Trivia / Rom: Spaceknight

• Colbert Bump: Thanks to Linkara's retrospective on the comic.
• Exiled from Continuity:
  • Ever since Marvel Comics lost rights to the character, Rom hasn't been so much as acknowledged in the Marvel Comics universe. Interestingly, though, since the rights only extended to the title character and the Dire Wraiths, literally everything else in Rom's story can still be used. As such, Space Knights and Hybrid have shown up again even after Rom's continuity exile and Rom himself eventually returned in his human form, having taken the name Artour, thus circumventing the aspects of the character still owned by Hasbro, namely the name Rom and his armored appearance.
  • Because only the character Rom and his enemies the Dire Wraiths were ultimately claimed by Hasbro, they and IDW Publishing (the current owners to Rom's comic book rights, as with most other Hasbro properties) cannot use any characters and elements created by Marvel, such as the Dire Wraiths' connection to the Skrulls.
  • This exile has created problems whenever Marvel's tried to collect the eras of characters who crossed over with Rom: For example, a Power Man and Iron Fist collection that had to feature Issue #73 could only include the parts of the story without Rom, and had to recap the rest with a summary that could only call Rom a "Silver Alien Cyborg".
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: After Marvel stopped licensing the title character from Hasbro, reprints of the comic were out of the question. They were allowed to republish some crossover appearances (e.g., with the X-Men), but the main series itself remained off limits. This remained true until January 2024, when Marvel reprinted the first third of the series (including the Power Man and Iron Fist crossover) in a paper and digital omnibus edition. A facsimile copy of issue #1 was also released.

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