Quote Originally Posted by grahamgg View Post
Well back years ago (2006) Marvel reprinted their entire 24 issue series from the 1970s as Essential Godzilla in B&W. Not sure it's been reprinted other than that? God I love how Marvel used to do comics ... license a character, then throw them right in the middle of the freaking MU. This series had all sorts of appearances by SHIELD, the Avengers, FF, etc.
Haha. I completely forgot about this. In fact it's how I read the whole series. I had picked a few up a few issues here and there over the years but never the whole thing.



Quote Originally Posted by grahamgg View Post
Regarding ROM, I've never read any of that material before. I knew of the series as a kid, and had an issue here or there from multi-packs but never read any of it. My understanding from some of the online articles I've read over the years was that the original comic series is so deeply embedded into the 616 MU that it would be virtually impossible for the series to be reprinted anywhere or in any form except by Marvel. I mean for gosh sakes, Rick Jones was ROM's main supporting character for a while, and ROM & cast interacted with the entire MU basically. Marvel owns the Dire Wraiths, the human version of ROM (he showed up at Rick & Marlo's wedding in Hulk) and the Space Knights (which is why every so many years we see Marvel publish some kind of Space Knight series ... Venom: Space Knight being the last, and most absurd IMO). They're trying to retain ownership of that IP or copyright.

The problem is Parker Brothers originally, and today Hasbro, own the ROM armored character. Seems like Marvel is chummy with IDW nowadays (they partnered on the Transformer reprints by letting Spidey's appearance be reprinted), and they work together on other prestige bookshelf format books like artist editions, HC newspaper reprints, etc. So I guess there's always a chance those classic issues will once again see the light of day. Especially today with the older 70s licensed characters coming back into print (MOKFU, Doc Savage in the forthcoming MTU MMW, and Conan in the recent 2018 Marvel calendar, etc). The only wrench to that hope for reprints, is that apparently Hasbro wants to create an integrated cinematic movie universe starring their characters like Transformers, GI Joe, Micronauts, and ROM. So....anybody's guess is as good as mine.
Yes...all of this is correct. I initially thought about going into the IDA background but didn't have time. I'm glad you did. I ready only a handful of Rom comics and while I enjoyed them at the time, I suspect they're like a lot of stuff that I enjoyed once upon a time - I probably wouldn't like it now. That said, I'd probably pick up a first volume omnibus if they ever did collect it.

By the way, I heard that when they reprinted some of the pre-300 Hulk (I think it was issue # 296 that Rom was in), they blacked out the character due to the copyright. I've never actually seen it though but it would make sense.