The IDW Annual for ROM came out around the time issue #7 or #8 of the regular IDW ROM series was released, but I deliberately waited to read it until I had read issue #12 of the regular series so that the annual didn't feel like an early release cash grab even though that is exactly what it was. I received the standard cover for the Annual #1 that is pictured above, and my first impression was that there was going to be a great love story told about ROM and his wife or fiance before the war with the Wraiths began. I was optimistic going in to the story, but was left appalled and completely disappointed with how ROM's origin story was handled (don't worry, I got over it :) ).
Where to begin? Well, first off, ROM's homeworld is called Elonia, as first mentioned in issue #2 of the regular series. Elonia is described in a very utopian way and we are immediately introduced to ROM's family. It turns out that ROM came from a family with two mothers, and he was a Geology student that hung out with his best friends Livia and Fy-laa. Within the first two pages of the story I was already having a bad feeling about where it was going. With the remote possibility that an alien civilization practices same sex marriages/families like humans do, and then with an additional layer of remote possibility that ROM, greatest spaceknight of all, comes from a same sex couple family, I just can't help but feel that same sex marriage propaganda was being shoehorned, unnecessarily, into ROM's origin story.
Christos Gage's art style is typically very good, but looking past the same sex couple family message, how he drew ROM's mothers in the story is baffling to me as you can see in the example screenshot below.
Moving along. ROM's motivation to join the Solstar Order as a result of his family dying was a bit questionable. How does an alien millenial geology student all of a sudden decide to join the military and take the fight to the Dire Wraiths after a very lackadaisical reaction to his family dying? And, what is the motivation for Livia and Fy-laa to do the same? Well ROM, Livia and Fy-laa do join the Solstar Order, and we get a very brief montage of training that reminded me a bit of the recruits training in the Starship Troopers movie. We even get this lovely shower scene . . .
ROM and Livia are in a relationship, and Livia is written as an over sexed tease to ROM. I get the sense that the writers of this story are showing indirectly a fantasy of theirs for what their ideal woman would be. A woman who always wants to have sex but displays many feminist characteristics including a butch hairstyle.
When the three titular recruits are shown to have completed their training, they are now expertly skilled Solstar Order soldiers(???) because we are just told that they are. In addition, their attitudes towards the Solstar Order leadership before and after training is very whiny with a sprinkle of hesitancy to follow orders. How ROM somehow becomes a Spaceknight that is rigid in his duty to follow the Solstar Order rules later on is not even hinted at in this annual. More things to make me go, hmmm.
So at this point in the Annual, there has been no mention of Spaceknights nor the shiny body armor that I was looking forward to seeing ROM finally don for the first time. This leads to another problem I had with this origin story for ROM. The iconic Spaceknight armor only exists in the Solstar Order due to a chance situation where during a mission, ROM and his amazing friends accidentally come in contact with Ore-13. When the Ore-13 comes in contact with their skin, body armor just randomly constructs around their body. The iconic look for ROM's Spaceknight armor, the light up eyes, etc. just randomly forms from the Ore-13. I feel that is lazy or poor writing to give a magical reason for the iconic designs of Spaceknight armor with no practical reasoning at all.
The reader then gets to see ROM and his amazing friends fight some Dire Wraiths for a few pages using their new, magically formed Spaceknight armor. The Solstar Order welcomes the discovery of the new magically formed armor and the Solstar Order Spaceknights are born. ROM and his amazing friends have no idea if the armor will ever come off again, but darn it, they are somehow motivated to dedicate the rest of their lives to fighting the Dire Wraiths. Thank you magical Ore-13, they couldn't have done it without you.
After all was read and done with this annual, I was so disappointed that I decided that I would take on the daunting task of rewriting this origin story. I will post the pages of my rewritten ROM origin story in three separate blog posts. Stay tuned, and please comment with your thoughts on the ROM series so far and what variant covers you got or liked the most.
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