It’s taken the natural course of events for it to be revealed, but it has been discovered that Hasbro has filed for a trademark for the property of ROM, the Spaceknight toy from the 1980′s. While this in and of itself may not actually lead to anything as it could just be a bit of standard clerical and legal work, it could by a portent of things to come as Hasbro continues to look for properties it owns for various interpretations. The original work was filed for patent back in 1978, making it thirty six years ago, and that was done when it was a part of the Parker Brothers family.
ROM: Spaceknight has been one of the more problematic properties for fans over the years as while the toy that was released pretty much ended up being a massive flop, it found a significant and intriguing life in comic book form as Marvel Comics had taken it on in 1970. The book, which had Frank Miller doing the cover for the first issue, had an entirely open world to it as writer Bill Mantlo and artist Sal Buscema were given pretty much nothing to work with besides the design. The character largely worked as a standalone piece for awhile but ended up becoming a part of the larger Marvel Universe as time went on. So much so that the character became a part of the galactic side of the series, had the character of Rick Jones from the Hulk as a friend and partner and had a lengthy and – in my opinion – awesome arc in the early 1980′s involving the Dire Wraiths, who were cousins of sorts of the Skrulls with their own agenda. That spread into other books as time went on and we had X-Men appearances and some really fun Soviet characters as well.
Unfortunately, when the rights lapsed and Marvel was without it anymore, the works from there have been out of print and gone ever since, which has been one of those minor tragedies in the history of the Marvel Comics world.
With the trademark filing, it does open a lot of possibilities as you could see Hasbro trying to monetize it through a feature or introduce it into the comics world again, such as has been done with a number of IDW properties that Hasbro has, but with the entire concept of the character being owned by Marvel since it was their work based on the toy, they’d be starting from scratch. So we’re hoping it’s a re-license to Marvel at some point to at least try and bring the seventy-five issue run out again.
[Source: Comics Alliance]