How there aren't toys for everyone involved here, seems like an injustice.

I always think I should have more Rom comics than I do; but while I read it occasionally as a kid, the only issues I remember owning were #25 and the first two annuals. So, since I just picked up a spare, let's check out 1983's Rom Annual #2, "To Save a Spaceknight" Written by Bill Mantlo, pencils by Sal Buscema, inks by Ian Akin and Brian Garvey, Spaceknight Squadron created by Richard Konkle, with a Bill Sienkiewicz cover.

This was set before the first issue of the series, some two hundred years ago, as Rom gives chase to the Dire Wraith forces driven from Galador. While many of the sorcerous shape-shifters scatter, Rom hounds their command ship all the way to Wraithworld, and then proceeds to kick the crap out of most of the planet. Between his rage and his Neutralizer, Rom's on a pretty good tear to banish all the Dire Wraiths, but gets hit with a spell that seemingly terrifies him...

After Rom had been missing for a bit, Galador's Prime Director sets the Spaceknight Squadron out to find their missing comrade. They're a hearty bunch, although the distribution of Spaceknight powers seems to be a bit of a crapshoot: Rom got a seemingly inexhaustible death-ray, while the Squadron's Unam gets invisibility. A bit of a knock on invisibility, but in a war against shapechanging wizard monsters, it's a power that doesn't get the skulls cracked. (Technically, Rom's Neutralizer only banished the Wraiths to Limbo; but it still seems like a step up from the average Spaceknight's kit. I don't think any others had one...) Still, in the end it's Unam who is brave enough to face the mesmerized Rom, who had been hypnotized by the Wraiths to see them everywhere. Later, Rom realizes by driving the Wraiths from their homeworld, he may have spread their menace across the galaxy, and resolves to hunt them down...

This year's Hasbro SDCC Revolution exclusive had a Rom figure and a Dire Wraith, but they were 3.75, maybe four inches. I keep hoping they'll get around to a six-inch scale one someday; I might even be tempted if they managed to get out any other Spaceknights for him to team-up with. Also, I don't know if this was intentional, or if I'm just seeing it since I caught Rifftrax Live The Five Doctors last week, but the Prime Director really looks like a British character actor forced into a terrible costume...Moreover, I appreciate Sal Buscema more all the time.