Spaceknight Saturdays: Many Happy Returns

Rom Annual #3 is a benchmark issue of the series, and one of the only three issues I had to my name before embarking on this project and getting everything else from my local comic shop's long boxes (thanks Rémi!). Among the returns heralded in this post's title: A member of Rom's rogue's gallery, a member of his supporting cast (both of which I'll reveal in due course), and my favorite inking team of all time, Akin & Garvey. The day these two left Rom Spaceknight was a dreary one indeed. I'm glad for just one issue inked by the duo (over Wm. Johnson's pencils, this time). Oh and a Bill Sienkiewicz cover too!

But let's get right into it with a shot of juvenile Dire Wraith drilling a kindergarten teacher in front of her students.
Starshine bursts in with the Light Eyes and everything, but only Rom realizes that she's just making the kids' therapy bills shoot up.
I mean, as if day care wasn't expensive enough! They take the fight outside to the river, and though Starshine is more than happy to boil the last Wraith to death, Rom, ever the reasonable one, banishes it to Limbo. But something escapes from Limbo! Something... scummy.
Ah man, I grew up in a paper mill town and there was stuff exactly like this in the river! I never suspected Wraith activity. Not in MY town. That's how they getcha. The pond scum finds "simple folk" down in Kentucky performing a baptism, and resolves itself into a humanish shape.
Who is this handsome young man who might or might not be played by Sam Neil with numbers shaved into his head? I'm not telling yet.

Kentucky is the home state of one Sam Guthrie AKA Cannonball of New Mutants fame (if the New Mutants can be said to hold any fame at all), and as it turns out, Professor X and his class are there for a visit. By coincidence, the young man who used to be river scum has been adopted by the Guthries' preacher, whose church is being menaced by a forest fire (not going well for Cumberland, KY). The New Mutants are on the case!
I especially love the locals' faces. If it were always that easy.
Rom and Starshine are also drawn to Kentucky by a SHIELD esper who apparently detects... Colonel Kurtz?
Nah, it's not. The evil son of a preacher man is none other than... HYBRID!
The icky super-powerful child of a Wraith and a human is back and he wants to make Brandy "Starshine" Clark his bride! To top it off, he banishes Rom to Limbo and forces him to watch as a phantom!

Step 1: Get Brandy out of the ghastly armor and into something even ghastlier.
Step 2: Totally PWN the New Mutants, turn all the boys into best men and all the girls into MORE BRIDES.
Step 3: Decorate the church... the Church of Rock!
Oops, he sorta missed Magik there, and her ability to teleport to Limbo. That's how Rom gets out of his predicament and in a position to ONCE AGAIN CRASH BRANDY'S WEDDING!

Step 4: Kiss the bride.
All together now: Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. Illyana, will you please?
Thanks. That snaps Brandy out of it and seeing Rom's Neutralizer on the ground, she grabs it and tracks it on Hybrid.
That's dangerous! Mjolnir-like, only Rom can hold the damn thing without psychic feedback frying his brain cells. But Professor X shields her from the worst of it. She barely makes it.
And that's how Rom finds his lady love again who, despite the leather togs here, has never looked more beautiful. Purged of the Starshine armor, she finds her heart. Awwww... And then falls into a coma for we don't know how long.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!

Next: "The beginning of the end of the world!" Promises.