Saturday, July 10, 2010

Batman and ROM



ROM was one comic that I liked more for the villains than the main star. The Dire Wraiths were the main bad guys and one of the most creepily designed alien races ever. They were just so inhuman looking that you knew there was no reasoning with them.

ROM himself was a little harder to get into for a couple of reasons. I liked the concept but the design made it hard for a reader to identify with him. The featureless metal mask made it very difficult to convey emotion - artists couldn't even cheat with it the way the can with Spider-Man or even Iron Man. But the main thing that bothered me about his costume was... he was wearing mittens! Yes they were made of cool alien metal, but they were still mittens! It was very hard to take a mitten-wearing superhero seriously.

Still, ROM has a lot of fans. It's too bad that rights issues prevent Marvel from reprinting his adventures.

5 comments:

Rick L. Phillips said...

I didn't read Rom when it was first published. Didn't think it would be any good since it was based on a toy. Most of them aren't. When I read the back issues I really liked it. Turns out I was wrong and it was pretty good.

Randy said...

Is that a Milgrom cover?

Ross said...

I'm pretty sure it is.

c lue said...

Don't know how long it'd been up when I saw this first, but I came across these two as ones I'd never written out of my favorites, and while running July 23rd I got this idea.
So long as Rom comes with the Dire Wraiths, you have the makings of a great story (especially those Simonson-designed ones from #47 out, yikes, yuck and yaargh!!).

What I have in mind works an investigation suspecting Ra's Al-Ghul into a tale set in Sri Lanka, part of the world ROM never saw. Bruce's visit leads to meeting ROM, the Wraiths, and even a trio of original characters.

You put caves together thematically, and the classic (and often deceptive) melodramatic misunderstanding language is so part of that late Silver Age DC cover!

Shlomo Ben Hungstien said...

well, for all those ROM fans out there there is a new blog site about all things ROM including a lot of recent news and original fan art. this is not a blog site that is filled with redundant clip art from the series and outdated news.

www.romspaceknightart.blogspot.com

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