ROM (IDW)

From 1979 to 1986, Marvel Comics published a series about some weird silver alien who hunted shapeshifting aliens.

Now he's back.

Set in the same universe as Transformers Robots in Disguise, ROM is a Darker and Edgier reboot penned by Promoted Fanboy Chris Rayall.

Tropes used in ROM include:

• Aborted Arc: A lot due to the compressed wrap up of the Hasbro Comic Universe, but the most prominent is Dr. Leonard Song building an interface to allow for remote control of Rom's armor.
• Adaptation Name Change: In the original comic, Rom was a "Spaceknight". Here's he a "Space Knight". That's how you get around trademarks.
• Adaptation Species Change: Since IDW can't use any of Marvel's intellectual properties, Rom is now an Elonian instead of a Galadorian.
• Adapted Out: Wraithworld was destroyed 200 years before the series started.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Save for one or two exceptions, the Wraiths live only to conquer.
• Always Second Best: Despite how often the Space Knights speak of how dangerous the Wraiths are, if another villain is in the room, the Wraiths will always be portrayed as the less competent and less powerful of the baddies.
• Amazing Technicolor Population:
  • The Elonians can be blue or red.
  • Orphion's people are blue snakes while Fy-Laa's are green bipeds.
  • The Dire Wraiths can be blue, purple, brown or green depending on the artist.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Scylla and Charybdis.
• Bigger Bad:
  • The Wraith Goddess, the Presence.
  • Shockwave. His Ore-12 on Elonia started the war. And his machinations as Onyx Prime created the Dire Wraiths when the Thirteen Primes invaded Elonia.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: The Wraiths are described as being very much like parasites needing to infect a sentient first before assuming their form.
• Blood Knight: Livia and Orphion.
• Canon Welding: Space Knight armor is Shockwave's Ore-12.
• Character Shilling: The Dire Wraiths are often hyped up as a dangerous interstellar power but very little across the HCU supported this, them usually being portrayed as less intelligent than the other baddies and only being even remotely threatening thanks to being able to pull off a Zerg Rush. Aside from the Space Knights, it seems that most people in the HCU don't take them seriously.
• Did You Just Scam Cthulhu?: At the end, Baron Karza betrays the Wraith Goddess, trapping the Entropy Cloud within its dimension, while he escape back to Microspace.
• The Dreaded:
  • Rom to the Dire Wraiths.
  • Zig-zagged for the Dire Wraiths. While earlier issues painted them as this, later ones would seem to have everyone regard them as a bad joke. Could be a case of Villain Decay as a result of losing much of their high command in Revolution.
  • The Cybertronians to most in the galaxy, Wraiths included.
• Earth Is the Center of the Universe: And Orphion ponders if this means it should be spared or destroyed.
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: Orphion so wants to invoke this.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The Energy Analyzer. It analyzes one's energy to see if they're a Wraith or not.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • The Wraiths and Solstar Order, of course, hate each other.
  • The Wraiths look down on humans.
  • The Solstar Order is not fond of Cybertronians.
• Happy Ending Override: Rom & The Micronauts ended in a more Bittersweet Ending than a happy one but everyone's hard work to defend Elonia is undone when Unicron feasts on it.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Rom. Unsurprisingly, disintegrating people at random isn't very good for PR. Averted post-Revolution but everyone thinks the Space Knights are Autobots.
• Heroic Willpower: There are a precious few individuals with will strong enough to expel the Wraiths such as Camilla, Acroyear, and Ultra Magnus.
• Humanity Is Infectious: And in Orphion's opinion not in a good way as it's made Rom soft.
• Humans Are Bastards: Orphion's opinion of us after reading the internet.
• Humans Are Special: Rom's opinion. Orphion doesn't agree by gives Rom a chance to prove it.
• Hypocrite: As Soundwave points out, the Solstar Order looks down on Cybertronians for endless war as well as shattering worlds and killing without mercy. Guess what the Space Knights do to the Dire Wraiths.
• Large Ham: ROM.
• Magic Is Evil: The Wraiths worship magic and are Always Chaotic Evil.
• Magic Versus Science: Like in the original series.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The Super Mode of the Energy Analyzer looks like its original toy.
  • Mantlo Park is named after Bill Mantlo who penned much of the original ROM comic.
  • The older Neutralizers are patterned after the one that came with the first Rom toy.
• Named by the Adaptation: Inverted. Space Knight armor was called "Plandanium" in the original comic but has no official name here.
• No Ending: While all properties but Transformers were affected with this, to one degree or another, by Transformers: Unicron, ROM gets hit with it very hard as neither Wraiths nor Space Knights have any noticeable advantage over the other when the Chaos Bringer is defeated.
• One-Hit Kill: The Neutralizer (usually) has this effect on Dire Wraiths.
• One Riot, One Ranger: Subverted. While Rom arrives on Earth alone to do his duty, Space Knights travel in pairs. Rom's partner died and Rom didn't ask for a new one something Orphion is livid about.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Orphion though it takes some digging to find it.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Rom gives Orphion one in issue 9. Orphion agrees with it.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Inverted for the Knights but played straight for the Wraiths.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Rom and Darby Mason.
• Shout-Out:
  • It's probably just asset recycling, but a lot of Elonian space vehicles are from from IDW's Star Trek ongoing.
  • Darby references Star Wars and the Trojan War when discussing their plan to make Rom a Trojan Prisoner.
  • D'rge enjoys quoting the New Testament.
  • The crack that Orphion explores in issue #14 seem based on the cracks in time.
• Squishy Wizard: For all their power, the Wraiths are very easy to kill.
• Swiss Army Weapon: The Neutralizer.
• Token Good Teammate: Orphion and Livia aren't evil, but Rom is clearly the most merciful.
• Touched by Dire Wraiths: Camilla Byers.
• Trigger Happy: If something is strange, the Space Knights shoot it.
• Unexplained Recovery: Despite being absorbed by Baron Karza, Caleb Awan shows up fine in issue 10. It's implied he was one of the Wraiths that Karza ejected from himself to fight off Victorion.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: As Soundwave and Optimus point out, Rom is fine with killing Dire Wraiths without trial but draws the line at harming humans. Though they're evil, the Wraiths are sentient beings and the Solstar Order is sponsoring a genocide.