10 Comics Characters Who Randomly Disappear With No Explanation
5. Rom: Spaceknight
Marvel has a long history of creating characters and events in comics that correlate to toys. The company's most famous and successful venture in this regard was the Transformers series, which gave the characters names & backstories.
Rom: Spaceknight was an earlier attempt at printing money via a partnership with Hasbro, but the toys failed to sell, leaving Marvel with a property they continued to print throughout the late-'70s and 1980s. Rom made his first appearance in the pages of Forces in Combat #34 in 1977, and by 1979, he had his own series.
Rom ran for a total of 75 issues, and while it was conclusive, Rom continued to appear elsewhere in Marvel Comics. He popped up in a number of issues of various series over the years, but his last appearance in Marvel Comics came in Incredible Hulk #418 in 1994. He showed up to Rick Jones' wedding out of costume with his love interest, Brandy, but that was it.
An alternate version of Rom popped up in 2000, but it wasn't the same character. While it's unclear what Rom has been up to for the past few decades in the Marvel Universe, it is known why he no longer appears. Marvel lost the rights, and IDW scooped them up to publish their own series in 2016.