Hi everyone,
Today, I'm writing about the sixteenth issue of Marvel Comics' ROM: Spaceknight. The cover, penciled by Ed Hannigan and inked by artist/editor Al Milgrom, shows our hero, fighting a large, green menace, with the cover blurb declaring "Beware...The Watchwraith!" The first story was titled "The Watchwraith!" and the issue had a cover date of March 1981.
The opening image shows Clairton, West Virginia, on a brisk fall day. It looks like just about any other small town in America at the time, just before the fall holiday season. A reporter (whom we briefly saw in one panel in ROM #14) gets out of his car and makes his way to the local newspaper office. The man asks the Clairton Clarion's editor if he knows anything about the robot menace that was recently in Washington, D.C. The editor quickly dismisses the newsman Killburn's claims, but after the newsman has left, he realizes the threat and the importance of informing the rest of the town about the potential threat to their silver savior.
As Killburn makes his way across the town, every resident and merchant he meets fails to take his assumptions seriously. This includes Brandy Clark and her father. The reporter leaves disappointed once more. However, he's convinced by their replies that the citizens are hiding something.
After his departure, we see ROM sitting in the Clark home with several other Clairton residents. The Spaceknight gained the trust of town residents after thwarting a Dire Wraith's attempt to disguise himself as Brandy's fiance Steve Jackson and wed her last issue. ROM told the group about his mission to eliminate the wraith menace after the aliens' initial attack on his home planet of Galador some 200 years ago. He expressed his faith in those assembled, and even though he knew what the results would be, he used his energy analyzer at their urging, only to verify that no wraiths were in attendance.
Jackson and a pair of his friends then showed the Spaceknight their own energy analyzer, which was built using X-ray equipment. ROM hoped that the device would not be necessary, and informed the humans of his intentions to leave the area to search for other wraith encampments. Brandy protested his decision, but the Spaceknight assured her that the threat to their town was over, at least for all he knew.
Unbeknownst to the adults in the room, there was another menace still lurking, deep in the caverns of their small town. A pair of young boys was playing with their ray guns near one of the entrances to the old, abandoned mines in the town when one youngster found the remnants of a former wraith base in the cave. The boys soon discovered a strange-looking being encased in glass. As they turned to leave, one of them accidentally tripped an unseen alarm, which roused the being from its case. The boys fled to warn their parents about what they had just seen.
At the same time, ROM was resting on a bed in the Clark's guest room, thinking about the guests who had since left the gathering and other humans that he'd encountered. His reverie was interrupted by the conversation that Steve and Brandy were having in Brandy's room. Brandy seemed to be torn between her love for her boyfriend and her love for the silver Spaceknight. Having heard the conversation, ROM thought about his love for the female human, and his desire not to hurt his friend Steve.
Before ROM's pondering could continue, the sound of sirens in the town warned of imminent danger, which we soon saw was caused by the being that the boys had found in the old cave. He was tearing up property in town, and the local fire department could not stop him. The fire chief made a call to Brandy's parents, to alert ROM of the danger. The Spaceknight soon attacked the creature, which he called a Watchwraith. Watchwraiths were created by the Dire Wraiths to serve as sentries for his enemies. This particular Watchwraith wondered where his alien masters were, not knowing that they had long since abandoned the base that he had been found in.
The battle between Spaceknight and Watchwraith continued as several people looked on, including the reporter Killburn. Townspeople fired on the wraith sentry from a nearby rooftop, but their bullets proved ineffective. The Watchwraith lashed out and struck the building, knocking the men off the ledge, but they were quickly saved by ROM. The Watchwraith then released a burst of plasmifire from his palm, whihc attacked his armor until townspeople used a fire hose to douse the liquid flames. ROM continued to fight his opponent as the reporter from out of town continued to write down what he was witnessing.
The conflict moved on to the town's ice cream parlor, where the Spaceknight was able to use the freezer's freon to stop his opponent in his tracks. Jackson soon shut off the freon cable's power so that it wouldn't freeze ROM, who was still clenching the cable in his armored hand. He emerged from the building as citizens hailed him as a hero. A few minutes later, Killburn tried to prove his story, only to have a citizen knock the notebook from his hand. The reporter soon found that a panel truck was soon in the broken window where ROM and the Watchwraith had just crashed through a few minutes before, as if to explain that the window was broken by the truck crashing into it.
Killburn swore that the real story would be printed, even as Clairton residents continued to dismiss his claims. From a nearby corner, ROM and his friends thought about what to do next. The Spaceknight asserted that the Watchwraith's presence confirmed that his masters were no longer in the town. Brandy made an impassioned plea to the Spaceknight to stay, which he accepted.
The second story was the third installment of the Saga of the Spaceknights. This time, we see ROM flanked by his fellow Spaceknights, the golden female Starshine and the male Terminator, who was encased in dark blue armor. The trio was on their way to save a Galadorian hospital ship which was under attack by a wraith Drakillar. Drakillars were powerful wraith craft with bat-shaped wings. ROM's neutralizer, Terminator's frontal assault and Starshine's lighteyes were sufficient enough to win the battle.
Once the Spaceknights entered the hospital vessel, they discovered the corpses of several passengers, floating in the air around them. They ventured on through multiple airlocks and found survivors. However, the remaining inhabitants asked for the Spaceknights to mercifully end their lives. Starshine was puzzled, but before one of the humanoids could explain their reasoning, Terminator swooped in and aimed his eye beams at the ship's stardrive power core. The blast soon destroyed the ship, moments after the Spaceknights flew to safety.
Starshine and ROM asked Terminator to explain his action. The solemn Galadorian said that the wraith Drakillars intended to infect the hospital ship with the as yet uncurable wraith plague. Terminator went on to say that the disease had once affected another formerly peaceful world, and that he was the only survivor of the plague. His body was grafted into his spaceknight armor and his diseased cells were simultaneously destroyed. He sought to destroy the infected ship so that the plague would not continue to infect additional life forms. Terminator also said that because of the infection, he has no humanity left to return to once the wraith conflict ends. This is a plot point that would prove to be very important during the rest of the comic's run.
This was another well-crafted Marvel comic. My only concern was the fact that the coloring of the Watchwraith differed on the cover and the interior pages, but both tales were both fast-paced and solid examples of quality storytelling.
Next time, I'll write about the seventeenth issue of Marvel's ROM: Spaceknight, where we meet one of ROM's deadliest foe for the first time, a powerful being who continued on in the Marvel Universe years after the title ran its course. Until then, have a great week and don't forget to be kind to one another.
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