ROM Spaceknight -Fake- Annual Cover (Micronauts 'Crossover')

Longtime fans of both ROM Spaceknight and Micronauts lament the fact that, even though the two Marvel Comics stablemates were published at the same time, with the same writing and editorial team, rights issues between the toy's different manufacturers made a crossover impossible.

Except... in the fevered imaginations of fanboys, of course.

Here we have the speculative cover illustration for (the non-existent) ROM Spaceknight Annual #6. Annuals often were (and continue to be) opportunities for quickie crossovers and cross-promotion.

My brief to penciller Brian Ahern was to design a suit of Spaceknight armor that Micronauts villain Baron Karza was inhabiting. (Stolen Spaceknight armor being something of a tradition in ROM storylines, noting as well Karza's ability to inhabit other people's bodies.) Brian took to the assignment with his usual ROM-induced zeal, and our back-and forth design ideas, as well as his original pencils, are included here. The piece's composition is a homage to an actual ROM cover, #25.

I designed the ROM/Karza logo, drawing on Marvel's tradition of occasionally 'tweaking' book logos for dramatic effect.

The icing on the cake was getting ROM inker Brian Garvey to finish the piece and affix logos manually, just like they did in the old days.