British Comic Stamps: Tiger

Here's the fifth of our ten posts to mark the release of the Royal Mail's Comic Collection, celebrating 75 years of British comics. The Royal Mail have kindly sent us large versions of each stamp, so we thought we'd show them off in all their glory, in the order of first comic publication

Tiger was published from 1954 to 1985, and featured predominantly sporting strips. Its most popular strip was Roy of the Rovers, recounting the life of Roy Race and the team he played for, Melchester Rovers. This strip proved so successful it was spun out of Tiger and into its own comic.

• There's more about Roy of the Rovers on his official web site: www.royoftherovers.com

• Stamps and stamp products are available at all Post Office branches, online at www.royalmail.com/personal/comic-stamps-and-collectibles, the Royal Mail eBay shop: http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Royal-Mail-Stamp-Collections and from Royal Mail Tallents House (tel. 08457 641 641), 21 South Gyle Crescent, Edinburgh, EH12 9PB.

Roy of the Rovers returns in special Daily Mail strip

The Daily Mail has published a special Roy of the Rover strip to mark this weekend's biggest match of the season, the 161st Manchester Derby.

Featuring Champions Manchester United versus super-rich City, the strip emphasizes it's the hottest ticket in football and United fan Neil Mason has managed to get his hands on a pair! It means Neil can take his seven-year-old son Ben - a new City follower - to his first ever Barclays Premier League match - but he spots a famous face in the crowd...

Written by Ian Rimmer, the strip is drawn by longtime Roy of the Rovers artist Barrie Mitchell.

"It's a one-off at the moment," Ian tells us, "but who knows..?"

I'm sure there are plenty of ROTR fans out there hoping there will be more.

• Read the strip: www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2051567/Roy-Rovers--Manchester-derby-Comic-book-hero-United-v-City.html

Roy of the Rovers © Egmont UK

Striker site down - but no early bath for the strip, says creator

Football comics seem to be getting it in the neck this month - after the demise of the print edition of Comic Football (due to return online later this year), fans have alerted us to say that the official Striker comic web site and forum have now gone down.

But don't be alarmed - the situation is only temporary, according to creator Pete Nash, who will be sorting out the problem, he hopes, in the next week, so fans will hopefully soon regain online access to the Striker strips.

Responding to concerns over the site's problems has also prompted Pete to reveal some tantalising hints that the strip - which used to be published The Sun and Nuts - is about to step into the limelight once more, in some form.

"As quiet as everything has been, there is a lot that has been going on with regard to Striker and the other projects, which I and the consortium I am working with hope will come to fruition by the end of the year," he told Striker fans.

"Sounds cryptic, I know, but confidentiality issues prevent me from saying more."

• Official Striker site: www.striker3d.com (not live at present)

Comic Football bounces back, looking for creators

We've got some good news about Comic Football, the national subscription-only comic that recently informed subscribers it had been cancelled.

It seems that this is only part of the story - the comic will return later this year, but in a new, free online format.

Because of this change of direction, Hinckley-based publishers Comic Football Ltd. stopped taking and have refunded subscriptions for the national version of the comic. It's hoped the digital re-launch as a web comic with a brand new site will happen before Christmas.

The new web comic will be constantly updated and free, hence no subscriptions. There's also iPad, Android and Kindle apps in the pipeline, but more about that when it happens.

The bottom line for the company is that it's responding to the fast-changing world of publishing, particularly as the move to digital platforms gathers pace. New technologies means the market is changing and nobody is quite sure how to launch a comic these days - or even re-launch one, it seems, in some cases.

"They've tried it one way, now they're going to try it another way, and they'll keep on trying until they hit on a sustainable market model," an insider told us.

In the meantime, the company's activities producing comics for individual football clubs - their core business - is going very well. They just signed up with Celtic and Doncaster Rovers, and already deliver publications for Manchester City, Newcastle, Stoke City, Wolves, Wigan, Derby County and Aston Villa, with more in the pipeline.

The company's main activities are bespoke comics for junior fans, featuring the club's mascot, club-based comic strips, player or match strips and packed full of features, aiming to be a comic tailored uniquely for a team's junior membership, acting as a marketing and promotional product, or as a retail product for club shops ... or even made available through the local news trade.

Alongside dedicated club features, Club Football also offers a catalogue of great characters that can be featured in the comics, aiming to help clubs capture the next generation of fans and give them something exciting in return.

Their work is being well received, too. "Comic Football has offered us innovative and well-crafted content that has lit up the junior section of our award-winning Manchester City programme," says Ian Guildford from Ignition Publications.

We're also told they're still on the lookout for artists, so submissions are welcome.

• Creators should send reasonably-sized samples to peteATcomicfootball.co.uk or by post to Comic Football Ltd., 12, Darley Abbey Mills, Darley Abbey, Derby DE22 1DZ

• Official web site: www.comicfootball.co.uk

Comic Football sent off

(Updated 13:24 4/10/11) We're sorry to report the demise of Comic Football, the subscription-only title - after just three issues.

Subscribers have just received a letter advising of the title's "temporary suspension" and the return of any subscription money owed - but the letter holds out the promise that the comic may return in future.

Comic Football was launched earlier this year by Hinckley-based publishers Comic Football Ltd. and featured strips by artists such as Karl Dixon, Nick Brennan and Duncan Scott.

The 32-page title was the latest spin on a number of football comics such as Rammie created by the company, which is sold at the Derby County matches (href="http://downthetubescomics.blogspot.com/2008/11/new-football-comic-
launches.html">see 2008 news story). The company now publishes several club-specific comics, including titles for Manchester City and many others in the Premier League. As well as being on sale at grounds, these have limited distribution in local newsagents where the clubs are based.

As we reported back in June, Comic Football was planned as a more general purpose football comic, available only by subscription. A subscription to Comic Football cost £9.99 for six months (six issues) or 12 months for £19.50.

The title's web site (www.comicfootball.co.uk) has yet to announce the title's demise.

See also: Crystal Knights: Comic Football: Supsended!

Striker Comic Archive released Free online

Football comic Striker is to have its entire 25-year archive made available to read free on its official website, striker3d.com.

The library has been launched with the release of the first seven stories from 1985 to 1987 and new episodes will be added every day.

Striker appeared daily in The Sun until September, 2009 and then featured for nine months as a weekly page in lads magazine Nuts.

“I want to concentrate on new writing projects." says Creator Pete Nash, "but this is a great way of keeping Striker alive for years to come.

“With the exception of the first three years of strips which were printed in a 1990 book, the stories have never been republished following their appearances in The Sun.

“Many of Striker’s fans have never seen these early stories and the ones who have will be able to enjoy a daily trip down Memory Lane.

“My old employers at News International are putting their content behind a paywall but if I did that with Striker it would end up being pirated and there would be a smaller readership.

“Making it available free is an experiment but if enough people read the archives then a profit can be made from advertising.”

The striker3d.com website is being developed, hosted and funded by Isle of Man-based business solutions company Intelligence Ltd.

Steve Woodford, the company’s Chief Executive, said: “I had never read Striker before but I was coming across so many people saying how much they missed it after it ended in The Sun that I decided to check it out.

“The episodes can be funny or dramatic but always compelling. It seemed to me that having a quarter of a century of stories like these that are popular with both young and old readers alike was an opportunity not be missed.”

•  View the Striker archive at: striker3d.com

Striker on the Subs Bench Again...

Episodes of the 1987 Striker
story 'Dirty Money'. The strip
today is published in CGI.
Striker © 2010 Pete Nash.

Long-running football strip Striker’s run in Nuts magazine will come to an end next month, creator Pete Nash reports.

Sadly for Striker fans who have followed the strip from The Sun to its weekly own comic, then back to the daily paper once more and now, Nuts, the magazine has told Pete they haven’t been able to secure a sponsor which means the income is insufficient to cover the artwork and production costs.

Striker, which has been produced as a Computer Generated strip for several years, has previously been sponsored by big brands such as Virgin.

"It simply isn’t viable to continue," Pete told fans on the official StrikerWorld web forum, revealing the last issue of Nuts featuring Striker will be the one from 5-11 October.

"There will be no big bang ending, just a wrapping up of the current story," he added, before also noting that this might, finally, be the last hurrah for the strip.

"I am long enough in the tooth to know you should never say never but I don’t see any likelihood of Striker re-emerging elsewhere," he says. "Twenty five years is a hell of a run and I feel the time to stop, or at least take a substantial break, is probably overdue. I am finally going to concentrate on my other writing projects."

Striker today. Find out how it's
produced here on the official
Strikerworld web site

Despite the bad news for the strip, there is some good news for its fans - the StrikerWorld web site, which is publishing an archive of past strips, is doing well and Intelligence Ltd – its designers and hosts – are committed to keeping the archive and forum going.

"We are going to shoot a promotional video for the archive to host on Youtube," Pete reports, "so hopefully visitor traffic will improve and the forum will eventually attract more members."

• Visit the StrikerWorld web site at: www.striker3d.com

• Pete's guide to producing Striker in CG

Doctor Who artist conjures iconic Football Moment for new print

Former Doctor Who comic artist Richard Piers Rayner has produced a limited edition print recreating one of football's most iconic moments, when Pele and Bobby Moore were pictured swapping shirts.

The original photograph, taken by John Varley at the Estadio Jalisco Stadium in Guadalajara, Mexico, on June 7 1970, shows the players together after England's Group C defeat to Brazil.

The then world champions were effectively handing over the baton of world supremacy to the champions-elect and the world's greatest-ever player.

Stockton-born Richard, who these days is artist in residence at Middlesbrough Football Club, contributed the stunning six part tale Evening's Empire to the Doctor Who mythos in the 1990s (also set in Middlesbrough and written by TV series script editor Andrew Cartmel), but is probably best known to comics fans for his work on the graphic novel Road To Perdition, which inspired the Hollywood blockbuster starring screen legends Tom Hanks and Paul Newman.

Richard has worked with "Boro" for a number of years, producing a wide range of artwork representing historic and contemporary events at the club. Chosen from a host of quality applicants for the post, which allows him to get close to the matchday action, his drawings have become a popular feature in the club programme over recent years and several line the main stairway of the Riverside Stadium as part of the club's Artist in Residence project.

"I loved the rare and irresistible opportunity to recreate one of sports defining images," says Richard of this commission, now on sale as a limited edition print from YPF Publishing.

"In a brief moment at the end of the game opponents acknowledge the sportsmanship of their contest. There is no better reason to call it the Beautiful Game and no better challenge than to bring all that colour and drama back to life."

• Limited edition signed and numbered prints (measuring 33cm x 44cm) of the painting, titled 'Mutual Respect', are available for £175, including courier dispatch and first-class packing. These prints are not framed but come fully mounted and ready for framing on high quality art paper. A black-wooded framed version is available for £225 (inclusive of delivery).


• Visit www.yfppublishing.com for more details.

Striker Heads Into the Net

Long-running soccer strip Striker recently came to an end in The Sun - catching many fans by surprize, even though creator Pete Nash had been saying for some time he planned to end the saga. But, after 24 years of publication, both in The Sun and as a self-published nationally-distributed comic, Pete still hopes the series will enjoy new life in new forms - including the online publication of the first ever adventure on myebook.

When Striker came to a conclusion earlier this month, Pete, tells downthetubes he had a holiday, a little relived at no longer being beholden to the deadlines the strip imposed on his life. But on his return he was gobsmacked to find his inbox full of emails from anxious fans, wondering what had happened to their favourite football comic, as The Sun itself had given no indication it was coming to an end!

"I received hundreds of them and they're still arriving," says Pete, "so I hope fans will forgive me for not replying to each one personally." Instead he is posting news about the strip's post-Sun developments on www.striker3d.net, which has long been its official internet home. This includes hopes Pete's long-held dream that the Striker saga will become a blockbuster movie or TV series as well as releasing the entire archive into a volume of books available in print.

"I have been warmed by so many kind comments and somewhat surprised by the strength of feelings expressed," Pete told fans via the StrikerWorld forum (registration required), also revealing the ending of Striker was rather more rushed than he would have liked because The Sun decided to stop the Saturday pages in August, so he had to reduce the final episode he had written by five or six strips. "I left the story with an open ending to allow for the possibility of an eventual relaunch (Romeo and Todd would provide excellent scenarios) but The Sun clearly want to pursue their own ideas. Having said that, one would have thought they could have come up with a better replacement for Striker than web virals."

Explaining the strip's completion, he told fans, "Last year, I gave notice to The Sun that I felt the time was approaching to end Striker as it was becoming increasingly difficult to create fresh storylines for the characters and I did not want to run the risk of it becoming stale.

"There was always the possibility of re-launching it in the future and to this end I offered to create a replacement strip for The Sun or to rerun earlier adventures showing how Warbury Warriors were formed when Nick and Eric first got together. Sadly, The Sun did not wish to discuss this possibility.

"I ended the strip with a scenario that both wrapped up the storyline and left it open to the possibility of being restarted at a later date. I had no idea The Sun would leave their readers in the dark by failing to announce the strip was ending."

This, of course, is not the first time The Sun has decided to leave fans in the dark about the strip's future. Back in 2003, when Pete decided to launch his own weekly Striker comic, The Sun gave readers every impression the strip was over for good, even featuring the Warbury Warriors team being killed in a plane crash in its replacement strip, The Premier.

Behind the scenes, as the Press Gazette reported, the paper also accepted £85,000 for a series of adverts to mark the end of the comic strip appearing in The Sun and to tell readers it was launching as a comic in its own right - then refused to run them. The paper also touted replacement strip The Premier in a news item, only mentioning the new Striker comic toward the end, declaring it would be "The most exciting and innovative strip to be launched in a British newspaper for decades". (It wasn't).

Despite this - and the unfortunate demise of Pete's Striker comic after 87 impressive issues, which even offered shares to readers to try to keep going, with huge success (but not enough to save it) - eventually Striker returned to The Sun, ousting The Premier, reaching a finale this month, much to the dismay of many fans of the strip, which has been created in digital form using Maya software for over 10 years. But even though the strip has ended its daily newspaper appearances, Pete still has plans for its future now he is back in full control, owning all rights to the saga.

"For a long time now I have wanted to publish the entire Striker archive as a series of books and develop it into a movie or TV series," he says. "I now have the time to explore those possibilities."

• Striker fans wanting to keep up to date on Striker developments should visit www.striker3d.net where you can also read some of the earlier Striker adventures free online.

Tube Surfing: 5 April 2009

• The Independent on Sunday carried a two-page 'interview' with Roy "Roy of the Rovers" Race today, a splendid piece of well-researched work about the character and his history by writer Cole Morton. The piece not only promoted the new Classic Comic released last week (see news story) but revealed Egmont's new online Roy of the Rovers project, which gives Racey fans the chance to play alongside Roy, and score the winning goal in a cup final. Choose a look, type in your name online and Egmont will print a comic that looks and feels like the one you remember, but has you as the star. This internet-age wish-fulfilment will become possible in the coming weeks. Read the full 'interview'

• Some bad news for fans of comics in newspapers: in the aftermath of the closure of subscription comic The DFC it seems The Guardian has cut its entire Comic Supplement from its Saturday edition. So no Vern and Lettuce or Super Animal Adventure Squad -- or any Comic for that matter! Let's hope readers complain...

• A quick reminder that the online strip Huzzah!, which features contributions from Dan McDaid, Dylan Teague, Rob Davis, Faz Choudhury, Dave Taylor, Paul Harrison-Davies and D'Israeli, among others, is cracking along nicely here. We gather there is talk of a print collection...

• Voting in the TOXIC Comic Special Poll has gathered apace, with Dave Hailwood and Paul Harrison-Davies' Hoaxers now neck and neck with Jamie Smart's Count Von Poo...

• Paul Birch reports, in his latest Speech Ballons column for the Birmingham Mail, that Borders' Bookstores UK now has a graphic novel section specifically for children's titles. "Publishers likely to benefit over the coming months include Walker Books, Penguin, Classical Comics, and Cinebook," he notes. "The latter specialise in bringing best-selling European comic books to an English-speaking readership and reviews of some of their titles will be appearing at Speech Balloons soon." Read the full column...

• Adam Cadwell has posted a report on the indie comics event Thing 2009 over on the Manchester Comics Collective forum, revealing it would seem that offering biscuits and cakes is a good way to help sell comics and thoriughly recommending Roger Langridge's Mugwhump the Great over on Act-i-vate. "It's wonderful stuff," says Adam, "So while I was disappointed that Langridge's new The Muppet Show comic wasn't available due to UK licensing reasons, I was consoled by picking up a handmade minicomic of the first chapter of the Mugwhump story. Excellent." He has plenty of other good-looking recommendations from the like of Paul Rainey and others, too.

• We're sorry to hear of the death of comic creator Ron "Nobby" Clark, who has died aged 85. "Nobby was one of the important figures in moving the action story away from historicals to more modern adventures," notes Steve Holland in a detailed tribute to the creator on Bear Alley. "Although his first action strip was a Western, he took over the writing of "Captain Phantom", a wartime spystrip featuring a "man of a thousand disguises". These were fast-moving and entertaining yarns which helped establish a more modern style of adventure strip in the UK with writers like Nobby Clark and Mike Butterworth ushering in the kind of strips that would dominate during the 1960s..." Read the full tribute on Bear Alley

• And finally for today... Brickman, Lew Stringer's classic cartoon character, is currently appearing in US title Elephantmen, and, mirroring the fate of the well known comics character he's inspired by, he's killing him off! "It's been 30 years since Brickman first appeared and I'm marking the anniversary year by killing him off!" Lew confirms. "Yep, don't miss Elephantmen 17 for the first part of Brickman R.I.P.! Coming up in future months, the Battle for the Trowel and the NEW Brickman!" For more details on Elephantmen visit the official website here:
http://www.hipflask.com/issues/elephantmen17/ or the official Brickman website at: brickmancomics.tripod.com