#ROM Spaceknight

[thebestcomicbookpanels]

ROM Spaceknight by Ed Hannigan from The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe #9

[themarvelproject]

Marvel house ad for ROM: Spaceknight #65 featuring the ultimate battle in the Wraith War (1984)

[therobotmonster]

The Dire Wraith, Marvel's Perfect Monster

It's no secret I love ROM: Spaceknight.

I've been relatively cool on latter reboots, largely because the things they change to dodge the IP holdings of Parker Bros/Hasbro or Marvel (respectively), always lose something essential.

The largest problem is that the dire wraiths are incomparable villains, and Marvel invented all their meaningful lore. And what lore it is.

The Dire Wraiths are alien demons, creatures that come from a world orbiting a black star in the center of the Dark Nebula. They distill the paranoia of cold war pod-people infiltrators and the demon-loving satanism scare villains of the 70s (and 80s... and 90s... and...) into a single, diabolical package.

Well, two packages, actually-

The wraiths are revealed to be a highly sexually dimorphic species, both in form and social role. Male wraiths were the bulk of who we had dealt with before. They used science and stealth to their advantage.

Their base form was always a placeholder for when Parker Brothers eventually made a Dire Wraith toy for ROM to fight. They never did, so Marvel got to come up with their own finalized design.

And like comic artists are wont to do, they wanted ladies to draw. Look, the artists couldn't resist disrobing them in their first full on-page appearance. Typical.

The Dire Wraith women had been hidden in spooky robes the whole time, so this made it easy. A gender-based murderous uprising later, and we've got our new wraith phenotype.

Now that's a monster! Not some vaguely humanoid, vaguely froglike pale imp, but a starborn demon in the flesh. Froglike hands and feet with melty, loose wax-like flesh pooling about them, more adept at prowling on all fours like a predatory beast than walking like a human being, long whiplike tail, and the face! A lobster-like maw with a lengthy barbed tongue.

A barbed tongue that drips acid.

Before the ladies showed up, it wasn't explained what happened to humans the wraiths replaced. They'd get snatched, there's a replacement, you're pretty sure they're dead.

Now the truth is revealed. The tongue is used to pierce the victim's skull, allowing the wraith to devour their brain and absorb their memories and personality, reducing the whole body to foul ash.

Mind you, they don't have to do this. They can shapeshift all they want on their own. Its questionable if the males even had these barbs, and they may have been doing it like their skrull ancestors.

Yeah, the wraiths are an offshoot of the skrulls... in the same way a cenobite is an offshoot of humanity.

It's the feeding/replacing process that really makes the Dire Wraiths shine as bad guys. They take your life and everything that came with it, your memories, your shape, your identity. But it isn't some infection that changes you into one of them. There's no transition to stop, no 'real you' to reach. It's not a possession you can shake off or have exorcised.

You're dead, and some thing from space is wearing your face, doing unspeakable horror in your name, using your knowledge to do it.

And their motivation is pure malice.

The dire wraiths seek to conquer not just to acquire territory, but because they loathe other forms of life. The science wraiths were merely genocidal and ruthless, moving in secret were possible.

The sorcery wraiths embrace sadism and intimidation as primary weapons, and they love their work.

A science wraith plot is "bind a human bigot to the armor (read: corpse) of a fallen spaceknight so he can kill Rom for us and we can get back to infiltrating the world governments and SHIELD."

A sorcery wraith plot is "torture kidnapped people to death in a sewer so their blood can be infused with a ritual curse, then add that blood to the transfusion supply so demons can hatch out of the most vulnerable in the places where all the medical resources are so we can spread terror, make people afraid to seek medical attention, and kill as many doctors and nurses as possible to make reacting to our other plots more difficult."

Now, some people may say that a group of villains that are literally pure evil are boring. Sometimes this is true. But the wraiths have a couple of advantages.

The first is they're written as having an intense need to be clever. They like their enemies off-balance and afraid, so straightforward villainy is off the table. They have to show off to their fellows by being not just brutal, but diabolical.

The second is the chain of command. Moral ambiguity is for all the various dupes that wraiths set in the Spaceknights' way and individual villains looking to cause trouble, whether its the wraiths pitting the police, SHIELD, or the Jack of Hearts against Rom, the Mad Thinker looking to get a chunk of his tech, the Mole Man mucking things up, or Hybrid setting the X-Men (and later brotherhood) on Rom while plotting a mind controlled harem of X-Waifus...

The wraiths get to subsist on an unrelenting delight in the suffering of all other creatures.

And on the subject of attracting third party attention, Some of that's on the Spaceknights themselves. Because their weapons that send the Wraiths to limbo: Rom's Neutralizer, Starshine's eye-beams, Karas's living fire? The knights see the wraiths revert and get banished.

Outside observers see a metal man disintegrating their neighbors on the street. Even in defeat the Wraiths cause suffering and sow distrust.

A World that is Hell Orbiting a Star that is the Devil

But as witches, the wraiths need their devil to serve and draw power from. And that power is their home solar system: Wraithworld and the Black Sun it orbits.

Both are living things, lovecraftian horrors with will and desires of the most malevolent sort. The black sun radiates dark sorcery and vile mystical energies to sustain Wraithworld and the rest of the dark nebula, and is actually a hole to a reality that is anathema to life as we know it.

Wraithworld is hostile to all life that isn't dire wraiths, and will adjust itself to be hostile to anything that can survive it, up to and including Galactus. The big guy tried to eat both, and was soundly rebuked to the point he fled in fear for his life.

The star's entire surface is covered by an inky blackness that it turns out is hordes of deathwings, living shadow-demons that are among the most potent weapons in the wraith arsenal.

Compared to most of the marvel universe, they're more demonic than most demons, more alien than most aliens, and more horrifying than the vast majority of the monsters. The only other contenders in my book are the Warwolves (who execute a similar shtick in a more surreal and undignified fashion) and maybe the Brood on body-horror merits if they weren't overplayed.

In the end, Wraithworld may have been banished to limbo, but only a more powerful demon could keep the wraiths out of the spotlight permanently.

That demon is, of course, intellectual property.

[heckcareoxytwit]

The wedding misadventures of Rick Jones and Marlo Chandler

As the wedding is about to begin, Hulk and Captain America are helping a very nervous Rick Jones into his tuxedo. While in another room, Marlo is being helped into her dress by Betty Ross and some other women. As she looks into the mirror, Marlo is frightened by the brief appearance of Mephisto reflected back at her. Before the ceremony, there were some surprising appearances such as Northstar who happens to be dating Hector (Hulk's friend from the Pantheon) as well as Rahne Sinclair, Guido Carosella and the unmasked version of ROM Space Knight.

As the wedding ceremony begins, the priest who looks like Peter David reads the book to the bride and groom when they are interrupted by the arrival of Drax the Destroyer. Everyone is surprised when Drax presents an invitation, even though he wasn't mailed one. Nonetheless, they have Drax sit next to Adam Warlock. Next, the wedding is interrupted by the supervillains - Wizard, Absorbing Man, Mister Hyde and the Living Laser. However, they have not come not as wedding crashers, but as attendees, as they too have invitations. In reality, the invitations got mixed up so they were given to the wrong people. The Hulk is about to start a fight with them anyway, however, Doc Samson convinces him to stand down. Rick Jones then agrees to allow the villains to stay for the ceremony. Things get even worse when Kree and Skrull ships arrive with more attendees. The special occasion does little to soften the relations between the two races. When one of the Kree tries to start a fight with Talos the Tamed, the Silver Surfer steps in to prevent the situation from escalating further.

Just before the ceremony is over, it is interrupted by a final surprise guest, Mephisto, who has come to claim Marlo's soul. However, he faces opposition from both the Silver Surfer and the Hulk. The Hulk resolves to handle the situation himself, and seeing a bright light in the sky, he admits his belief in the possibility of a higher power. This apparently gives the Hulk the strength to beat Mephisto back, forcing him into retreat. However, Mephisto gloats how this "defeat" is part of a much larger scheme to damn the Hulk. The wedding is quickly completed and Rick and Marlo are made man and wife. During the reception, Marlo is congratulated by the various guests including the surprising appearance of Death of the Endless, who has come to give Marlo a gift. Once Marlo accepts it, Death quickly leaves. Marlo isn't sure who the woman was, but she and Rick open the box and find a beautiful hairbrush inside.

Incredible Hulk #418, 1994

[deepdreamnights]

Spaceknights:

Skera the Scanner and Vola the Trapper

Scanner and Trapper got the closest to my Tokusatsu-Spaceknight dreams in relation to my Live-Action ROM Spaceknight video project.

All the SpaceKnights are at least a bit toyetic, and you can see Marvel trying to throw Parker Bros a bone that they never snatched with everyone from Firefall onward. Scanner and Trapper are two of my favorites.

Full tutorializing under the fold.

Overpainting was the most effective way to get the designs to where I wanted them, and this is going to be the main breakdown of that (later posts about other knights will likely focus on other aspects).

I used Midjourney's edit feature to do this. The first step is getting the image high-enough res to work with. MJ's edit feature can be used as a very effective image upscaler, and that's the first step.

It's also useful for removing word balloons and other obstructions that the AI will later misinterpret and getting a view of an entire character if parts are cropped off. You will need to often extract backgrounds manually, especially with comic art where AI background removal tools usually fail.

Once the image is upscaled you're going to get better results using the overpainting/retexture feature. Which you're going to have to use a lot because anytime you're using overpainting to shift a character in art style, its going to involve compositing.

No single version of Vola or Sekra had all the right parts, so photoshopped the bits I liked together before re-loading it into MJ's editor for some touchups. Sometimes you have to make a mockup and use that as a character reference or fully retexture over it.

You'll notice that I removed Vola's net. Accessories, if on the character model, will always be on the character when used with Vidu's system, and often glitch because of it. You can always put them back in with a second image reference or with a specific reference that still has them.

Once you have the reference image, you can use the character. Though if you want to use them a lot, you'll want a full model sheet with multiple views.

More to come.

[ultrameganicolaokay]

Rom Epic Collection Volume 1: ‘The Original Marvel Years’ by Bill Mantlo, Sal Buscema and more. Cover by Frank Miller and Joe Rubinstein. Out in April 2025.

"At last, the classic adventures of Rom in the Marvel Universe are collected in paperback!

Learn how Rom gave his life in service to his home planet, Galador, becoming a Spaceknight sworn to protect it from the evil Dire Wraiths! Rom tracks these vile creatures across the cosmos to Earth, where they have infiltrated the highest levels – including S.H.I.E.L.D. itself! Armed with his energy analyzer, only Rom can see the true form of the Dire Wraiths – and with his neutralizer, he can blast them to Limbo! But what will Earth make of this armored invader? Will his quest be aided or hindered by encounters with the X-Men and Jack of Hearts? And can he survive deadly clashes with super villains like the Mad Thinker and the Space Phantom? Collecting ROM (1979) #1-20."

[kollectorsrus]

[hasbr0mniverse]

IDW Hasbroverse Gallery - Rom vs Optimus Prime By Brandon Peterson

[browsethestacks]

Rom Spaceknight

Art by Bob Layton

[crisisofinfinitemultiverses]

Thanos #2 (2024) variant by Taurin Clarke

[thebestcomicbookpanels]

Same place, different comics....

X-Men #137 by Byrne and ROM Spaceknight Annual #4 by Ditko

(and the original art thrown in for kicks)

[smashpages]

X-Men #30 (Marvel, January 2024) Rom Variant Cover by Taurin Clarke

[therobotmonster]

Superman's unwillingness to kill is not his greatest weakness...

But Rom the Spaceknight's is.

Warning, I am on pain medication.

I didn't want to bloat the post that inspired this more than I did already. In it, there's reference to Zach Snyder alluding to his putting Superman in the position where he 'had to' kill Zod because Superman's unwillingness to kill is "his greatest weakness."

I disagree. Superman's unwillingness to kill is actually his greatest strength, or at least a manifestation of it. Superman doesn't refuse to kill just because of a Christian devotion to 'thou shalt not kill' or an adherence to human law. Clark's refusal to kill is an extension of his absolute dedication to not abusing his power.

Clark's actual greatest weakness is his compassion for others. That's the thing that constantly tempts him to abuse that power. It isn't that killing Lex Luthor or Zod is an unforgivable crime in itself, it's that Clark knows it wouldn't be.

Rom, on the other hand, is the other way around.

Rom isn't really a Superman Expy, but he's certainly a commentary on him, even if unintentionally. Rom is also a paragon-type, also an alien superhuman with a wide assortment of immense powers. His greatest weapon is essentially a phantom zone projector.

Like Superman, Rom is sworn not to kill. But that's the important part. Sworn not to. He is bound by oaths and duty and rules of engagement because he's both a holy knight hunting demons and a soldier in a war. He isn't allowed to kill non-wraiths because they're civilians and doesn't want to because he cares about most living creatures.

He isn't allowed to kill wraiths because death is too good for them. He's hunting down war criminals, and the Galadorian leadership sentenced them all to exile to limbo to suffer for eternity, immortal but unable to affect, much less harm, anything.

A dead wraith is a wraith that has escaped its sentence, and coming back from the dead is easier for a species of demon-warlock aliens than escaping their metaphorical exorcism and banishment to hell.

Rom's code against killing is the most often exploited weakness he has. The wraiths, knowing a front-on confrontation with him is certain banishment, love to hurl non-wraith humans and superhumans at Rom, knowing the Spaceknight won't return their lethal force (and that if he did, they'd have forced him to murder an innocent, which they consider a win).

In these contests, Rom's humanity (specifically his ability to express human traits like compassion, mercy, and self-sacrifice) is usually what turns the tide by convincing these dupes of his true nature.

Pictured: Rogue inadvertently triggers Rom's body dysmorphia

Now, as has often been mocked, Rom does kill a couple of times. This gives him an existential crisis, but it's more about violating his oaths and losing control than remorse for destroying a wraith in a moment of passion. The audience isn't supposed to be horrified at his actions or unsettled, they're supposed to see the impossible standard the Galadorians put on Rom and his brethren.

But it still works with the themes, because Rom is a man trapped in a machine, and his Spaceknight code and duty are a part of that machine.

So where Superman must triumph over the temptations his own compassion puts before him to go too far, Rom has to keep his power and duty from keeping him from feeling the emotions he needs to triumph over his demons.

[keaneoncomics]

Bronze Age Marvel fans, take note: Rom, Spaceknight and the Micronauts are getting Epic Collections in 2025!

[deepdreamnights]

Spaceknights in Training

From the 1981 "ROM the Spaceknight" TV series.

I'm going to be posting my various reference pieces for my 80s Rom Music Video through the week.

The premise of the project was "What if ROM got a TV Show in 1981." I don't think I entirely hit the mark as Vidu couldn't consistently give me the tokusatsu look I wanted for the Spaceknights and effects, but perfect is the enemy of the good, and I wanted it out in time for Valentines weekend.

And it was an excuse to do some fan-casting.

I couldn't just pick A-listers of the time, however, because if it was a Marvel project in 1981, you got Reb Brown, not Burt Reynolds.

Ron Ely as ROM. Tarzan was over, he could grow his hair out or wear a wig.

Haywood Nelson as Karas/Firefall I - Haywood would have been two years out from the end of What's Happening? and Karas's human form in the comics was yet-another-long-haired-white-guy, so a good fit in my book for Rom's best bud.

Cheryl Ladd as Landra/Starshine I - She would have been one of the major draws from the show, as an ex-Charlie's Angels actress.

Erik Hexum as Rem/Terminator - We never saw Terminator's human form or got his Galadorian name in the comics. Here he's reinterpreted as Rom's brother and Erik Hexum, because I'm still upset about Voyagers being canceled.

My thought is that a TV adaptation would use flashbacks to Galador, dream sequences, and "how I see myself" VS "the real me in the mirror" scenes to give the lead some actual face-time.

Thinking like a TV producer, matching the Galadorian uniforms to the eventual spaceknights they would become, and while i love Galador, it's civilian clothes are dorky as hell. Rom's was first, with Karas and Terminator's photoshopped and in-painted off his.

I generated roughs of them in Midjourney with a combination of text and image prompting. Once I had a stack, each of the costumes were inpainted and photoshopped, and composited faces from various 1978-1981 actor head shots both the old fashioned way and with some help from Huggingface spaces.

Video post is here.

[themarvelproject]

Marvel house ad for ROM featuring art by Sal Buscema (1979).  The House of Ideas just announced an exciting new collaboration with Hasbro that will result in brand-new collections and reprints of ROM’s original comic book adventures, including a ROM #1 Facsimile Edition and a ROM Omnibus.