ROM #1

[history79]

Written by Christos Gage and Chris Ryall, Art by David Messina

12 pages of 36

Comments

[starwolf_oakley]

Hmm. So the Dire Wraiths see Rom as the bad guy?

[icon_uk]

They always have, he is single handedly responsible for neutralising more high ranking Wraiths than the rest of the Spaceknights put together,,,

[shadur]

Of course. All they're doing is just travel the galaxy, feeding on the occasional planet full of lesser life forms that no one will miss in order to sustain themselves, and Rom keeps pursuing them and murdering them in job lots for no good reason...

[cainofdreaming]

"Yeah, he's trying to commit genocide on us for all the genocides we've committed. That ain't right!"

Mooooooo!

[7dialsmystery]

I don't think it's genocide if they turn other planets into farms. Since extinction is actually opposite of their goal.

[halloweenjack]

Does this mean that the Marvel ROM stories--including the Dire Wraiths, and their crossovers in the X-Men--are now officially out-of-continuity? (I mean, if IDW now has the rights to ROM, then Marvel couldn't do any more stories with them, which effectively means that they're out of the MU, right?)

[ozaline]

I think Marvel's approach to the licensed comics and continuity has always been more of "They happened but we don't talk about them."

Unless they can still get away with using them with a slight-tweak (US-1) or use the base concept (I think the Microverse is still around, but not any of the micronaughts)

[beyondthefringe]

Even there, it's like, only the -toy- Micronauts are off-limits to Marvel. Bug was around for a while as part of the Guardians of the Galaxy, and showed up relatively recently.

[dragontail]

And Marvel, IIRC, still owns the rights to the Microverse (fair enough as, again, it/Mantlo created the concept) which is why it's in the Ant-Man movie and why IDW's Micronaughts comic is set in a differently-named... um, place. Only slightly differently, but enough.

[featheredserpent]

The first rule of the SpaceKnights limited series is we do not talk about the SpaceKnights limited series.

Expect to see them as background characters in Rocket & Groot one of these days.

[dragontail]

According to all the handbooks and fact files, Marvel's Rom stories are still in continuity. The only handwave is that the Spaceknight who came to Earth and had all those adventures likely wasn't named Rom but... something else (most often he's referred to as "the Spaceknight leader", which misses the point but whatever). I'd wager that's because Marvel still owns the Spaceknight concept, and Galador, and the Wraiths/Wraithworld etc (seeing as it/Bill Mantlo created them).

[kirayoshi]

IIRC Rom had a run-in with Rogue back when she was still with Mystique's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Rogue ended up absorbing some of Rom's memories and was amazed at his nobility. Rom also told Rogue he sensed no evil in her, and by the end of this issue Rogue started questioning which side she was on. That and her inability to control her powers led to her quitting Mystique's team and joining the X-Men.

So without Rom, one of the most popular members of the X-Men would never have joined the team. Funny ol' world, innit?

[dragontail]

Your recollections are spot-on :)

Claremont, along with Roger Stern and John Byrne, was hugely focused on incorporating Rom into the broader Marvel U. Reading that run (which I've recently finished, after several decades of trying) as a whole is a pure joy. Rom really did affect, and was affected by, the Marvel U (mutant-neutralising weapons/collars, for example, arise directly from Forge having studied Rom's neutraliser). He all but took the place of the Silver Surfer between '79 and the mid-80s, and did well in the role.

Even if fact files etc have to do jumping jacks to keep him-but-not-him-exactly in canon, I'm glad they do. It's too special a run of comics and continuity to lose.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

I thought that Marvel's Dire Wraiths were theirs, and IDW had to put their own spin on the concept?

Also, Linkara gave a pretty good overview of the series as a whole a while back.

[dragontail]

I'm liking what I'm seeing with this book so far, writing-wise. Darby's PTSD and visual hallucinations play perfectly into the paranoia feel for which IDW is shooting, and her status as a vet contrasts nicely with Rom and what he's been through (what we assume he's been through, at least, given so far we can only assume it's similar to his Marvel incarnation's background). It's also great that she and the other female lead are POC... emphasises this is a modern approach to the property.

I'm also a fan of mixing up a broader Hasbro-verse in which Rom can operate. I honestly think the character works best against other super-powered/sci-fi characters, so having him share a globe with GI Joe, the Autobots, et all pushes all the right buttons for me. The presence of Dire Wraiths within the EDC/Joe ranks helps smooth some of the issues with IDW's handling of that franchise, too.

Not totally sold on the art, though. This is a book that hinges on identity, so the humans need to be readily identifiable as individuals so we can keep track of/be shocked by who's a Wraith (and who isn't). Can't say that's coming through so far. Still, early days.

[astrakhan42]

IMO I think Christos Gage is the key to the better writing here. Chris Ryall is an okay writer (and a huge ROM fanboy--he's the main reason why IDW got this license and Micronauts) but Gage is one of the top writers in the business.

And as a lifelong fan of Transformers and a mostly-life-long fan of GI Joe, I have to agree that the Hasbroverse has a lot of potential. Hopefully they bring in the Inhumanoids, one of the original four shows connected by Hector Ramirez (the others being Joe, TF and Jem).