Guide to ROM, Spaceknight (New for Patrons!)

Today, Marvel Comics is releasing an omnibus we never thought would come to exist, so I’m releasing a guide I never thought I’d ever make exclusively for Pledgeonaut Patrons of Crushing Krisis. It’s a guide to a toy that became a comic that defined the toy (which was a bit of a flop, as it turns out), but is now back thanks to our collective nostalgia. That’s right, it’s a Guide to ROM, Spaceknight – including his reading order at both Marvel Comics and IDW Publishing!

Guide to ROM, Spaceknight

Okay, I know what you’re thinking (unless you are exactly in the Gen X age range to have specific existing nostalgia for this comic book). You’re thinking: “Really, Krisis? A whole guide just for a comic book about a toy? Is this really necessary?”

In a word: YES.

In several more words: ROM is perhaps the most-shining example of Marvel’s 1970s and 1980s licensed character comics, which involved a bevy of Marvel’s best creators breathing life into media properties and toy lines in the form of a richly-built world and dynamic supporting casts.

Of course, Marvel’s Star Wars continuity is well-known and well-loved. And, Larry Hama’s G.I. Joe is rightfully lauded for its incredible tight coordination with the continuity of the toy line (for which he wrote all of the packaging copy). However, ROM by Bill Mantlo, Sal Buscema, & Steve Ditko is remarkable for expanding a single failed toy launch into a heroic, dramatic, and occasionally tragic seven-year comic run that crossed over with the likes of the X-Men, the Avengers, Incredible Hulk, Power Man & Iron Fist, and more!

Except… Marvel was never allowed to reprint any of the issues… UNTIL TODAY, the day of the release of the first of three ROMNIBUS volumes collecting Rom’s complete 1979 series as well as the handful of guest appearances that Marvel has always been forbidden to reprint.

How did this all happen?

Let’s flash back to 1979.

Parker Brothers, then known entirely as a board game brand, was set to launch a cutting edge new electronic toy. How cutting-edge? HIS EYES WERE LEDS (batteries not included).

Actually, that was about all he had going for him. Rom was a boxy-looking cyborg with a suspicious resemblance to a Cylon who had as few points of articulation as a classic Barbie.

Rom had a few accessories and no opponents or companions (unless you had him hang out with Barbie). He wasn’t based on a cartoon or a popular novel. Parker Brothers was basically selling him on the strength of those LED eyeballs. And, as you might expect, selling him was a failure – despite Rom being featured on the cover of TIME magazine!

However, Parker Brothers had one great marketing instinct when it came to Rom: they worked with Marvel to launch him into his own comic book, created by Bill Mantlo and Sal Buscema. That’s a book with an incredible pedigree! And, since the Rom toy came with just a basic pamphlet of information (mostly explaining his accessories), Mantlo & Buscema had free reign to create his origins in the ROM comic book.

(The character is “Rom,” but the comic is “ROM.” Don’t ask me why.)

The result was an incredibly compelling run of 75 regular issues and four annuals that subverted the expectations that Rom would be an unfeeling robot. Instead, he was a tragic hero. Once a regular flesh-and-blood humanoid two centuries ago on his home planet of Galador, Rom became an armored spaceknight to fend off an invasion by the evil Dire Wraiths. Yet, when the invasion was averted, his servitude didn’t end! He was sent out into the universe to eliminate every trace of the pernicious wraiths… who had embedded themselves on Earth 200 years later, in our present day.

Mantlo & Buscema slowly unfurled this backstory in a series of flashback and back-ups over the course of the first two years of the title. While ROM started out only nominally a part of the Marvel Universe, after his first year his book increasingly featured Marvel’s villaind and heroes. That included a direct crossover with Power Man and Iron Fist (1978) #73 and a ROM issue that contained key plot development for Rogue and Mystique on Rogue’s path to heroism!

Those stories have NEVER been reprinted until today! Why? Because Parker Brothers – and, later, Hasbro – own the rights to Rom himself and to the concept of his foes, the Dire Wraiths. Marvel can’t reprint a comic if it includes Rom for more than the sparsest cameo.

However, Hasbro does NOT own the rights to Rom’s Marvel Universe backstory, Galador, Spaceknights, or Marvel’s version of the Dire Wraiths.

In fact, Dire Wraiths made a ton of appearances outside of ROM in the early 80s (including, famously, on the cover of Uncanny X-Men (1963) #187), all of which are fair game to reprint as long as they don’t inlude Rom himself. And, Marvel has continued to use Galadorian Spaceknights (who bear a striking resemblance to Rom) throughout the 2000s, including in their cosmic saga beginning with Annihilation (2006), continuing through Hickman’s Infinity (2013), and into the Age of Krakoa in Gerry Duggan’s Cable (2020) and the “X of Swords” crossover!

Meanwhile, in 2016 Hasbro relaunched Rom into an all-new continuity with a tweaked origin and redesigned Dire Wraiths at IDW as part of their Hasbroverse anchored by Transformers and G.I. Joe.

Yet, that new version of Rom couldn’t satisfy nostalgic fans, who have been faithfully beating the drum for a seemingly-impossible omnibus of Marvel’s ROM – a so-called “Romnibus.” I’ve been seeing custom-bound volumes of the original ROM run for over a decade in collector communities, and modern Epic Collection fans are always seeking the single issue of Power Man & Iron Fist (1978) #73 to fill in their collection.

The licensing landscape shifted in 2023. In a major coup, Hasbro concluded their long-standing arrangement with IDW and moved their licensed comics worlds to Image’s Skybound imprint run by Robert Kirkman. Soon after the first comics in a new Transformers / G.I. Joe universe launched, Marvel announced a series of major licensed collected editions, having successfully regained the rights to Shang-Chi’s Fu Manchu and to Conan long enough to produce swiftly-selling omnibus lines over the past half decade. ROM was just the first of these new announcements, soon to be followed by Hasbro’s Micronauts and Godzilla – both of whom also occupied the main Marvel Universe.

Is ROM as good as Generation X nostalgia has claimed for all these years? I haven’t read it in full, because there has been no way to buy it! However, from the issues I’ve read, it stands up to the best of Marvel’s other workmanlike early-80s solo titles. It’s hard to beat 75 issues of Bill Mantlo writing a single character on a hero’s journey.

This new Guide to ROM not only covers that classic Marvel comic, but also Rom’s run at IDW, and Marvel’s further use of Spaceknights and Dire Wraiths.

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