28 May 2012

Dire Wraiths in Your Bedroom!

Here's one I'd almost forgotten about.  I was in a local Big Lots, IIRC, back in January 2002, when I spotted a mattress.  The fabric on it had a space theme, much like I've seen on children's mattresses since Star Wars came out back when I was just a kid.  This one, however, didn't exclusively have knock-offs of Star Wars ships on it.  It featured a variety, including this one:


Look familiar?  It should.  It's pretty obviously based on a Dire Wraith warship:


Whoever created this apparently drew from multiple sources.  In addition to the Drakillar, there's also the Death Star and the Beauty, the heroes' ship from the early issues of Jim Starlin's Dreadstar.  Here's a slightly zoomed out view.  I'm sorry I didn't get a view of the entire pattern.


I'd guess they didn't know they'd actually be giving kids who were fans of an '80s, toy-based comic book nightmares because the bad guys had infiltrated their bed!  (But okay, that's gotta be a teeny, tiny minority by 2002.)

Shifting gears, I'm worried about maintaining this schedule from here on.  I'd managed to build up a queue of scheduled posts at first.  Unfortunately, life got busy again and the queue is now almost drained.  This post was written Sunday night so the blog wouldn't be missing a post come Monday morning after being weekly for so long.  The post I'd planned for today wasn't getting written in the time that was left.  It seems I've almost exhausted all the quick and easy topics and what's left are those that take more time to research,  write, and/or scan. There will be a post in a week, because it's already done.  After that, however, don't panic if it takes more than a week between posts.  We'll see what happens.

7 comments:

  1. LOVE!
    I would sleep on those.
    (Of course, I can't speak for my wife.)
    But really, I'd keep 'em safe in their plastic womb...

    As for your schedule, I understand.
    I'm so far behind and life is NOT letting up on me.
    Just do what you can knowing that whenever you post, you have people who appreciate it.

    Now seriously, I need to get those sheets.
    lol

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    1. Sorry if I wasn't clear, Ptor, but like Gary says, this is the fabric actually attached to the mattress, not sheets on it. Not to say someone, somewhere mightn't have made sheets out of the same fabric.

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  2. My 6 & 4 year olds are sleeping on these right now. We bought a used bunkbed just a few months ago and this exact fabric covering is stapled onto the mattress frames (in other words can't be removed; it's like a mattress & boxspring in one, I guess that's typical of a bunkbed?). No idea if it originally came with matching sheets, pillowcases, etc. But my wife and I were carrying the bed out of these peoples' house & I said "aaaaah! Dire Wraiths!!!!!" *blank stares*

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  3. correction Lee, the Drakillars are the bat shaped dire wraith ships first seen in ROM #16 (back story). the ship there i believe was always refereed to as simply a dire wraith warship.

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  4. I think you're mostly on the money Shlomo, the text on that panel in Saga of the Spaceknights makes it clear the darker purple "bat-winged battle craft" are Drakillars. Did they ever appear in print again? Hulk #262 shows one crashing, I think. Anyway, there's definitely a mindset that the pinker ship with a face is called Drakillar too. The source of this might be Marvel itself: see http://marvel.wikia.com/Drakillar (also Bill Mantlo didn't make it easy on us by reusing the name for bat creatures in Hulk & Rocket Raccoon). I personally, like you Shlomo, have trouble calling it Drakillar since I don't think the comics themselves ever did (text in ROM #1 does say "wingfighter", and Annual #2 "battlecruiser", but generally the series said "warships" or "fleet" since there were always a whole bunch of them together). This is the kind of thing I'll try to remember to keep an eye out for when I more closely re-read my "Legend Of ROM" this summer.

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  5. Oops, you're right Shlomo. That's what I get for relying on the Internet when I look for something. Sorry to say I'm just as imperfect a Rom fan as any. (BTW, Gary, the Wikia site isn't an official Marvel wiki. That's at http://marvel.com/universe.) I've updated this post to correct the error.

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    1. Cool, just found this response while looking around for new ROM stuff for the first time in a while.

      Neat, hadn't noticed that Wikia page wasn't official Marvel, it sure looks it.

      Hmm, searching Dire Wraiths at marvel.com it seems the only difference there is they don't show a picture of the pink ship; they put the name "Drakillar" to the whole battle fleet. There's a link to a page that should show more details, but it's blank; I don't think they've fully decided yet either.

      So, I'm sticking with battlecruiserwarshipwingfighterfleet.

      Until I have to type it again anyway. :-)

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