Another small but crucial Rom cameo is the cover for West Coast Avengers #1. There he is among Hawkeye's candidates for membership.
Of course, the mystery of who the new Avengers are isn't that deep. Not if you're good at matching silhouettes to the actual characters.
And so Hawkeye's choices were:
1-Himself: This is a no-brainer.
2-Iron Man: You want to the biggest gun on the west coast, and that's ol' shellhead. Little did Hawkeye know Tony was finding himself at the bottom of a bottle and would have to settle for the Rhodey model, which meant the Christmas armor in the monthly series.
3-Wonder Man: Guy lives in Hollywood and never got himself a fashion consultant, but he's pretty powerful.
4-Mockingbird: How could you ever face your wife after not picking her?
5-Tigra: Meow!
Ok, but classic Avengers teams are supposed to be six. Who's the 6th member of the WCA? Well, Hawkeye would spend the rest of the mini-series trying to answer that, and unsuccessfully at that! It would take a relatively long time even in the monthly series to get a 6th member. If his short list is on the cover, who would have been good?
6-Doc Samson: Enough super-strong characters already, and the quota was reached on that hairdo already.
7-Venus?: I'm not sure who that girl is, but Mockingbird obviously put her foot down. Hairdo quota and all that.
8-Cyclops: You're kidding, right? Filthy mutie wouldn't have left the X-Men.
9-Quicksilver: Another mutant, but having the virtue of having been an Avenger before, and one on Hawkeye's team. In other words, Clint knows quite well that he's a jackass and wouldn't have picked him.
10-Red Wolf: Really? Red Wolf?
11-Black Widow: At least Red Wolf is an American.
12-Namor: Isn't Namor usually based in the Atlantic Ocean? That would have been a long commute, even with the Panama Canal.
13-Hercules: Would have been great, but he was assigned to the East Coast team at the time and largely the reason I was reading that title. Cap wasn't having any trades.
14-Ant-Man: The team did wind up taking in Hank Pym, but this is the Scott Lang version. 'nuff said.
15-Puck: It's bad enough the Southern States are stealing hockey teams from Canada without sending one of our few Canadian heroes to sunny California.
16-Shroud: The mini teases us with the possibility of taking in this Daredevil wannabe, shadow-casting, fake mafia dude. I'll always wonder why it didn't work out.
So really, that only leaves...
17-Rom, Greatest of the Spaceknights: The West Coast Avengers roasting some Dire Wraith tail from Tijuana to Vancouver would have made some great comics. Admit it. A friend for Iron Man, a confidant for Tigra, jealous of Hawkeye and Mockingbird's love. Totally ignoring Wonder Man. The subplot write themselves. Of course, Rom is too big for a single team. He would have outgrown the WCA in about a minute and a half. So it's probably for the best.
Of course, the mystery of who the new Avengers are isn't that deep. Not if you're good at matching silhouettes to the actual characters.
And so Hawkeye's choices were:1-Himself: This is a no-brainer.
2-Iron Man: You want to the biggest gun on the west coast, and that's ol' shellhead. Little did Hawkeye know Tony was finding himself at the bottom of a bottle and would have to settle for the Rhodey model, which meant the Christmas armor in the monthly series.
3-Wonder Man: Guy lives in Hollywood and never got himself a fashion consultant, but he's pretty powerful.
4-Mockingbird: How could you ever face your wife after not picking her?
5-Tigra: Meow!
Ok, but classic Avengers teams are supposed to be six. Who's the 6th member of the WCA? Well, Hawkeye would spend the rest of the mini-series trying to answer that, and unsuccessfully at that! It would take a relatively long time even in the monthly series to get a 6th member. If his short list is on the cover, who would have been good?
6-Doc Samson: Enough super-strong characters already, and the quota was reached on that hairdo already.
7-Venus?: I'm not sure who that girl is, but Mockingbird obviously put her foot down. Hairdo quota and all that.
8-Cyclops: You're kidding, right? Filthy mutie wouldn't have left the X-Men.
9-Quicksilver: Another mutant, but having the virtue of having been an Avenger before, and one on Hawkeye's team. In other words, Clint knows quite well that he's a jackass and wouldn't have picked him.
10-Red Wolf: Really? Red Wolf?
11-Black Widow: At least Red Wolf is an American.
12-Namor: Isn't Namor usually based in the Atlantic Ocean? That would have been a long commute, even with the Panama Canal.
13-Hercules: Would have been great, but he was assigned to the East Coast team at the time and largely the reason I was reading that title. Cap wasn't having any trades.
14-Ant-Man: The team did wind up taking in Hank Pym, but this is the Scott Lang version. 'nuff said.
15-Puck: It's bad enough the Southern States are stealing hockey teams from Canada without sending one of our few Canadian heroes to sunny California.
16-Shroud: The mini teases us with the possibility of taking in this Daredevil wannabe, shadow-casting, fake mafia dude. I'll always wonder why it didn't work out.
So really, that only leaves...
17-Rom, Greatest of the Spaceknights: The West Coast Avengers roasting some Dire Wraith tail from Tijuana to Vancouver would have made some great comics. Admit it. A friend for Iron Man, a confidant for Tigra, jealous of Hawkeye and Mockingbird's love. Totally ignoring Wonder Man. The subplot write themselves. Of course, Rom is too big for a single team. He would have outgrown the WCA in about a minute and a half. So it's probably for the best.
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And while Matthew Turnage's logic is sound, I could picture Clint Barton asking Black Widow to join BECAUSE she was an ex, and he was hoping he could talk her and Mockingbird into...
Oh, wait, I'm thinking of Green Arrow again.