Rom First Strike #1

Written by: Christos Gage
Art by: Chris Panda
Colors by: David Garcia Cruz
Published by: IDW Publishing

Coming off of a pretty fun outing in First Strike Micronauts #1, we get to enjoy the continuation of this mini-story within the bigger event as  the Micronauts now have to confront Rom in a typical hero vs. hero-style fight. However, Gage makes it not-so typical by changing up the trope somewhat in an enjoyable twist.

We begin the issue where the last one-shot left off: with Rom encountering the Micronauts for the first time and instantly mistaking them for Wraiths. The Micronauts, not willing to back, approach this fight in two ways: direct assault on a much larger opponent and to try and reason with Rom with actual logical thinking. After tempers subside and order is restored among the heroes, Rom and his new bite-size colleagues look to determine what exactly the Wraiths’ plan was and discovers that the end goal is to release their contagion to the world from, of all places, an amusement park.

The ensuing battle demonstrates the inventiveness of the Micronauts within the battle with the wraiths as not only do they figure out how to stop an airborne contagion, but also determine the best course of action to get rid of it and the wraiths at the same time. To be quite honest, Rom was more of a side character in his own one-shot throughout the issue.

As a side story to the bigger First Strike event, Rom First Strike delivered in a way I was not expecting: it allowed me to get to know the characters of the Micronauts a lot better and Rom a little bit more. I had read of the character in the past but never understood the appeal before. Now, I have a better understanding. I also quite enjoyed Gage’s use of the hero vs. hero tropes and how he was able to twist it just enough to not make the fight actually make sense. Too often in superhero comics, the hero vs. hero battle makes no sense and goes counter to the actual characters involved.

Christ Panda on art, with colours by Garcia Cruz, also impressed me in his take on the Micronauts and Rom. One of the first difficulties in combining these two franchises is to make both seems important on the page and not diminish each other. This is especially true when one of the characters, Rom, is probably hundreds of times larger than his compatriots. At times the scaling of the characters was a little off - the scene where Rom waits on the repairs of the Micronauts ship - but for the most part, you could tell that the Micronauts were not as big as Rom visually. Gage also added some tidbits here and there in the dialogue to also put that point across. I’d like to give special mention to Garcia Cruz’s colours: they are bright, vibrant, and jump off the page.