{"id":664,"date":"2010-01-20T17:11:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-20T22:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/2010\/01\/rom-64\/"},"modified":"2010-01-20T17:11:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-20T22:11:00","slug":"rom-64","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/?p=664","title":{"rendered":"ROM #64"},"content":{"rendered":"

I can’t stop thinking about this comic book! I can’t sleep! It’s driving me crazy!<\/p>\n

For starters it’s Ditko inked by P. Craig Russell and it’s Rom…! Ditko’s my guy. I think he’s up there with the greatest comic-book storytellers, right next to Carl Barks, Osamu Tezuka, Jack Kirby, and Gilbert Hernandez, and like those guys he has an idiosyncratic, functional line, especially when he ink’s himself. So it’s weird to have the fucking opera-comics-guy P. Craig Russell inking Ditko. Russell’s sharp, mechanical ink-work does very little for Ditko’s acting; the best faces are either at a remove and minimal, or just on the verge of Russell over powering Ditko’s worried, angry expressions. But! Russell’s precise draftsmanship does wonders for Ditko’s layouts! illuminating the “frozen music” of his single pages and spreads. I’ve been living with this page for days…<\/p>\n

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It’s ridiculous how intuitive the contour lines shape the reading composition of this page. And just about every page of this comic book is equally stunning with innovative and exciting techniques, all respectfully appropriate for the story, and virtually never to be seen again in what we’ve accepted as the American comic book. Blackest Night<\/em> indeed. Rom<\/em> #64 is the alternate path never taken: a wormhole to an alternative reality where a person doesn’t have to wade through shit and mire and deceit to find such pure light, a reality where shitty movies are adapted into awesome comic books and more people are occupied by Steve Ditko’s genius (I mean that!) and a quality color job (shout out to Petra Scotese!) rather than Tobey Maguire’s abs.<\/p>\n

BONUS FEATURE!<\/p>\n

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I’m compelled to assume that Ditko and co. weren’t aware what pages would be presented as spreads and what pages would be faced by ads, but because these are consecutive pages I’m equally compelled to assume they knew exactly what they’re doing. This spread in particular reminds me of Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan<\/em>.<\/p>\n

CREDITS:<\/p>\n

ROM\u2122 Vol. 1, No. 64, March, 1985
\nROM\u2122 copyright \u00a91984 Parker Brother
\nStory Title: Worldmerge!
\nStory: Bill Mantlo
\nArt: Steve Ditko & P. Craig Russell
\nLetters: Janice Chiang
\nColors: Petra Scotese
\nEditor: Mike Carlin
\nPrime Dork: Jim Shooter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I can’t stop thinking about this comic book! I can’t sleep! It’s driving me crazy! For starters it’s Ditko inked by P. Craig Russell and it’s Rom…! Ditko’s my guy. I think he’s up there with the greatest comic-book storytellers, right next to Carl Barks, Osamu Tezuka, Jack Kirby, and Gilbert Hernandez, and like those guys he has an idiosyncratic, functional line, especially when he ink’s himself. So it’s weird […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[994,1228],"class_list":["post-664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-russell","tag-ditko"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}