Always bet on black...Black Panther that is

   I'm going to give away one, just one spoiler because in some ways this was the coolest part of the film for me. The Black Panther opens up in Oakland California which is right here in The East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. Oh I can just imagine how audiences in theaters in Oakland must have reacted to that. And on a related side note the director of Black Panther (Ryan Coogler) was born in Oakland.
   So now that I got that out of the way how was the film? It wasn't great like Civil War but overall it was pretty good. We're treated to a lot of that Marvel cinematic universe humor we've become accustomed to along with the continued development of Chadwick Boseman's Black Panther which Civil War did such a great job of getting started. Also, a lot of good supporting characters that you actually get into fairly early on in the film. I liked how Black Panther featured so many strong black female characters with out it ever feeling like they were some kind of mandatory tokenism.

   Now all that being said it was kinda hard to see Michael B. Jordan (Killmonger) as a bad guy. I've had my eye on that actor for years now and he was superb in movies like Chronicle, Creed and Fruitvale Station. I'm so used to him playing a hero or some sort of sympathetic character as opposed to being a real dick of a villain but he certainly demonstrated his acting range here. Now make sure you keep your butt in your seat for the end credit scene even though it's a bit of a slog having to wait through the entire credits scroll. The end scene has the most significant Avengers tie-in moment and quite frankly the movie would have been incomplete with out it.
  Pretty sure trump isn't going to be in any rush to see this movie. Too many black folks in it, not to mention all those empowered female characters. But if he did manage to see it in between his FOX News binge watching schedule he would probably end up tweeting that Wakanda was just another shit hole country.

As I've said before, the vast majority of new ROM related fan art that turns up every month is amateurish looking crap as far as I'm concerned (especially when it comes to twitter) but once in a while something worth posting here comes along. Found this at some obscure site I'm not familiar with and unfortunately I couldn't find the artist so that I could accredit it accordingly. The biggest strengths of this piece are the way the dire wraiths are drawn and the over all colors they really pop. He or she did a fair job on ROM himself but making the neutrilizer bigger would have helped.

The Defenders 62 left click to enlarge

Here's a little random something from the tail end of the 70s which was basically the lead into the awesome 80s. This panel I believe is the only real moment of action with The Torpedo during the some what silly Defender For A Day story line.

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When I saw this I just had to post this here also this is pure political satire genius. Hopefully, you're someone who's watched The Rocky & Bullwinkle show and know the always conspiring russian characters Boris and Natashia. The Rocky & Bullwinkle show wasn't a Saturday morning cartoon like Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends or one of the ones that came on in the afternoon like The Transformers, G.I.Joe, Thundercats, Voltron, Robotech for example. I remember it being on early in the morning before school. If only the writers of The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show could see what was going on today with the russians.

And finally here we are with more of my photoshop trickery. I did this years ago but just posted it here for the Hell of it.

Just a couple of days I was at one of those dollar stores looking for some cheap snacks when I saw this little E.T. Lego set. The E.T. figurine in particular just gave me this on the spot rush of nostalgia. I loved this movie like so many other kids back then. And ya know what? I caught part of the movie on some channel a few months ago and I gotta say it doesn't hold up too bad even these days. I had a number of E.T. memorabilia items back in the day including a garbage can this is the only photo I have of it. Ofcourse you also see my old X-Wing ship and on the wall a mini Star Wars poster featuring The Millennium Falcon and some tie-fighters I wish I could remember where I got that from.

Holy shit is that Captain America in Hayward California!?

Highway 580 Hayward California

So all the stuff you see below this opening photo was stuff I was planning on posting along with a Black Panther movie review which I already have tickets to see on opening weekend. But when my buddy Sammy (fellow comic book/sci-fi fanboy) text this photo from earlier today while he was cruising down 580 I was like fuck it it's time for a new blog posting right now. According to Sammy this guy was really hauling ass but I betcha even a minor accident would have been a quick wake up call to this idiot that he's not a super soldier with an indestructible shield on his back. Among all the cities in the San Francisco metro area Hayward is certainly not one of the ones that you're likely to see some thing cool like this but once in a while you get lucky kinda like I did last fall when I saw the Batmobile at a down town vintage car show . . .
http://suicidesquadtaskforcex.blogspot.com/2017/09/black-power.html

Ya know it's funny, probably a third of the back issues I buy from discount boxes are of comics I had back in the 80s but some where along the way over the years lost or traded away. Sometimes I think it's worthwhile to pick something up again and give it a second look with a fresh pair of eyes.
One such issue is Avengers 253 which was kind of a cool issue aside from the ROM connection. In it, The Vision's conscience enters a number of global computer networks around the world in an ill conceived plan in order to take over the world and make it a better place. There's clearly some elements of TRON in that concept as well as the computer intelligence taking over the world narrative which have spawned a ton of sci-fi movies like The Forbin Project, The Terminator, I Robot or The Matrix.
For those of you who've read ROM 43 remember that The Living Computer Quasimodo had possessed ROM's armor but was driven out by the mind controlled Brandy Clark who was merged with the Starshine armor at the time. Now they never really explained after having been driven out what happened to Quasimodo his conscience represented as this ghost image just kinda disappears in the air and keep in mind all that shit happened at some kind of secret base in The Soviet Union (or call it Russia if you prefer but who gives a fuck same difference).

https://www.zipcomic.com/the-avengers-1963-issue-253

Back in the mid 80s when I first had this issue I completely missed this. Despite the absence of a foot note (dumb ass writing over site) it's pretty obvious Quasimodo is making a reference to ROM 43 which I was able to confirm on the Quasimodo entry page in The Ultimate Marvel Universe Handbook (issue 10 Vol. 2).

Avengers 252

Oh and look at this clip art from the previous Avengers issue. Even though it was written in 1985 talk about no truer words ever spoken in the current political climate of this country. Chris Evans has done such a great job with the Captain America role it makes me want to see him run in 2020. Pretty sure unlike trump, Chris Evens wouldn't get an endorsement from that racist and anti-Semitic piece of shit david duke.

In case you didn't happen to have seen this before. Oh my goodness how could you not love the 80s? Poly bag sets, spinner racks, comics at your local liquor store and 7-Eleven not to mention none of this $2.99 and $3.99 cover price bullshit.

Also pretty cool in case you didn't happen to have seen this before. Now I know what some of you might be thinking right something along the lines of "hey wait a minute those are dire wraiths from IDW and you had that ROM in name only reboot".

Yes that's true, however the dire wraiths from Marvel were shape shifters as well so if we stretch our imaginations a bit one might say this is the original ROM busting up and banishing these fools. Anyways, I found this on deviant art and the guy who staged this has a bunch of other cool toy scenes based on comic book clip art. Especially cool if you're an 80s Transformers fan . . . 

https://urbn1nja.deviantart.com/gallery/

Ok it's back to more Star Wars stuff. I recently recovered this old passport (long story don't ask) I had as a kid I totally forgot about it. It was valid from 1978 to 1983. I'm guessing I was around 8 or 9 when I did this Empire Strikes Back doodle and clearly at that age you don't understand that it's not legal to be drawing fan art on federal documents.

It may be 2018 but here it's always the totally awesome 1980s

Happy New Year from ROM's man cave (location unknown).

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January 2nd Update: Speaking of totally awesome 80s stuff let's get back to Star Wars when it was good. My rebel fleet has gotten a bit bigger today with the arrival of my hammerhead corvette in the mail from ebay. Now I'm ready to ram the nearest and preferably disabled star destroyer. I'm sure most of you remember that epic scene from what as far as I'm concerned now is the only good Star Wars movie made since 1983.

January 3rd Update: I wanted to throw something else unto this posting more on the comics end of the 80s as well. Marvel Team-Up 130 (1983) features some really fantastic classic Sal Buscema art. If you're wondering what's going on here The Vision's android body has been temporarily taken over by some villain named Necrodamus. Not to be confused with Dave Chapelle's Negrodamus mind you. The clip art I posted here is just a sample of the action packed dynamic pencils by Buscema as Spider-Man and Scarlet Witch trade blows with the possessed Vision until they finally figure out a way to drive Necrodamus out of Vision's body.

The Last Jedi Review and so much more cool shit

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First off I thought I'd open up this posting with some awesome kick ass recently discovered art work that spans the Star Wars continuity between Rogue 1 and The Empire Strikes Back. Been looking for an excuse to post this stuff here for a few weeks now. So with out any further adieu, on with the review.
Basically, I think whatever you felt about The Force Awakens is what you're going to feel about The Last Jedi. It was over all a mixed bag with some good moments in the spirit of the original trilogy although at times they seemed to be trying a bit too hard with that schtick. There was also some shit that was way too derivative of things we know from reality with everything from World War II B-52 bombers to Las Vegas. We never did get to find out who the fuck this Snoke guy is and then there was this one scene in particular on this planet where the rebels were making their last stand on that had to do with salt that went absolutely no where or other wise made any sense to what was going on. We also got our fair share of logic and plot gaps even within the realm of sci-fi fantasy and too much goddamn CGI effects as well I don't know why the fuck they keep doing that. And speaking of which, there was a Yoda ghost scene with Luke where Yoda's looks were a bit off. It bugged me, I was like come on can't you people at least make a ghost CGI Yoda look like how we remember him from the original trilogy!?
Some of the high lights included a couple of genuine surprises in the story line as well as finally getting a bit of back ground about what happened between Luke Skywalker and Kylo Ren. Poe Damron was something of a stand out in the story but Rey and Fin were just there and not much more. Chewbacca was also a bit under used but I did for the most part like the late Carrie Fisher's reprised Liea role although I'm still not too sure about her would be death scene. The Phasma character like in the last movie was a completely useless and worthless character again. They introduced a new Rebel character by the name of Rose who I didn't much care for and toward the end of the movie she does something that I thought was bullshit and made me wish she had died. Sorry folks, The Last Jedi was no ROGUE 1. That classic Star Wars magic just wasn't there.

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Early this year I posted a photo of myself from the summer of the year before knee deep in mud at the Dead Sea in Israel with a copy of ROM spaceknight 38 (Mantlo, Buscema, Akin & Garvey)
http://romspaceknightart.blogspot.com/2017/06/i-love-80sexcept-when-idw-reboots-it.html I ended up giving that copy to a friend of mine in Israel and he recently sent this cute photo of one of his kids with it. Reminds me of when I was that age sitting at the kitchen table and drawing with some open comic books nearby to help inspire my creativity.

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Was just feeling a little nostalgic one day where I had spare time on my hands and on a whim decided to color this panel. Actually this is more concept art then a panel per se. It has to do with a proposed 6 issue Marvel mini-series continuing the story line of the original ROM spaceknight run that Brian Douglas Ahern came up with some years ago. I read the script a while back and it had some aspects to it that I liked and others I wasn't too crazy about. As you can see among other things it features another Hybrid return, ROM back in his spaceknight armor and Danny Jones taking after his old man with the Torpedo suite.

Saw this on an ebay auction at the beginning this month and thought it wasn't bad. I think Spider-Man actually came out a little better then ROM did but still, over all not bad and at least this art work features some imagination.

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I recently went on a weekend trip to Pismo Beach and got these shots of my dog (Chevy) at this really cool seas side park. I loved em so much I just had to share. Now as you can see she's so cute but like a T-Rex or Velociraptor she's a little monster around any unattended food that she can get at. We were reminded of that when we accidentally left some pastries in the car while we were inside some place we stopped at for a few minutes. There you have it the world's first dinodog a Chevysaurus.

It's my dick in a box

I have a lot of new stuff to get through so let's get started. Yeah I know what's up with this posting title? Well I thought it was funny and extra points to you if you get the reference.  So it's not my dick in a box but it is something that I have of value that I did put into a box. Of all the collectibles I have, I felt like I should provide a special means of storage for my ROM Hasbro figure. First off I had to find a box that was just the right size. But I just couldn't have it be any old box so I had to customize it.

Now here's something I stumbled on while looking at some random ROM related stuff on the internet. No doubt you're wondering why I would bother to post an IDW cover to what has now become the IDW ROM series reboot fail.The some what "cartoony" style of this cover art is not quite my preference but in spite of that what I really like about this cover is that the ROM interpretation you see here is what I thought IDW was going for after we got our first look at the zero issue cover art. This is the updated kind of look I could have been into.

If you compare what you see above to the classic 80s ROM you will notice some minor design difference in the details of his armor. He's a bit more streamlined with an over all more "organic" look that feels some what less robotic. But at the same time, it's a tastefully done updated look that is still very much faithful to the original. Now I say that with the understanding that any version of ROM that does not exist in the Marvel Universe or has fingers instead of mittens would have just never gone over with some of the hard core fans but those particular things I could have gotten used to. We'll never know if this version you see of ROM here on this cover art would have resulted in a more successful reboot but I do know that I would have at least given it a chance. I will never understand what chris ryall and the rest of IDW were thinking with the shit they came up with.

I am not a Michael Bay fan and it's nothing short of a miracle that he was able to pull off a good movie with the first Transfomers film but every one since then has been shittier then the one before. So shitty that I don't even remember anything about the First Knight trailer or even it having been in theaters so I have no fucken idea about who or what this thing is from the movie. But I couldn't help but notice the uncanny resemblance it has to Ikon. Purely coincidental I'm sure. A character that I always felt had potential to do at least some justice to the ROM legacy with continued story lines involving Galador's spaceknights in the MCU but Marvel managed to eventually fuck that up to.

Fan art by John McCrea

This however is not fucked up. In fact it's pretty damn cool unlike most of the Rom related fan art I come across on the internet which is generally very amateurish and or lacks any imagination. Here we get to see a really nice visual concept of an encounter that sadly never happened.

One last thing, a quick round up of recent movies I've seen. Blade Runner was an all around let down but Thor Ragnarock turned out to be better then I expected despite the problems it had. Just saw The Justice League yesterday and despite the cautious optimism I had going into it I was pretty happy with it here's a short non-spoiler free review I wrote if you're interested . . .
http://suicidesquadtaskforcex.blogspot.com/2017/11/justice-league-short-review-with.html

Captain America vs nazi scum david duke

It seems appropriate to open this posting with this bad ass Sabra splash page (Patrick Zircher) from New Warriors 59 that I've been looking for an excuse to post for a few months now.

I gotta say I'm a bit embarrassed to admit I only recently learned about a twitter feud between Chris Evans and the piece of shit Jew hating trump supporting kkk nazi asshole david duke going all the way back to February of this year. Talk about missed by the mainstream media! I'm not gonna bother to post the actual tweets here because they're easy enough to find through a Google search but suffice it to say the feud started over duke expressing his disapproval of the sort of women Chris Evans has been known to date. Being the classy guy that he is, Evans responded to duke's white supremacy fueled ramblings with some heart felt and thoughtful rebukes as opposed to the more straight up ad hominem attacks I would have unloaded on duke.
Now that being said, I certainly hope the obvious irony here isn't lost on any of you. Captain America, who is a virtuous symbol of American idealism is a character that was created by a couple of Jewish guys. And as you all know he's been fighting his entire super hero career against every incarnation of nazi ideology from the 3rd Reich during WW II to Hydra and The Red Skull. So now you've got Chris Evans, who as a person seems to be almost as virtuous as the character of Captain America he plays. Who also happens to have had a series of heated twitter exchanges with a real life nazi based on their ideological differences. Chris Evans may only be a regular guy in the real world but he's no less of a hero then the Avenger he plays so very well.

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So let's close out this posting with another match up that's a little less ideologically charged. Hopefully most of you remember the classic ROM vs The Herculoids 4 page sketch story arc from Ron Joseph a couple years ago. Some other artist on deviant art did a fantastic job of coloring the last page. Hopefully we'll get to see the other pages in color in the not so distant future.

The original uncolored Ron Joseph pages....
https://www.deviantart.com/art/ROM-vs-THE-HERCULOIDS-inks-pg01-545293978
https://www.deviantart.com/art/ROM-vs-THE-HERCULOIDS-inks-pg02-547745355
https://www.deviantart.com/art/ROM-vs-THE-HERCULOIDS-pencils-pg03-544320568
https://www.deviantart.com/art/ROM-vs-THE-HERCULOIDS-pencils-pg04-05-544320573

I LOVE THE 80s...and the late 70s

I know I've said this before but I'll say it again anyways but where does all the time go!? Here it is November first already and you know damn well Christmas is gonna be here before you know it. The late 70s and the entire decade of the 80s was so awesome for so many reasons even though we didn't have the internet or smart phones back then. But there was so much other cool stuff not to mention the original ROM spaceknight series. And even though some of that stuff may be a bit dated here in the early 21st century it's still cool in a vintage kinda way if you know what I mean.
There's some cool things that came my way last month I felt like sharing. I was watching an episode of The Greatest American Hero on one of those retro TV show channels last weekend and it was an episode I don't remember seeing back in the day. I even at one point had the vinyl 45 record of the show's theme song (Joey Scarbury) which every body loved back then. Cheesy as it was by today's standards I still had fun watching it as William Katt takes on some neo-nazis conspiring to sink a U.S. naval vessel bound for Israel with an arms shipment. That plan didn't work out for them thanks to our hero so they went to plan B which was to see that donald trump get elected to the White House and after wards go for a walk in Charlottesville with tiki torches.

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Also, on something of a whim a couple of weeks ago I bought on ebay the Hotwheels version of KIT from the iconic 80s TV show Knight Rider starring The Hoff. Never hassle The Hoff.

There's an artist I've run into on more then one occasion at the San Jose Super Toy Comic and Collectibles show. I saw this awesome Godzilla vs Mothra piece at a September show but opted to buy it later on which was last week after I found out the artist lives in the same city as I do. There's a certain somebody I know who loves Godzilla that I think this will make a great holiday gift for. Although I think I should see about getting it framed.

Godzilla vs Mothra and ROM vs Dire Wraith art by Gazbot

Even though this is one of those idw fan art mock covers I still like it though since Gazbot went with the original ROM spaceknight. I also really like the classic dire wraith here, he did an especially good job on that part of this piece. Over all it makes me miss the original series again while at the same time driving home why the reboot sucks so bad. By the way I'm sure you all by now have heard that the upcoming issue 14 of idw's woefully disappointing ROM reboot series will be the last one. Not the last time we're going to see this ROM in name only character in the pages of idw comics. They're gonna milk that shit for all it's worth after all they need to get a return on their investment. Along with the specific contract details wouldn't you just love to know how much exactly it cost idw to acquire the rights to publish ROM (or at least their shitty version of him) from Hasbro?