Rom: Spaceknight of Galidor, Member of the Solstar Order

Art reference for the one version of him no one can do anymore, the original Marvel Comics version that ran for 80 issues on the back of a toy that was on shelves for maybe a year.

A beautifully clumsy mix of retro-robot clunkiness and sleek superheroic design, Rom was the glue that held the Marvel Universe together for basically a decade, a the king of the crossover whose lore touched everything from Storm losing her powers to Rick Jones getting cured of cancer, and because Hasbro owns him, there's a toasterhead shaped hole in Marvel history that only a toy tie-in character can fill.

Dear Stardrive Seeker,

Not all newly-forged Cybertronians spend their early lives on Cybertron—always, there are those Cybertronians born with an instinctual thirst for adventure, who yearn to venture beyond the confines of their metallic homeworld. Thus, in the years following the War of the Threefold Spark, the Cybertronian government authorized the creation of a cultural exchange program between the Cybertronian commonwealth and some friendly galactic neighbors, an incentive program where newly forged Cybertronians could study abroad on a diverse range of planets, assimilating the local culture and language as part of a possible career in Xeno-Relations.

I should comment, briefly, on the history of the Solstar Order—it originated corewards of Cybertron, not far from the barricaded region of space known as the “Quintessence”, and expanded outwards not through conquest, but by carefully negotiating trade agreements and alliances with alien civilizations and gradually building a strong federation of many diverse species: Elonians, Intriessians, Karkans, and more. By the era of the Nominus Edict, the borders of the Solstar Order nearly bumped up against remote Cybertronian colonies like Velocitron and Omicron. Despite their proximity, the two star-nations had only ever enjoyed a strained relationship. The Solstar Order consolidated much of its recent power by absorbing the defeated remnants of other empires, smashed to bits by Cybertronian hegemony—in particular, a large contingent of Szorian refugees who’d seen their homeworld obliterated by the Titan Waypoint eyed the Transformers with a deep and abiding distrust. More recently, tensions flared when unscrupulous elements of the Cybertronian government conspired with the ambitious Natalus to abruptly declare that the planet Probat was a Cybertronian colony, despite the fact that no Cybertronians lived there—deliberately smashing years of careful accession agreements that would’ve seen the citizens of Probat join their galactic government.

Into this already-tense environment came Stardrive—already a model mentee with a rare triple-changing bodyframe, a knack for languages, and eying a possible career in Xeno-Relations—who announced that she would like to study abroad on the planet Elonia. The request, while highly unusual, went through, and before long Stardrive had arrived in Solstar space and enrolled in a xeno-linguistics program on the planet Ofsted XVII, with a minor in astro-navigation. Although she faced prejudice and even outright discrimination from many of her organic classmates—and indeed, more than one lecture hall had to be renovated so that she could fit into their classrooms—Stardrive persevered.

One day, Stardrive and her class were on a field trip to monitor the unique phenomenon known as the “Quintessence”, a seemingly insurmountable barrier of electrical energy that prevented the Solstar Order from expanding any closer to the galactic core. Suddenly, while monitoring the phenomenon aboard an orbital research station, Stardrive witnessed a bizarre astrological phenomenon: what appeared to be a nebula somehow shifted into a massive portal that crackled with arcane power, a gateway through which a new kind of shapeshifting lifeform came to attack their vessel! The creatures, their slug-like bodies immune to conventional weaponsfire, easily breached the station’s hull and devoured many of the beings inside. Those who survived were infected with toxic biomatter and converted into more of their kind. However, the invaders hadn’t prepared to deal with a Cybertronian, whose mechanical biology rendered her immune to their necrotic touch, and whose tight-beam plasma blasters could simply burn through their arcane biology. Fighting her way through the hordes, Stardrive piled as many students as she could—including their professor, Rom K’atsema—into her space fighter alternate mode, then beat a hasty retreat as the station exploded behind her.

By the time Stardrive limped back to Elonia, it soon became clear that the Solstar Order faced a grave crisis. The “Dire Wraiths”, as they were now called, had launched coordinated invasions of outlying worlds like Xeres and Buras, and lightly-armed planetary garrisons had already been overwhelmed. Although the Solstar Order’s celebrated diplomatic corps had long since assumed that they could defuse any problem with negotiations, it soon became clear that they were fighting an enemy that had no obvious means of communications, and would accept nothing less than total extinction. It soon became clear that the Solstar Order would need something new to combat the hordes… and, eventually, all eyes fell upon the one Cybertronian in their midst.

Before long, Solstar scientists had gathered enough firsthand testimony and video recordings to draw up a weapon capable of meeting the aliens head-on: a full-body suit of armor forged from artificially-synthesized cybertonium that would be cybernetically grafted to one’s skin, equipped with a plasma-blasting “neutralizer” powered by a miniature energon reactor. While the scientists referred to their creation as merely an “anti-Wraith battle armor”, it was Rom who joked that the suit resembled the knights of old—and so it was he who volunteered to become the first organic to undergo the procedure, and emerge as “Rom, the Space Knight!” Inspired by his example, other courageous members of the Solstar Order stepped up to undergo the process, and over time the efforts of these “Space Knights”, supported by Stardrive herself, gradually helped push the Wraiths back.

I mean, it’s sure looking like they might have.

Just...took one look at the orphan and went “I guess this is our daughter now”.

It also looks like Stardrive has happily reunited with space-dad Rom too, which is nice. It’s what she deserves.

Note: I actually hope this new little kid ends up following the family tradition and becoming a Space Knight too. 

She’s had a front row seat to a lot of chaos as well as heroism throughout Unicron. Makes sense she might be inspired and grow up to want to be a hero to!

And while the usual source of Ore to create a Space Knight is destroyed, we’ve seen that it’s regenerative. 

Such as how this here was Livia in 0, who we can see now is completely fine, with all the metal grown back:

From my collection: myROM00727

ROM Vol. 2 #9 (Variant Cover) (2017)