Roy of the Rovers back in time for World Cup

(Via Lew Stringer and others): Egmont is joining in with the World Cup mania gripping the UK with the release of a 52-page full colour comic, All About Roy of the Rovers, which joins Titan Books fab new Roy collection as a couple of ace football goodies now on sale.

The publication is the latest of Egmont's regular All About... series, which are normally feature-driven so this Roy of the Rovers special is something of a novelty.

Lew Stringer reports there are five comic strips in all over on his ace Blimey! It's Another Blog About Comics blog, selecting material from the late 1970s to the 1990s. The issue kicks off with eight consecutive parts of a 1978 Roy of the Rovers story concerning Roy Race forming an England squad that includes real-life 1970s footballer Trevor Francis and, in a rare UK comics crossover, Nipper Lawrence (from Tiger's long running Nipper strip). The art is by David Sque, now the artist on the Mirror's Scorer strip. (David drew the Roy of the Rovers story from January 1975 to August 1986).

Two other Roy of the Rovers stories are included which, at eight pages in length each, possibly from old annuals or specials; a four part Goalmouth story by Tom Tully and John Cooper; and a four page Andy Steel Playmaker story by H.Manning and G. Marchetti.

"Football isn't really my thing and I hardly followed the old Roy of the Rovers comic at all but this is a very nice collection of strips," Lew enthuses. "The format is glossier than the Egmont Classic Comics of last year and I'm pleased to see the strips are more complete rather than the open-ended choices of those Classic specials."

Titan Books also have an ace Roy of the Rovers: World Cup Special out now - which includes work by the great artist Joe Coloqhoun, who's perhaps better known these days for his stunning art on strips such as Charley's War and the early Johnny Red strips. This lovingly put together title - hats off to series editor David Leach for another gem! - includes stories from four different decades as Roy Race strives to help England to relive the past glories of the 1966 World Cup.

Whether it's leading the British B team, or taking part in qualifiers, Roy was always at the forefront. The story of Roy's trials and tribulations in Australia, pitted against increasingly violent opponents both on and off the field, is simply priceless!

Back at Egmont, the latest issue of TOXIC continues the World Cup theme with a selection of World Cup Funnies alongside the usual assortment of strips and daft features. That's on sale now and comes with three free gifts.


• All About Roy of the Rovers is £3.99 and will be on sale from 16th June to 13th July.

• Read a 2006 interview with David Sque about his work on Roy of the Rovers and more. (Part 2 here)

• The Official Roy of the Rovers website

They think it's all over -- well, yes it is now

World Cup 1 Avoiding It 0

So England lost the quarter final, came crashing out of the World Cup and the press inevitably cast around for someone to blame for the fact that despite valiant efforts by a 10-man team, they didn't beat Portugal.

We miserable sideliners took bets on how long it would be before the England flags came down in the street and off parked cars (about five minutes after the match ended).

Our 93-year-old neighbour was furious with the team. "I could play better than that," she hissed at my partner. Which is a bit unfair as I think that 10-man team did their very best after Rooney lost his temper - yet again - and was sent off.

Yes, I know he was apparently put in the wrong position but the bottom line, surely, is that if he doesn't learn to control his temper he won't be worth his £20 million price tag Manchester United paid for him if every time he plays there's a chance someone's going to wind him up and the fists and then the red cards start flying?

As for the England 'fans' who attacked Portuguese fans in Jersey, throwing bricks at the police in an effort ot hit the opposing supporters... Well, certainly not the best advertisement for the beautiful game. A small number of people spoiling things for the vast majority who might not like the fact that the team lost but moved on, hoping for better next time round.

Then there's The Sun and it's disgusting 'Give Ron One in the Eye" dartboard yesterday (3 July), perhaps one of their sicker 'jokes' of late, when we've seen footballers getting attacked by fans from the terraces with coins, darts and other things in the past. Not very funny - and perhaps a breach of the Press Complaints Code on grounds of harassment and, possibly, discrimination, although the PCC is pretty useless, so I expect they won't do anything.

I started this thread about the World Cup as bit of a joke in a response to an appeal for World Cup blogs from a friend over at Yahoo UK, but over the past few weeks I've come to appreciate the huge sense of social 'togetherness' supporting the England team has generated across England, and seen all the best backing your national team has to offer.

Sadly, there have been some terrible examples of the worst kinds of human behaviious aong with it, and I'd certainly include The Sun's tirade against Ronaldo amongst them.

Bonnie Scotland

World Cup 0, Avoiding it, 5

... as in five days of being in Scotland, where the only sight of the World Cup was a brilliant cover for the Scottish Daily Mirror urging Trinidad and Tobago on. Oooh, and I will admit to checking the score of that match but other than that being in a farm cottage miles from anywhere surrounded by soay sheep (above: they might look they're about to stampede but it's only away from us, as fast as possible. Apparently they're impossible to herd with sheep dogs which does not surprise me, we had visions of poor collies looking well over ten trying to do it when they were only two) and visiting the Cairngorm reindeer herd pretty much beats the World Cup easily.

Had a wonderful break really, even if I did come home to the usual spam mountain (does anyone really order red pills from someone they've never heard of?). Plenty of interesting Star Trek news though, inevitably just after I'd filed my news copy for STAR TREK Magazine -- the fan film "Gods and Men" which is being directed by Tim Russ sounds quite interesting.

In the 'real' post was a copy of Comics International #197, complete with an all-new Really Heavy Greatcoat especially for the magazine and the second of four Doctor Who features (one not by me) which I think came out rather well. The magazine's getting something of an overhaul as it approaches its 200th issue, living up more to the "International" in the title, I think.

There's some good buzz about the new Superman film: those who've already seen it say it's pretty good, although the first hour is apparently better than the first.

Over at Virtual-Lancaster , it seems plans to switch to a content managed based site are coming along nicely. That's welcome news, it's something we've been trying to do for well over four years...

Avoiding the World Cup Day Six

Hmm. I find the wording of this press release from my local council highly suspicious...

The England flag will be flying from the roof of Lancaster and Morecambe Town Halls on Thursday in support of our boys playing in the World Cup in Germany.

The flag of St George will be flown when England matches are played and will continue to be flown on England match days if they make it through to the knockout stages of the tournament.
Football mad council staff will also be wearing their footbaking donations to Sport Relief

I wasn't actually aware that when it came to "our boys", there were any Lancaster or Morecambe-born players in the England squad, otherwise the Lancaster Guardian would be running them as pin ups by now...

As usual, the Council seems to have woken up the fact that a major event is taking place well after it's started...

Avoiding the World Cup Day Four

(Old post reinstated, ignore if RSS checking)

World Cup 1, Avoiding It, 1

It should have been easy to avoid the World Cup yesterday; but I actually found myself filling in the scores on the free Broadcast-provided wallchart. It was just like being an 11-year-old kid all over again.

Still, managed to avoid most of today's footie weirdness because a) we had to rescue a frog from our cat (where is she getting them from?) b) Star Trek copy writing needed doing c) a cartoon needed lettering - a new Greatcoat for Comics International d) housework and e) i finally managed to catch the finale of Smallville after Sky Plus mangled the recording earlier in the week. How are you going to get out of this one, Clark Kent?

World Cup 1, Avoiding It, 1

I felt really sorry for the teenager on the checkout at Sainsbury’s by the time we’d trekked its near deserted isles yesterday afternoon. He was missing the first England game. He’d missed the first goal. And when my wife asked him if there’d been another goal, the very thought that he might have missed that too – well, you can imagine the black look on his face.

Actually I was surprised Lancaster was as it busy as it was yesterday. There were still people shopping, including blokes, some of them with their partners with a look that said either “I prefer cricket” or “I either came out and helped with the shopping or it was the divorce courts”. Since, as I am trying to avoid the World Cup (this of course a pretty difficult task), it was interesting to get the chance to study both expressions (there would be plenty of opportunity to study the sheer joy on the faces of football fans on the national and regional news later, seemingly ad infinitum, the regional news reporting England’s victory, by dint of the reason that north west football team members are in the squad. This is is apparently bigger news than the tragedy of another 15-year-old being killed on our streets).

World Cup fever was at fever pitch yesterday: our cab driver told us that of the 90 taxis in the company, some 75 were parked up at kick off. It’s a small reflection of the world phenomenon football has become. TIME Magazine has a pretty exhaustive feature on the subject this week, and it makes for fascinating reading.

So why don’t I just embrace it? What’s the problem? I’m a bloke. It’s football. That’s the only demographic a marketing company needs to sell me everything. From wide screen TVs, lager, deodrant and... and, well, the World Cup.

And I guess that when it comes down to it, that’s what irks me. That this whole thing has been taken over, hyped to death, in the same way that Christmas begins in September. Yes, it’s a minority view, but surely no true footie fan needed to be told the World Cup was happening? It happens every four years (although it does seem that all these football events are merging into one, to the extent that we couldn’t even remember who won last time round this morning. Was it Greece (no, they won the European cup in 2004. Do keep up!) or Germany? (no, 1990) Or France? (1998). (Later: it was Brazil, for the fifth time)

I think the truth of all this is, I’m useless at statistics (a sports necessity, surely), I’m useless at football (played once for the class team at school, never asked again), and I’m simply suspicious when all these politicians start wrapping themselves up in any flag (there was an ace cartoon By Morten Morland in the Times about this yesterday which pretty much summed up my feelings.

I want fans to enjoy the world cup; just don’t be surprised when I don’t join in (other than checking the score, wondering just how certain teams actually qualified over Turkey, Greece and others...)

Avoiding the World Cup: Day Two

World Cup, 1, Avoiding it, nil.

Wouldn't you believe it, now it's in my mailbox. I've just been sent a link to The Barmy World Cup Sheep song . It's bloody awful, frankly, but what next? Football playing cats?
(Actually. maybe I should just video our one cat that loves football and add a music track to the video...)

It turns out that the guy who came up with this, Charley Darbeyshire of Bright Blue Studios , Ulverston, is actually the cousin of Designer Bob in our office. (The video was filmed by Tony Wilkinson of Red Onion Video ).

Also disappointed that little old lady in our street has put England flags in her window. But so far, only two cars with flags (according to some boffin, these add to your fuel consumption by an astonishing litre a day if you drive at 70 mph . Like anyone can get up to that kind of speed around Lancaster).

There was a discussion on BBC2 last night where film director Richard Eyre challenged all the flag waving, particuarly by politicians (a discussion made interesting only by Michael Portillo describing David Cameron as "naff" for doing it too). It's all bread and circuses, apparently, which is why the whole thing's got hyped to distraction. I think there's some truth in that.

Still, avoided any metatarsal-oriented news reports by going to see The Da Vinci Code, but what a dull film. Even an assesment of Trinidad and Tobago's chances would have been more interesting...

Avoiding the World Cup: Day One

(Old post reinstated, ignore if RSS checking)

Well, actually, that's a lie, I've been trying to avoid it for weeks. But really, what's all the fuss about? If I hear any more about Wayne 'Shrek' Rooney's bloody meta tarsel I swear I'll put a brick through the telly and no, that won't be an excuse to race out and buy a 42" replacement and couch to match.

As my wife said when the dreaded injury occurred, 'get up, you're not dead', which perhaps wasn't very charitable but you really would think Rooney was going to play every position on the field for England and there weren't another, um, 20 + players in the squad.

One of my friends works in a nursing home and some of the little old ladies in there have gotten themselves in a right state, wondering if they're missing something and why the World Cup is suddenly so important... and thinking that it really must be important and perhaps they should join in somehow. is there a senior citizens version of the tournament?

Today's attempt to avoid the world cup may involve pouring cold water over passers by wearing England shirts and talking loudly about baseball. Since very few British people know anything about baseball — including me — no-one will dare challenge me and I will insist it is far more important than anything going on in Germany.