ROM THE SPACEKNIGHT AND THE MARVEL UNIVERSE

This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog looks at licensed I.P. Rom the Spaceknight’s crossovers with Marvel Comics characters.

NOTE: Rom: Spaceknight was a popular toy item decades ago and – as they did with the Micronauts – Marvel Comics licensed the rights to do comic book stories about the figure. Marvel’s Rom was a Spaceknight from the far-off planet Galador.

           The Spaceknights of Galador were humanoids genetically grafted to their high-tech armor. They traveled the universe to fight the vile alien race the Dire Wraiths, who used advanced science, black magic and their own shape-shifting abilities to conquer planets and prey on their inhabitants. Marvel eventually made the shape-shifting Dire Wraiths an offshoot of their own company’s Skrulls.

Dire Wraiths had already infiltrated powerful organizations around the world by impersonating humans after doing away with them. This series featured a lot of story elements that Marvel would subsequently reuse in assorted Skrull invasion tales.  

ROM Vol 1 #5 (April 1980)

Title: A House is Not a Home

Villains: The House of Shadows, Hellhounds of the Dark Nebula

Synopsis: Dr. Strange sensed that his long-ago foe the House of Shadows had returned to Earth. The house was really a sentient entity from another dimension. It preyed upon Earthlings who entered it due to its “haunted house” reputation until Strange defeated it and exiled it.

In West Virginia, Rom and two of his human allies, Brandy Clark and Steve Jackson, are pursued by Hellhounds (humanoid creatures from the Dark Nebula) sicced on them by the Dire Wraiths. They seek shelter in the House of Shadows, but Dr. Strange’s mystic warning helps Rom send the house back into exile before it can kill him and the others.

ROM Vol 1 #12 (November 1980)

NOTE: I previously covered this story pitting Rom against the Earth superhero Jack of Hearts HERE.

ROM Vol 1 #13 (December 1980)

Title: Peril of the Plunderer

Villain: The Plunderer

Synopsis: At Cape Hatteras, Rom the Spaceknight takes on Ka-Zar’s archenemy (and half-brother) the Plunderer. This time around that villain and his pirate troops are into human trafficking.

Rom outfights the Plunderer, his thugs and his vibranium-based weaponry to free his trafficked victims. The goons wind up arrested and the Plunderer seems to be killed in an explosion, but naturally he isn’t really dead.

ROM Vol 1 #14 (January 1981)

Title: The Ultimate Android

Villains: The Mad Thinker and his Android

Synopsis: The Fantastic Four foe called the Mad Thinker mistakenly believes that Rom (who has been featured in plenty of news broadcasts by this point) is really an android. Having always fancied himself THE authority on androids he uses his original huge robot from the 1960s to try to capture and study the Spaceknight.   

Rom defeats that android in battle, but the Mad Thinker escapes.

ROM Vol 1 #17 (April 1981)

Title: Hybrid!

Villain: The Hybrid

Synopsis: In Rom’s Clairton, WV home base, a mutant hybrid of an Earth woman and a Dire Wraith has become old enough for his mutant powers to manifest. The X-Men’s device Cerebro detects the new mutant presence and the team travels to Clairton to investigate.

Meanwhile, Rom and his human allies track down the hybrid child and the Spaceknight battles the Hybrid in its monstrous form, which has superpowers beyond what Dire Wraiths normally possess. As the X-Men arrive, the Hybrid reverts to its child form to make the X-Men believe Rom is the bad guy.

ROM Vol 1 #18 (May 1981)

Title: And a Child Shall Deceive Them

Villain: The Hybrid

Synopsis: The X-Men attack our Spaceknight and a wild battle erupts. The Hybrid, feeling it’s inevitable that Rom will convince the X-Men that he’s not the real villain, sows confusion.

The evil mutant manipulates Storm’s weather powers to conjure up a blinding blizzard amid which the fight goes on and Storm fights to retake control of the blizzard. Meanwhile, Wolverine, Colossus, Nightcrawler and Sprite fight the Hybrid. Rom eventually exposes the child Jimmy Marks as the Hybrid and the X-Men help him defeat it.   

ROM Vol 1 #19 (June 1981)

Title: Limbo! (Not a musical about limbo dancing.)

Villains: The Space Phantom and Dire Wraiths

Synopsis: Rom learns that the “Limbo” to which his Neutralizer weapon banishes Dire Wraiths is the same Limbo ruled by Kang the Conqueror’s future self Immortus aka He Who Remains. In this story the Spaceknight clashes with Immortus’ lackey the Space Phantom, an old Avengers foe.

In addition, many Dire Wraiths that Rom exiled to Limbo try to kill him in a nice bit of tension. It would be like a regular superhero being tossed into a prison populated by plenty of the supervillains he sent there. Our hero wins and escapes Limbo for Earth after learning that something horrible has happened to his home planet Galador.   

ROM Vol 1 #21 (August 1981)

Title: The Return of the Torpedo

Villains: The Rocketeers and Dire Wraiths

Synopsis: Former NFL star Brock Jones, who is secretly Daredevil’s old foe turned ally the Torpedo, has moved with his wife and children to Clairton, WV. Brock wearied of life in New York City and is now the new coach of the Clairton High School football team.

Because Clairton is still Rom’s home base, he inevitably winds up in a fight with Torpedo due to the usual far-fetched comic book misunderstanding. Ultimately, the two realize that Torpedo and Daredevil’s old foes the Rocketeers are really Dire Wraiths, at last explaining their high-tech weaponry. 

ROM Vol 1 #22 (September 1981)

Title: The Great Rocketeers Revival

Villains: The Rocketeers and Dire Wraiths

Synopsis: A squadron of Rocketeers raids Clairton, WV to kill Rom and recover the Torpedo’s high-tech costume which supplies his powers. The costume was created by the Dire Wraiths to try creating a companion army to the Rocketeers in order to further their invasion of the Earth.

They don’t want such technology in the hands of Earthlings who might reverse engineer it and use such futuristic weaponry against them. Rom and Torpedo fight together and defeat the Rocketeers.

POWER MAN AND IRON FIST Vol 1 #73 (September 1981)

Title: Wraith, Color or Creed

Villains: Dire Wraiths 

Synopsis: Trusting Torpedo to safeguard Clairton, WV while he is gone, Rom flies to New York City to look into Dire Wraith infiltration of the company that Brock Jones (Torpedo) used to work for. He also plans to borrow the Fantastic Four’s captured spaceship from Planet X in order to return to his home planet of Galador and learn what ugly fate has befallen it.

Rom uses his Neutralizer gun to banish seeming humans who are really Dire Wraiths in human form, and once again this action makes him seem like a killer to onlookers, one of whom hires Power Man and Iron Fist. Dire Wraiths impersonating the Fantastic Four tell Power Man and Iron Fist that Rom and his fellow Spaceknights are a menace and they hire the pair to prevent the “evil” Rom from entering their Baxter Building HQ.

You know the formula for such stories. Rom fights additional Dire Wraiths in NYC while Power Man and Iron Fist battle him, still thinking the Spaceknight is a villain. That misunderstanding is clarified and the two Heroes for Hire join Rom in fighting the Dire Wraiths.

ROM Vol 1 #23 (October 1981)

Title: To Storm the Baxter Building

Villains: Dire Wraiths

Synopsis: Power Man and Iron Fist help Rom get through the night-darkened streets to reach the Baxter Building and the interstellar spaceship inside. Dire Wraiths impersonating high-level figures sic the police and National Guard on Rom and his new allies.   

Eventually, the trio penetrate to the interior of the Baxter Building and fight their way through all of the high-tech security systems. At last, they reach their objective and encounter the Fantastic Four themselves. After Power Man establishes that they are the real F.F. the trio of intruders spell out the situation with Rom and the Dire Wraiths. Our hero is permitted to use the Planet X spacecraft to head off for Galador to determine its fate.

ROM Vol 1 #24 (November 1981)

Title: No Place Like Home

Villains: Skrulls

Synopsis: An unknown amount of time after the ending of the previous issue, Rom and the Planet X space vessel emerge from hyperspace at the coordinates of the planet Galador. Rom is perplexed to see that the planet is nowhere to be found.

The Spaceknight begins searching for the planet and eventually enters the solar system of the planet Xandar, home of the Nova Corps. The member of the Nova Corps from Earth, Richard Rider, attacks Rom’s ship along with a squad of Syfon Warriors led by villain turned hero Powerhouse.

After the formulaic “fight then reconcile and work together” bits of business, Rom and the others go to Xandar where the Spaceknight hopes to use the planet’s notorious Living Computers to find out what happened to Galador. That is interrupted by the arrival of a Nova Corps spaceship.

Those Novas turn out to be Skrulls in disguise and a massive battle breaks out. While Rom, Powerhouse and Comet fight the Nova-Skrulls, the Richard Rider Nova invades the Nova Corps ship. He kills all the Skrulls impersonating Novas and frees the captive REAL Novas.

Richard Rider asks to be teleported home to Earth and no longer wants to be a Nova Corps member. He is sent back to Earth as requested. Xandar’s living computers have located Galador’s new location and so Rom is teleported there for the cliffhanger ending. 

ROM Vol 1 #25 (December 1981)

Title: Galador

Villains: Terminator, Mentus and Dire Wraiths

Synopsis: Rom materializes on Galador, which has been taken over by an evil clone of Mentus the Prime Director. The Mentus Clone is content to be the power behind the throne and has made Rom’s old foe Terminator (this was years before The Terminator movie) the seeming ruler.

Because Terminator was a Spaceknight gone bad, the Mentus Clone reworked his armor to be a duplicate of Rom’s own, so the people of Galador have been convinced that Rom himself is really running the planet. The Mentus Clone has been working with assorted Dire Wraiths posing as Galadorians to set the planet, its sun and its surroundings on a collision course with the Dark Nebula, hence its new location. 

Rom frees a handful of other Spaceknights who had tried taking down the Mentus Clone and Terminator and they fight those two villains plus the Dire Wraiths impersonating Galadorians. The good guys win, the conspiracy is exposed and the original Mentus dies in battle with his clone.

With the clone’s death, Terminator is freed from his control and helps Rom and the others mop up the Dire Wraiths. The real Mentus’ dying words warned Rom that the planet-devourer Galactus is approaching Galador and will reach it even before the collision with the Dark Nebula.

ROM Vol 1 #26 (January 1982)

Title: Galactus on Galador

Villains: Galactus and his herald Terrax

Synopsis: An unknown amount of time later Galactus’ latest herald, the axe-wielding Terrax, reaches Galador. Rom, Terminator, the female Starshine and a few other Spaceknights attack and defeat Terrax, stunning the approaching Galactus.

As the world-devourer lands on Galador, Terminator atones for his years of villainy by making a suicidal assault on Galactus, who easily kills him. Terminator’s attack distracted Galactus while Rom slipped aboard the world-devourer’s massive spaceship Taa II.

Rom trashes entire rooms of Taa II, and the outraged Galactus arrives to punish him for such an unbelievable act. Rom bargains with Galactus, asking him to spare Galador in exchange for leading him to the hidden Dark Nebula, where he will have entire planetary systems to feed upon for decades.

NOTE: Because the Dark Nebula was the home of the Dire Wraiths, Hellhounds and many other races just as vile, predatory and tyrannical, Rom was not blamed for such an offer by his fellow Spaceknights.

ROM Vol 1 #27 (February 1982)

Title: Turnabout is Fair Play

Villains: Dire Wraiths and Deathwings

Synopsis: Rom, the female Starshine and other Spaceknights accompany Galactus to Wraithworld in the Dark Nebula. Terrax is sent down first but returns, battered and terrified. The black magic and futuristic technology of the Dire Wraiths were more than he could handle.

Galactus and the Spaceknights go down to Wraithworld’s surface and Galactus tries to set up his devices that let him feed on planets. The Dire Wraiths unleash their black magic and tech on Galactus and the Spaceknights and even the elements of Wraithworld prove dangerous to Galactus. The acidic rains are so astonishingly toxic that they even eat through the world-devourer’s armor.

Sensing that the Dire Wraiths draw their eldritch energies from the Black Sun their planet orbits, Galactus and the Spaceknights return to Taa II and fly to that sun. Galactus goes forth alone to destroy the Black Sun but the sentient star fights back and even unleashes twelve Queen Deathwings on the Big G.

The Black Sun wins and begins feeding on Galactus, who manages to escape back to Taa II and flies off. Galactus admits defeat and says for the first time he has encountered an entire section of space that is too powerful for him. Perturbed, he keeps his promise not to devour Galador but teleports it, its sun and its surroundings to a part of the universe where he says the Spaceknights will never find it. Galactus then leaves them behind in the empty space where Galador was formerly.

ROM Vol 1 #28 (March 1982)

Title: Earthward Bound

Villains: The Mole Man and Dire Wraiths

Synopsis: The handful of Spaceknights consult and resolve to resume their crusade against the Dire Wraiths and hope that Galador can somehow be located over time. Starshine teleports herself and Rom back to Earth.

In Clairton, WV Rom, Starshine and Torpedo battle to save the town from subterranean attacks by the frequent villain the Mole Man and the Moloid race. It turns out the Mole Man and his people are also fighting the Dire Wraiths, who tried taking over Subterranea.

The Spaceknights and Torpedo join forces with the Mole Man and company to defeat this latest squadron of Dire Wraiths, but Starshine is killed in the process. 

ROM Vol 1 #29 (April 1982)

Title: Even a Spaceknight Can Cry

Villain: The Missing Link

Synopsis: After Starshine’s funeral, Rom goes off by himself to contemplate the current state of his life. He detects some sort of menace in the nearby West Virginia mining town of Lucifer Falls.

Rom flies over to investigate, but instead of finding Dire Wraiths on the loose, he instead finds the town in the grips of a wave of radiation poisoning. The source – the Hulk’s old foe the Missing Link.

NOTE: The Missing Link was last seen in the 1970s, having been accepted by the people of Lucifer Falls after his battle with the Hulk. In the time since then, the Missing Link’s radiation emanations returned and have been poisoning the local population.

Rom uses his Neutralizer to heal the human victims of radiation poisoning, then searches the mines for the Missing Link. That monster mistakes Rom’s attempt to heal him as an attack. They fight, eventually resolve the misunderstanding, and Rom cures the Missing Link so he can go back to hiding safely in the friendly town.

ROM Vol 1 #30 (May 1982)

Title: Silver Spiders in the Snow

Villain: Metal Master

Synopsis: From one old Hulk villain to another – this time the alien called Metal Master, who can control and manipulate metals. On Christmas Eve, Rom flies around Clairton to safeguard the humans celebrating the holiday.

The Spaceknight runs afoul of the Metal Master, back after all these years to try conquering the Earth again. During the battle, Rom’s Galadorian armor proves immune to the Metal Master’s powers, and he goes on to defeat the villain. 

ROM Vol 1 #31 (June 1982)

Title: West Virginia Reel

Villains: The Mutant Brotherhood (Mystique, Rogue, Blob, Destiny, Pyro and Avalanche)

NOTE: This was only the SECOND EVER appearance of Rogue, who could still control her powers back then and was still a villainous member of Mystique’s version of the Mutant Brotherhood. She had already permanently stolen the powers and memories of the original Ms. Marvel, Carol Danvers.

Synopsis: After their clash with the Avengers out in California (Avengers Annual #10 October 1981), the four Mutant Brotherhood members who were captured (Destiny, Blob, Pyro and Avalanche) are being transported through West Virginia in a high-tech vehicle to a new prison. Mystique and Rogue, who escaped, attack the vehicle and free their teammates. 

Rom battles the escaping mutants. He defeats and recaptures Blob, Pyro and Avalanche for the authorities, then pursues the fleeing female mutants Mystique, Rogue and Destiny into the night.

ROM Vol 1 #32 (July 1982)

Title: Choosing Sides

Villains: The Mutant Sisterhood (Mystique, Rogue and Destiny) 

Synopsis: The Dire Wraith-human mutant called Hybrid has returned to West Virginia. He encounters the fleeing sisterhood and the ladies attack him because of his monstrous form. Hybrid telepathically communicates to the Mutant Sisterhood his previous battle with the X-Men and Rom. They form an alliance.

Rom traces the ladies to the abandoned home in which Hybrid is hiding with them and is shocked to find Hybrid at their side. They all fight it out, but eventually Destiny’s precognitive abilities make it clear that once Rom is defeated, Hybrid intends to forcibly mate with Mystique and Rogue to produce more mutants with Dire Wraith attributes like himself.

The ladies therefore join Rom in fighting Hybrid and ultimately Rogue steals some of the being’s powers, giving Rom an opening to use his Neutralizer Gun to banish Hybrid to Limbo.

NOTE: The Mutant Sisterhood would go on to fight the mutant superheroine Dazzler in multiple issues of her own series.

*** Rom would go on to have many other crossovers with Marvel characters, with his final issue being #75 in February 1986. Along the way, Brandy Clark came to be fused to the Starshine armor (above left) and often fought at Rom’s side. The final issue saw the Spaceknights finally locating Galador, recovering their humanoid bodies and setting out to repopulate the planet.

You know pop culture writing, though, and Rom’s series was rebooted multiple times over the decades.

FOR MY LOOK AT THE 1970s AND 1980s STORIES OF STAR-LORD CLICK HERE.