Thoughts

After the “love story” of the last issue – this immediate follow-on is an action-packed, monster-loaded thrill of a comic, Die Hard in a Magic Skyscraper as Storm takes on the Dire Wraiths attacking Forge.

The whole issue moves along at a cracking pace, not a panel is wasted as we see the various strands of this skyscraper assault race towards an incredible cliffhanger finale. Even the emotional scene where Storm and Forge meet again is covered in a couple of panels, half of which involve them holding awesome guns for some reason. No, actually, I’ll tell you the reason. Because it looks great and fits an issue that doesn’t scrimp on the action.

Fun Panel

While Paul Smith’s reinvention of Storm was initially striking, it really is John Romita JR that is making the character come alive as a dynamic hero. Given that we know Storm has lost her powers, there’s a risk that she’d be left out of the high stakes action going forward. Or her “powerlessness” would be fudged to allow her to play a part as her team mates take on Gods. But neither really happens. She’s presented as smart and resourceful, with the scope for mistakes but with a reason why she’d take risks. I love reading these action panels.

Any Googling

The first collection edition I had that included this issue became very odd at this point. Primarily because Marvel had lost the rights to ROM at this point and so had to be creative with the presentation on the reprints, omitting the mention of ROM.

Which, of course, begs the question who the f*** is ROM? Originally a toy designed by Parker Brothers (and subsequently acquired by HASBRO), ROM was a Robotic spacenight action figure. That doesn’t seem to have done very well as a toy.

However the Marvel series done in conjunction with the toy seems to have held up slightly better. And from that series come his enemies – the Dire Wraiths. It does seem an odd rival to have – no Dire Wraith toys were launched with ROM at the time. And they’re a surpisingly dark foe for an action figure. Although their murderous stealing of souls, with all the Clive Barker-lite talk of taking over their souls is catnip for Claremont so they fit into this title quite nicely.

In fact its a shame they don’t really do much beyond this story. Elements of their nature keep being dropped in this issue in a way that it utterly bamoozling. They seem to change form to pterodactyl style birds (even Google couldn’t furnish me with a good explanation for that one!) and have a taste for magic. And then just when this nonsense seems to becoming overwhelming, they suffer a bit of a damp squib defeat.

This X-men comic was published in 1984, so when Marvel was running with the ROM title. But this doesn’t really seem like a crossover with barely any mention of it and certainly no promotion of the characters own title even as the X-men defeat his foes (and a hologram of the hero makes an appearance). The ROM comic itself was to last till 1986, which, having started in 1979 seems like a good innings for a title based on a failed toy.