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One of the best reasons to have gotten out yesterday and hit up your local Free Comic Book Day was the new #0 issue of IDW’s ROM comic book. ROM the Space Knight, as you recall was a popular electronic action figure from Parker Brothers in 1979 that went on to start in his own Marvel comic book in the 80’s. Now he is back thanks to IDW and sporting his original look!
 Issue 1 toy variant cover
Vince Brusio over at DIAMOND PREVIEWS have done a an interview with ROM writer Chris Ryall. We have a snip it of it below as well as the cover and 2 variant covers to the first issue.
Who doesn’t like to reminisce over their revered retro playthings? How can you resist stepping out of your regular routine to do a time warp, where all the time was yours to imagine yourself far away in worlds where they need you? For some of us, those adventures were acted out with toys. And for those growing up in the 70s, one of the coolest toys was ROM. Now Chris Ryall gives us an exclusive interview to tell us that his reverence for the Space Knight has finally paid off in that IDW Publishing will launch ROM #1 (MAY160373) for an ongoing series starting in July 2016.
PREVIEWSworld: If you could geek for a moment about this project, what would you say about its production that gives you the most joy? Is it seeing the finished art? Having the creative freedom to come up with new adventures? Let us peek behind the publishing curtain.
Chris Ryall: I’d say it’s two-fold, or maybe three-fold. One is just knowing that we’re bringing ROM back like this, and sharing the work with Bill Mantlo’s brother and caretaker, Michael, as well as taking to Sal about it and having him involved. And then there’s the idea of working up the stories with Christos and David, creating new characters and universe around ROM, and plotting out his story. I’ve written a lot of titles for IDW but never done an ongoing series, so the idea of setting up subplots in the way we’ve been doing is a lot of fun. And seeing initial fan reaction and seeing the fan anticipation is also really nice.
But really, there’s still no comparison to seeing your words come to life through an artist’s pen. That will always be my favorite part of comic-book collaborations: seeing pages starring ROM, knowing we’re bringing back ROM in such a nice way thanks to David’s talents, as well as all the great people doing covers for the book. It’s as good as it gets.
You can read the rest of the interview here.
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