All
good things must come to an end, I'm told, and so we reach the action-packed conclusion of
Rom. Rom, if you don't recall from
the other times I've dipped into this well, is probably the greatest comic about a cyborg poet fighting shapeshifting red aliens ever to be written by Bill Mantlo. If that's not high praise, I don't know what is.
Rom, greatest of the Spaceknights, having used a giant space gun to wipe his enemies, the Dire Wraiths, off the face of the earth ten issues prior, has been spending his time wandering about space in search of his lost home, Galador. After managing to kill two entire species and beating the Hell out of Gladiator, he finally makes it home, only to find that his planet has been taken over by the second generation of Spaceknights.
Their leader is a blue, spiky toaster-headed robot name of Dominor, making him the only supervillain whose name is a mere four letters away from "Domino Rally." But that's neither here nor there.
While Dominor and Rom square off in a duel to the death, our omniscient narrator helpfully provides a recap of Things So Far.
The second-gen Spaceknights, being total pricks, turned against the humans they were meant to protect, leaving Galador pretty much devoid of human life. Spaceknights have a human component, usually represented as a glowing sphere, that's left in stasis while they go out and do their Spaceknight thing. Rom's been bemoaning the loss of his for, like,
ever whereas these cats went and destroyed their own, further underlining the idealogical differences between the
silver toaster-headed guy and the
blue toaster-headed guy.
Anyway, Rom and his remaining first-gen Spaceknight buddies had just about given up hope when Rom's beloved Brandy Clark, a woman who not only used to date Rick Jones but was also a Spaceknight for a while, showed up on Galador, thanks to the freaking Beyonder (the less said of that, the better). Take a look at how Brandy's drawn there. I have a point, it just doesn't pay off for a while.
Rom and company, thoroughly bolstered by the sudden appearance of a shrewy broad in an AIM jumpsuit, embark upon a suicide attack on Dominor's evil castle of evil because that's just what
happens at the end of stories such as these.
Scanner, Trapper and Seeker, the B-list Spaceknights, all end up dead at the hands of their replacements, leaving Rom to face the whole bunch of evil robots by his lonesome.
Of course, someone who talks to himself as often as Rom is never
truly alone, but you get my drift. I mean, how lonely can you be when you're thinking stuff like "Spaceknight stands poised to slay Spaceknight on a world reduced to ruins! What madness could have brought my beloved planet to so pitiful a pass?" while preparing for a fight? When you monologue like the opening of a Stan Lee comic, you're your own best friend.
As Rom and Dominor fight, it becomes clear that all is not as it seems. Dominor apparently saved his humanity while his loyal crew of flunkies blew their own up, and now wants Rom to surrender Brandy to him so as to sire a whole new Galadorian race, as he went and killed all the wimmens on his home world. I guess he didn't think his clever plan all the way through.
Rom and Dominor mince back and forth as they battle, having a conversation more reminiscent of the
Rowdy Roddy Piper/ Keith David fight from the 1988 John Carpenter classic They Live than anything else. Substitute "PUT ON THE GLASSES!" for "TELL ME WHERE THE WOMAN IS!" and "NO!" for "NO!" and you're pretty much on the right page.
Meanwhile, the girl in question is off, unchaperoned, wandering about the inner catacombs of Galador carrying a sling full of Qwardian lightning bolt-things, apparently lifted off the corpse of one of the human defenders of the planet.
That is one casual bolt-toss, right there. Were I told that the weapons I was carrying were capable of destroying a civilization, I feel like I'd want them far enough away from me that I'd at least chuck them
overhand. After blowing up a wall for literally no reason other than it being in front of her, Brandy walks into a crypt to discover the terrifying secret of space:
Whoa, calm down, there, Manhands, I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for that one. Just give it a few pages, and it'll all be okay.
Back at the duel, Dominor messes with Rom's head by using "destabilizer beams," which evidently cause the victim to see flashbacks in montage form. Now, I'm no expert on supervillainy, but I've seen this sort of thing used a few times before, and it never ends well for the bad guy. Flashback montages never make a hero go "you know what? Screw it, I'm not fighting anymore," which I'd imagine is their calamitous intent. It's always "I've got to do it for Aunt May!" or "I'm not afraid of you anymore, guy who shot my parents when I was eight!" or "I'll never lose another home planet!" followed by a second wind that invariably blows the villain over.
Which, of course, is pretty much what happens here. Dominor's forced to chuck one of his minions at Rom, which Heatwave, the Starscream to Dominor's Megatron, immediately points out as a violation of the Spaceknight Duel to the Death Honor Code. With that legal loophole pointed out, Rom finally remembers that he can pull the most powerful weapon created by Galadorian science literally out of nowhere. So he does that.
Wow, Rom's Lego gun blew Dominor's backpack right off his body. That's some solid Neutralizing, right there.
Rom is declared the winner by the remaining second-generation 'Knights and given a choice: join them and help them blow up the remainder of Galador or die with the planet.
Rom, being
The Man, goes with the second one. The dying one. That prompts Heatwave to give the order to unleash the Ultimate Power of the Spaceknights.
Were it 2003 all up in here, the use of the phrase "Ultimate Power" would almost certainly end in me invoking an extremely tired joke about ninjas and being totally awesome and flipping out or something. But it's 200
6, so you're out of luck there.
Much like the Justice League, Spaceknights can face any foe simply by holding hands. With the Justice League, it's usually some kind of expression of unity, but with the Spaceknights, it's supposed to blow up whole planets.
I picture the end result being the Spaceknights standing on little rocks floating in the naked void of space, like the ending to a Duck Dodgers cartoon.
Helpfully, Heatwave explains what him and his buddies are about to do, as is the custom in situations such as these.
Kinda makes you wonder why they didn't just do this to begin with.
After a wee bit more speechifying, the Ultimate Power goes off and...
Huh. That certainly wasn't nearly as impressive as I'd been lead to believe. This was all, of course, part of Dominor's ill-thought-out scheme to repopulate Galador. Sure, he got rid of the remaining evil Spaceknights, but he already let them
kill everybody else on the damned planet. I mean, you've got break a few eggs to make an omelette, but you went and fried all the chickens, too.
Dominor and Rom chat in the wreckage, where it seems Rom is just about to give his girlfriend to the blue meanie in order to save his world. Rom asks the million dollar question - where'd you hide your humanity from all your crazy-ass Decepticon buddies? - which prompts Dominor to drop right into the end of the seminal
Twilight Zone classic "Time Enough at Last" in the Burgess Meredith role. Seems he'd stored it inside his throne, which was inside the tower, which was blown up six panels back.
Snapping completely, he jumps Rom again. Not in an effort to kill him, but to steal the Neutralizer so as to whack himself. Rom, who can store this mighty weapon in
another dimension accessible only by him, instead keeps it handy and Dominor gets the gun after giving our hero another dose of his Flashback Ray.
I'd question how, exactly, Dominor is holding that gun, considering his obvious lack of hands, but I'm so taken aback by his horns getting blown clear off his skull that I'll let it go.
Rom awakes to Brandy standing over him with the balance of the original Spaceknight force, summoned to Galador by Scanner's last message before getting herself croaked half a book ago. Seems that the body Brandy found was that of a crazed Spaceknight named "Terminator" who'd stolen Rom's humanity and appearance so as to take over Galador something like fifty issues prior. Terminator got himself whacked by none other than Galactus, and Rom assumed that his humanity had been forever lost, and rightly so, as Galactus isn't known for half-assing anything.
Well, Galan didn't use his whole ass on this one, as Rom now has an out to turn human again. He takes it and his sleeveless-shirt-wearing, blue-hair-having, Bruce Banner-pants-bearing non-metal self.
Remember when I told you to take a look at Brandy's face from her first appearance this issue? I recall reading somewhere that Ditko developed a nasty habit of handing in pages with wholly undefined faces, leaving the inker to finish off characters. This kind of lends credence to that theory, as Brandy looks a whole Hell of a lot less like Squirrel Girl here than she did a mere fifteen or so pages back.
So we leave the Romiverse with this image, full up of space deer and space bunnies and the
ghostly image of the greatest of the Spaceknights leveling his pistol at us, ready to Neutralize the lot of us so his human form can get laid for the first time in two centuries.
Somewhere in the vast reaches of the Marvel Universe is the most inbred planet in history, populated solely with the poetic progeny of a Spaceknight and his whiny Gal Friday.
Elsewhere in this issue:
The results of the '85 Marvel Try-Out Contest are in! Mark Bagley's probably the pick of the litter. Within ten years of winning this, he drew
every Goddamn book Marvel produced. Remember that summer? The man must have extra arms, or something.
Doug Hazlewood's better known as an inker for DC - he's worked with Tom Grummett a ton, John Bryne and Scott Kolins, off the top of my head.
Robin Riggs ended up inking sundry Marvel books, including a run on
Thor with Alan Davis.
The other two are mysteries to me, sadly. Got to love the idea behind this one, though.
Creepy ads for comics aimed at small children!
I don't have much to say here beyond pointing out that I don't know if I've ever seen a sword held more suggestively in my life. And that's factoring for all the times Lion-O made his sword grow by stroking it while yelling.
If you like the Go-Bots, something is freaking wrong with you!
I've been lied to by Madison Avenue fatcats many times before. I've grown jaded and accustomed to advertising being full of half-truths and hyperboles, but I can't brook anyone telling me that Go-Bots are "awesome." That's just a bald-faced lie.
I decided to check my local listings for time and station as directed by the ad, but the only place I could find the Go-Bots was in this weird edition of
TV Guide.
Seems the show is a huge hit in Hell, where it's on as often as
Law and Order is here. It's a perennial favorite of the Prince of Lies and cover boy, Mephisto.
Totally enlightening interview with Cy-Kill, though. Did you know his name is a pun?
Left to right: Steel's (hilariously long) sledgehammer, Doctor Fate's (hilariously ventilated) helmet, a chunk of Robin's tunic, Captain Marvel's man-bracelets, Mister Miracle's cape and mysterious metal bangles, Jack Knight's cosmic rod and Superman's chest logo circa his Breakin' 2 era. 
Left to right: Steel's (hilariously long) sledgehammer, Doctor Fate's (hilariously ventilated) helmet, a chunk of Robin's tunic, Captain Marvel's man-bracelets, Mister Miracle's cape and mysterious metal bangles, Jack Knight's cosmic rod and Superman's chest logo circa his Breakin' 2 era. 
She done flipped the switch.
Dying in such a manner? Totally validated by the befuddled look on Darkseid's face. 
