Sorry, no furry here for a couple of posts...
As some may know, I'm a BIG fan of the old Marvel comic, ROM:Spaceknight, and the fact that the character (particularly the term "Ultimate ROM") has become something of a punchline around the Marvel offices really sticks in my craw. SO, every so often, I get a bug up my butt to actually try to revamp him and his "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"-esque story with a more modern feel.
I've learned since my last effort that part of the problem with any potential revamps is that, actually, Marvel doesn't ACTUALLY own the character or his likeness; I believe, currently, Hasbro does, since they've bought out every toy and game company not named "Lego" or "Mattel," so any attempt to bring the character back has to be done without actually looking like or apparently being named after the original character. Sticky sitch.
While working on a potential character for an unrelated story, however, I designed this suit of Spaceknight armor; while doing so, I had an idle thought that it might actually look good on Rom...which suddenly started flipping all sorts of mental switches...
Following the naming conventions from the old comic (and an old char of mine with a similar name), this is Romega the Neutralizer, first of the Spaceknights of Galador, an order of alien cyborgs crafted with one purpose in mind: the extermination of the Dire Wraiths, a parasitic race of shapeshifters who once tried to slaughter the Galadorians before scattering to the far reaches of deep space. Clad in his silver armor, Romega possesses the power to scan and disrupt energy fields; at its lower settings, it could cure radiation poisoning or black out a city block...at its highest settings, it could tear apart a living creature's lifeforce, killing it instantly. However, since Rom himself has a personal code against killing, he uses this power mainly to detect and disrupt the electrochemical makeup of a body that's been duplicated and replaced by a Wraith, causing it to crumble to ash and "banishing" the creature's spirit to an ethereal limbo where it remains, trapped and harmless. Unfortunately, he quickly discovers that he is the ONLY one who can see the disguised Wraiths; to the humans of Earth, it looks like a giant silver robot walked up and disintegrated an innocent person in cold blood, something which the Wraiths quickly latch onto and exploit, turning Romega into a wanted serial killer pursued by the government.
I also made a couple of other minor changes, beyond internalizing the original's three pieces of equipment; potentially the biggest change is that, borrowing from the Starlin/Battista "Spaceknights" mini-series a few years back, Romega CAN assume a human form, placing his armor in a subspace pocket and allowing himself to walk somewhat freely among the humans. The biggest visible difference between his human form and us is his red irises, a holdover from his analyzer power; also, he's somewhat pale-looking (like in the original series, however, Rom's natural from looks like a Native American, with red-brown skin and black hair) because his blood has been replaced with a silver nanomolecular compound that allows him to operate his armor. I mean, let's face it, it was stretching credibility to have a 7-foot-tall silver "robot" able to hide in plain sight back in the late 70's; nowadays, it'd be downright ridiculous.
I have much more in mind for this idea, but thinking about one toy-based immigrant to the Marvel Universe made me think of another one, and how to tie him into Romega's story.