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. Continue reading
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