Astonishing Tales 2009 One Shot starring Sabra part 3 of 3

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Well at this point the story pretty much speaks for it's self. Yeah that's a pretty nice perspective in that top panel like I said in part 1 of this blog posting series the art work in this issue is just absolutely amazing. I would love to see this artist pencil ROM, Hybrid, The Torpedo and the dire wraiths I know he would make them all look so awesome.

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And that city is Jerusalem, probably the most contested piece of real estate in the world. In the near future I should be doing some flying of my own to both Greece and Israel where hopefully I'll have a couple cool photo opportunity ideas that Bill Mantlo & Sal Buscema will get a kick out of. Ok one last thing . . .

Avengers 101 mighty facts

Here's something that I found in an Avengers special edition magazine by Wizard (1999) I picked up from a con in a dollar box a few weeks ago. I've been sitting on this because I wasn't sure if it was worth blogging about because quite frankly it's a bit ridiculous even within the fictitious comic book universe of ROM spaceknight. I've never read the original Avengers #10 but I'm pretty sure somebody came up with this concept long after that issue and indeed long after ROM #1 was published.

Astonishing Tales 2009 One Shot starring Sabra part 2 of 3

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So obviously if you were thinking of Samson & Delilah toward the end of the last posting you were right. Samson, who's great strength comes from his long hair is betrayed by Delilah who cuts his hair while he's sleeping. To further debilitate him he is also blinded and eventually put on display by being chained to the pillars of a temple. Thinking he is helpless his enemies party around him and mock him in the process but with his last bit of remaining strength he manages to pull down the pillars he is chained to quite literally crashing the party. Ofcourse this kills Samson but at least he takes his enemies with him.

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I also like the whole concept of Sabra being saved by the Israeli army as opposed to her being sprung by some other superheroes or something like that. It underscores the whole point of her story to Yael about how every body in the security apparatus (from the Israeli Defense Force to Mossad*) of the tiny country of Israel have each others back.

*Mossad, the Israeli secret service that Sabra operates under.

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Next up, the conclusion.

Astonishing Tales 2009 One Shot starring Sabra part 1 of 3

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Over the past few years there's been a handful of obscure random single issues I've been on the look out for. In recent months I've been able to get my hands on just about all of them from discount back issue boxes except for this one. Couldn't find it online either as far as hard copies go but a friend of mine who had a marvel.com account was able to hook me up with a digital copy so now at least I was able to read the entire story as opposed to just some of the random clip art found here and there all over the web. I really wanted to make this story available in a more complete format for any Sabra fans out there so I'm going to make this 3 part posting series.
First off, as you can see the art work is nothing short of amazing thanks to Brazilian artist Adriana Melo. But aside from that it's very interesting about who the writer is. Matt Yocum was actually a US Air Force liaison to the Israeli Air Force and has spent quite a bit of time in Israel over the years. And obviously he's also a writer and a big comic book fan. In a nut shell, the story takes place at a diplomatic function in Jerusalem in which Sabra runs into her old friend Ronit who in turns introduces Sabra to her daughter Yael. As an important side note in the story it turns out Sabra and Ronit's fathers served in the Israeli air force back in the day. Notice how in the flash back panel Sabra is featured in her original costume (but with her early 90s hair style)? As you can see from the clip art above Yael is having some anxieties about her impending military service for which Sabra proceeds to give her a pep talk of sorts.

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The story has some nice touches to it such as the Old Testament references that even non religious folks should be able to pick up easily as Sabra faces this Pacific Rim style Hydra robot.

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In the story of David and Goliath every body knows how the young King David brought down the Philistine warrior Goliath with his sling but David also decapitated him which may not be as commonly known. That's just what you did in those days after you take down a mother fucker.

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Sabra's disposition during her captivity with Hydra mirrors another Hebrew fable from the Old Testament although in Sabra's case things didn't end nearly as tragically but we'll get into that in part 2 of this blog posting mini-series.

Sabra by Dann Phillips!

http://dannphillips.deviantart.com/

Mozel Tov! Every body raise your glass Dann and I just had a baby. But in this case the "baby" came in the form of an upload yesterday on deviant art. Now the baby thing is because I had been pestering Dann for some untold months about doing something with Sabra. The thing is I can always draw something myself (previous post) if I really want to see it but every artist brings some different to a character or scene based on their style and imagination and some times it's just nice to see another artist's interpretation for a change. I hope you all enjoy this it certainly made my weekend.
Nothing new on the ROM front I hadn't really planned on any more postings in the foreseeable future and I'm trying not to think about the new series because I'm burnt out on it already. But since I posted this new Sabra fan art today to give it some more exposure I might as well pass along some other fan art to you. Speaking of strong female characters created by Bill Mantlo and Sal Buscema this is some of the best Starshine fan art out there although The Defenders cover concept doesn't make much sense to me but that aside this is pretty damn good . . .
http://michaeldooney.deviantart.com/art/Spaceknight-covers-595064323

And finally, here's a color version of that recent Acroyear vs ROM fan art piece which is over all really good although ROM's neutralizer still looks like shit. It really is the proverbial fly in the ointment as the saying goes . . .
http://mavspace.deviantart.com/art/Rom-Vs-Acroyer-591575790

March 14th update
Actually there's one more thing Ptor from The Sanctum Sanctorum gave me a heads up about a custom Torpedo that just recently sold on ebay. The seller also had this on deviant art where  he comes off as kind of an asshole but hey whatever.

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.

What an epic douche bag!

Ya know since my last posting aside from some updates to it I was really planning on taking something of a hiatus from blogging here in light of my all time low in terms of enthusiasm for the new IDW Rom series. Which took another hit by the way with the discovery last weekend of that Michael Golden cover variant featuring the "juiced up" Rom firing a ghostbusters gun. But that wouldn't be the last thing I would discover last weekend  that got on my nerves and this one demanded a strong response. There's actually two matters I want to address in this posting but let's start with this prick you see pictured here. Now what you're looking at below are some cropped pictures I took of a couple pages from a comic book price guide listing. You know how they have this kinda index listing style with a random featured titles here and there and a bit of an editorial blurb to go with it? When I first came across this price guide at a used book store I saw the ROM entry and I was like cool and gave it a read. Not so cool actually, once I realized the condescending tone to the ROM spaceknight series that the editorial blurb was written in.

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The most insulting part is when he compares the dire wraiths in the pages of The X-Men with Team America (yeah as in the motor cross bike comic series) in the pages of The New Mutants. He's basically saying that the ROM spaceknight series is lame on the level of the short lived Team America Marvel 80s comic book series. I mean is this guy one pretentious douche bag or what? Anyways, screw this idiot 40 Year Old Virgin sequel casting call and this garbage he wrote. But keeping things in perspective, I've gathered in print and online a ton of articles and editorial shorts on ROM over the years all of which have been overwhelmingly positive but with any loom of grapes there's always gonna be a rotten one in the bunch. As to the price guide I've been talking about...
http://bamcc-bam.blogspot.com/2011/04/comics-shop.html


  Every single ROM fan I know out there has been turned off in one way or another to some degree over what they saw in the preview pages of the zero issue. In essence we've been waiting for decades for something like this and just like every Star Wars movie that's come out since Jedi this new ROM series would not have been possible with out the enduring fandom. I feel like we deserve a book that suites our taste and not that of some millennials who were still in elementary school when 911 happened and thought the Star Wars pre-quels were pretty cool because they never saw the original trilogy.
  So I ask you my friends why the reluctance to express your concerns to IDW? Why? What's all this it's "too early to judge" or this "wait and see" approach? The zero issue doesn't come out till early May and the first issue not for another two months after that. If IDW were to respond with some changes for the better thanks to fan feed back wouldn't you want to see that sooner then later in the series? So why is it such a challenge for so many of you to be a little pro-active and simply drop them a line by saying something like "Hey I'm a long time ROM fan and was really excited when you guys released the cover art but not so much when I saw what ROM looked like on the inside". Hit "send" button now, done. Seriously, it's so easy even a cave man can do it, so what's stopping you?

SOLD

At first I was gonna update the previous posting to let any other would be interested parties know that the Onyx mini-series has been sold but then I decided to just replace the previous posting since a sale announcement posting serves no real entertainment or archival purpose. But to those of you who caught it as I said I would probably include some envelope art in the deal. Oh indeed it's such a better deal then what was being offered up at ebay and it happened with only the 2nd interested party here only the first inquirer  turned out to be a flake.

Nothing new to talk about or share here and I suspect their won't be until around FCBD. I've seen on twitter and facebook how people are just sucking up to IDW about the new series with the usual base compliments and "likes" it's like nobody dares post anything negative any where where Chris Ryall might see it. I know for a fact that most everybody is not happy with the new look for ROM rather you hate it or just think it needs some more work. I Also know many of you have been waiting for this for a long time so don't you owe it to your self to take a few minutes and let IDW know what's on your mind instead of just passively watching them  . . . do what it is they're doing like a deer in headlights? Well I certainly have, although I'm not holding my breath for IDW to ever print that letter.

letters@idwpublishing.com

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February 10th Update:  WRITING WORKS!!! I will have you all know that I just copied and pasted Joseph's comment with the facebook replies into an email and fired it off to IDW and got a pretty prompt response. Out of respect for confidentiality I won't make their response public but I can assure you all that IDW is aware of the public criticism of the new look for ROM but seem to be "bewildered" about it. The correspondence actually went on as I'm writing this update which is around 11 AM pacific time. They even refereed to the manga style armor of the Jim Starlin 2001 spaceknights mini-series as rationale for this new look for ROM. I even told em straight up just go with what you guys had on the cover and how we were all happy with that and the collective WTF through out the internet when we saw the inside pages. Folks, it's clear to me IDW just doesn't get it and we're going down the Star Wars pre-quel path here with George Lucas. At what point did it make good marketing sense in the field of creative arts to not listen to the fans? For fuck's sake if you care anything for The Greatest of the spaceknights and the legacy of Bill Mantlo & Sal Buscema's creation email IDW now! Or hit em up on twitter and farcebook, it may be all for nothing but ask your self . . . what would ROM do?

Rom on roids cover variant by Michael Golden

Update February 13th: Thank you to Brian W. for bringing this to my attention today (see today's comments). It's nice to see an old school ROM cover artist back at it again although to be honest this isn't some of the best work from him I've ever seen especially if you compare it to the ROM covers he did in the 80s. All of which I love ofcourse but may favorite I think is issue 18 with ROM and The X-Men fighting Hybrid. Notice how the armor design here is more a reflection of the zero issue art cover as opposed to the interior? Don't know if that's what Rom's neutrilizer is gonna look like even though we don't get a really good look at it here. I hope IDW doesn't foul that up to and come up with something radically different looking not to mention that cool looking straight line stream of crimson energy that the neutrilizer discharged. If you're in the mood to see a some old school Mantlo/Golden era fan art check out what I found today over at deviant art . . .
http://www.deviantart.com/art/Rom-VS-Acroyer-587533905

Update February 14th: Now that's more the kind of ROM I want to see. I lifted this image off of the latest Hasbro cinematic multiverse online chatter this morning. I'm not gonna get into all that but I just really like this illustration ROM looks so fucken slick not all "beefed up" and clumsy looking like that Michael Golden variant. Like I said before the minor but noticeable changes IDW had for him at first were fine with me but they just went way too far.