starlog (also curated by Gary) features the Parker Brothers Rom doll among other electronic toys of the late 70s that were cutting edge technology at the time.

Sorry folks, no new Rom related fan art to feature this time around there just hasn't been anything out there for a while that's caught my eye. But on a high note for myself I did find some Sabra appearance titles on the cheap from this comic shop I visited for the first time today. Those issues were # 1 and 2 of the Union Jack mini-series and X-Men #69 and 72 (1997).

Union Jack #1 (2006)

X-Men #69 (1997)

So what ultimately is the Sabra character all about? It's simple, don't fuck with the Jews. The entire Union Jack mini-series can be found here in a nice readable online format . . .
http://www.mixedmartialarts.com/thread/2266003/Union-Jack--London-Falling-2006-GagePerkins/?page=1

I've got a quick Monday update here. I just found something interesting in the way of some newly discovered fan art. It's a bit unusual but well worth a look, opinions?
http://julepe.deviantart.com/art/ROM-OF-GALADOR-459448272

DAMN! That looks good in color!

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A little while ago I came across this awesome coloring job for this Sal Buscema HULK vs THOR line art
http://www.deviantart.com/art/Hulk-Vs-Thor-By-Sal-Buscema-327576237 So of course I left my compliments and gave the artist a heads up about the recent commission piece that Sal Buscema did earlier this year (my April 4th posting) and suggested it would make for a great coloring job project. As you can see our friend here (who's from Portugal) turned out another fantastic piece so let's here it for this labor of love as someone who has done a lot of coloring work this was a pretty time consuming effort.

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Here's something cool I found that looked like it might have been intended as some sort of cover concept. Unfortunately I don't know who the artist is but seeing this makes me really wish there had been a Sabra mini-series or at least some sort of one shot special. I dunno maybe one of these days I'll do something with this when I have some time. Sabra was created by Bill Mantlo, Sal Buscema and Belinda Glass.


X-MEN Days of Future Past: Just wanted to share with you all that I saw the movie last night. I thought it was pretty good and arguably the best film of a franchise that never quite reached a level that could be described as great. Yeah there were some logic gaps, some discontinuities and even a running time that was a bit too long. But all that aside it was still a well thought out story line complimented with some fantastic acting and plenty of homages to 60s / 70s American pop culture. In a lot of ways Quicksilver is the sleeper high light of the movie I wish we could have seen more of him then we did.

Other cool stuff from my Memorial Day weekend included some temporary exhibits at The Oakland Museum of California that I checked out. The first one was on the history of the San Diego/International Comic Con (since 1970!) in which I learned that the Comic Con has become the biggest event The San Diego Convention Center holds every year and as you may have guessed it generates far more revenue for the local economy then any other annual event in the San Diego area.
http://museumca.org/exhibit/sunshine-and-superheroes-san-diego-comic-con
Also at the Oakland Museum was the Art and Giant Robot exhibit which featured among other things this awesome display of the classic giant size Shogun Warriors. It's really cool to see how over the years all this one time obscure comic book/sci-fi nerd stuff become so mainstream.

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BIG WOW Comic Festival San Jose CA. Mike Zeck

On the Marvel end of this weekend's con in San Jose I'm hoping to get a chance to have a few words with Mike Zeck. I've often cited Zeck as being one of the best comic book artists ever seen and certainly among the very best of the Marvel 80s. His body of work among other great stuff included some awesome penciling at the tale on of the 70s on Shang Chi Master of Kung Fu and later with The Punisher, Web of Spiderman and of course Secret Wars. And who can forget that iconic Captain America annual cover by Zeck with Wolverine slashing at Cap's shield with all those sparks n shit!?
There's at least 3 issues of ROM that Zeck did the cover art for so I'm pretty grateful for that even though I would have loved to have seen him having done at least one issue in the series as far as the interior art goes. Needles to say when you think about Secret Wars you can just imagine how awesome Rom#65 could have been had Zeck been the penciler instead of  . . well you know who.

Cover art by Mike Zeck

Like last year Michael Golden will be there again and as you all know he was another powerhouse Marvel 80s artist who did the cover art for at least 9 Rom issues I believe but never the interior art unfortunately. Didn't get a chance to talk to him he got irritated with me when I pointed my camera in his direction he doesn't like that unless you specifically ask him first. But for me the high light of last year's Big Wow Con was meeting Bill Sienkiewicz who also did the cover art for at least 9 issues and even some interior fill in pencils for a couple of them
http://romspaceknightart.blogspot.com/2013/05/big-wow-comic-con-san-jose-ca-2013.html

Speaking of those Rom covers that Sienkiewicz did, one of them was Rom annual 3 but the pencils were done by someone named WM Johnson. Who is this guy!? His work on that issue was fantastic but I've never heard of him before and internet searches haven't given me squat. Talk about another artist who could have done justice to the series had he stepped in for Sal.

ROM issue # 1 signed by our pal Sal and some mind blowing sketch art!

Gary Martin Jr. gave me a heads up on this at the CGC Collector's Society website. It came with the following caption, "Sal Buscema signature and head sketch on cover - very difficult to get and only one in the census".

Proper proportions, perspective the interplay between light and shadow, foreshortening and other principles in good figure composition is a tireless craft you have to be honing all the time if you want to be able to do it well. And let's not even get into the art of drawing hands, feet and facial expressions. Practice practice practice it's what all artists have to do for years in the slim hope that a few of them will be able to make a living at it some day. A big thanks to Jack Crowder for bringing this sketch (deviant art) to my attention.

And a big thanks to Rick Hansen for sending us this commission sketch from the recent C2E2 con. This is what I always imagined a dire wraith would look like if illustrated by greats like Berni Wrightson, Gene Colan and Mike Ploog.

And for a bit more of a finished piece here's the latest from Dann Phillips talk about the fight that should have but never happened back in the day. As irony would have it just prior to Dann giving me a heads up about this I had been telling him how I had this fan art idea of a Baron Karza vs Hybrid piece I really like the idea of the Micronaut's arch enemy having a throw down with what could arguably be Rom's. Too bad Sal Buscema never penciled at least one Micronauts issue.

Oh and look what else just turned up, an extended ROM vs Firefall CG video fight scene  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVX-DIBAgdo

One last thing folks, it looks like my farcebook account got suspended for good this time. Oh well I kinda saw it coming : ) You can always email me for those of you who have my email address or find me here as usual.