[Guest review by Chris Schillig, who blogs at Monkey on My Back.]

Combine Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Day the Earth Stood Still, mix with a dollop of Chariots of the Gods, sprinkle in the Green Lantern Corps, and then bake in an oven of late 1970s/early 1980s Marvel Comics. What do you get?

ROM: The Original Marvel Years Vol. 1, written by Bill Mantlo and illustrated by Sal Buscema.

This 2024 omnibus reprints the first 29 issues of ROM, which ran from 1979 to 1986. The titular hero, a shiny cyborg from the planet Galador, arrives on Earth after a 200-year pursuit of the Dire Wraiths, shapeshifting villains who ravaged ROM’s own world. Instead of landing in New York City, Chicago, or Los Angeles, ROM crashes just outside Clairton, West Virginia, a small town that appears to have been taken directly from the backlot of Universal Studios, B-movie home of many alien invasions.

ROM himself is a slightly less angsty version of the Silver Surfer, which is to say that he’s just this side of Jesus. Our hero is willing to sacrifice his own humanity to save Earth, even though its denizens take him at face value as a maruading alien. It doesn’t help that ROM’s twin tools to reveal and dispatch the evil Dire Wraiths — his analyzer and neutralizer, respectively — look like high-tech, extraterrestrial weapons, or that his cyborg circuitry alone can see the gelatinous true forms of the Wraiths. To everybody else, they look like humans who have been reduced to ash by a big silver robot. From this misunderstanding comes much of the plot of the first handful of issues, which gets old fast.

Fortunately, however, readers can see Mantlo’s storyline expand and grow more ambitious after the first few stories in this collection. Slowly at first, and then with more assuredness, Mantlo ushers ROM into the larger Marvel universe. This begins with a cameo by Doctor Strange, grows with the introduction of S.H.I.E.L.D., and eventually culminates in a wild interstellar saga that includes the Skrulls and Galactus. Along the way, the writer finds novel ways to reintroduce a plethora of B-listers: the Plunderer (brother of Ka-Zar, Marvel’s Tarzan wannabe), the Mad Thinker and his Awesome Android, the Space Phantom, and the Missing Link.

The perfect marriage of the title and the larger Marvel universe comes in issues #17 and #18, when ROM faces the New X-Men in a terrifying story set during a Midwest blizzard. This was the time when the X-Men were gaining traction quickly as Marvel’s top-tier title and guest appearances in other books were almost obligatory, but Mantlo makes it work by giving the team a valid reason to fight ROM, along with a true character-defining moment for Kitty Pryde, the least experienced mutant on the team.

Some of the stories here suffer from being read in one sitting, when the need to recap not only the previous issue but ROM’s entire raison d’etre becomes distracting. The least offensive of these summaries lasts for just two or three panels. Others go on for pages, coupled with reminders that ROM loves Brandy Clark, the first woman he met on our planet; that Brandy loves ROM; and that Steve Jackson, Brandy’s boyfriend, is both jealous and self-berating because he recognizes the space knight’s innate nobility.

Similarly, the then-Marvel mantra that heroes must first fight one another before realizing they are on the same side is on full display here. It happens in nearly every story, whether with the Jack of Hearts (where’s he these days?), the Torpedo, or Nova. Excise the fight scenes and many issues demonstrate only a threadbare plot. Not too annoying at one issue a month, but very distracting all in one go.

But these are secondary concerns. Mantlo deserves praise for swinging for the fences, storywise, with ROM and a concurrent series, The Micronauts. Because both were licensed properties, it must have been tempting to just phone in the plots, but he instead populates both titles with multiple supporting characters who change and grow as the issues progress. Here in ROM, that means the solitary hero eventually wins over the populace of Clairton, creating an almost team-like environment. Mantlo also introduces a veritable army of ROM’s fellow spaceknights, including Terminator and Starshine, who co-star in a backup feature in several issues.

Artist Sal Buscema is a large part of the series' success. He pencils and inks the first 19 issues, and is then joined by Fantastic Four legend Joe Sinnott on inks for the remaining stories in this volume. While Sinnott adds a definite polish to the proceedings, Buscema’s solo work is looser and more lifelike, and the man can draw the hell out of any idea Mantlo can conceive. He also manages to invest ROM, whose facial features consist of two red eyes glowing out of a high-tech toaster, with a surprisingly full range of emotions. One can only imagine the artist seeing the ROM toy for the first time and wondering how he was going to do anything with that design, and then sitting down at his drawing board to figure it out in all the best ways.

The omnibus comes with an enjoyable introduction by Chris Ryall, who co-helmed a revival of ROM for IDW a few years back. It also includes promotional ads, reproductions of original art, and all the letters pages, where Mantlo himself often answers his readers, helping to perpetuate the reader camaraderie that made old-school Marvel so special.

ROM has been fondly remembered for decades. ROM: The Original Marvel Years Vol. 1 demonstrates why, as the creative team transcends its inspirations to create a unique work.