Roy of the Rovers

It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that I am not much of a sports person. I don’t play any, and I don’t really follow any. However, I am obviously a comics person, and a fan of British comics on top of that. Even so, it surprises me a lot that one of my current favorite comics is a series about soccer (or football, in the UK). But that is exactly the case with Roy of the Rovers, the recent revival of the classic British football comic.

Rebellion—who publish 2000 AD and the Judge Dredd Megazine—relaunched Roy of the Rovers last fall. Their approach really shows that they have put some thought behind marketing the series to a youth audience. For starters, they didn’t start with a comic; the first book in the series is actually a prose novel for young readers by Tom Palmer. I’m not familiar with Palmer’s work beyond this series (yet), but I read the first Roy novel because I was interested in the series, for reasons I will get to in a bit. And I was instantly captivated.

Palmer is a wise choice for the prose Roy of the Rovers stories. He’s got a clear, straightforward style that conveys a great deal of depth of character and emotion. That is, of course, the key to any successful series: if you don’t care about the characters, there’s no real reason to come back again and again. We really get a sense of who Roy is and who the members of his family and his friends are. The novel format allows Palmer to take his time, introduce the characters in depth, and really get into their heads.

The book ends on something of a cliffhanger, with Roy heading off to tryouts for his local football team, the Melchester Rovers. This leads directly into the first graphic novel, written by Rob Williams and drawn by Ben Willsher, which opens at those tryouts. Does that graphic novel stand on its own as an effective introduction? Probably, but I guess I’ll never truly be able to tell, because I did come to it after I read the novel.

Having said that, the graphic novel and its creative team is the reason I decided to give the series a try at all. In terms of British comics writers, Rob Williams isn’t an insignificant name. Not only has he done a lot of great work for 2000 AD, he’s one of their regular writers on Judge Dredd. Putting a writer like him—and an artist like Willsher, also a regular Dredd contributor—shows a certain level of commitment on the part of Rebellion. And, according to articles I’ve read about the series, Williams is a football fan.

The graphic novel continues both the story and tone of the first novel, combining fully-developed characters with football action. And when I say “action,” I mean exactly that. Williams and Willsher handle the football scenes as adeptly as a well-told comic book action or fight scene. If anything, Willsher probably makes things look deceptively easy; these sequences require the reader to be able to tell where things are happening on the football pitch, who is who, what they are doing, and how the ball is moving along the field. 

A turn of events forces the Rovers administration to move their youth players (including Roy) up to the starting lineup, and the rest of the first “season” of Roy stories tells the story of their first season. In many ways, it’s a classic sports tale, with the team starting off as the overlooked underdogs who, through grit, determination, skill, and sheer will, make it to the playoffs. However, while the formula may sound familiar, the quality of the storytelling, both in the novels and comics, and the characters are what kept me coming back. Besides, Roy of the Rovers is a series that has been around since the 1950s; odds are that the early strips helped establish the classic sports story formula.

While the graphic novels feature a lot of visual action, they also have a lot of great character moments. And it’s certainly possible to just read the comics and skip the novels, I suppose. But the novels are where we really see Roy with his family and friends, and get the details of his growing relationship with Ffion, sister of team captain Vic Guthrie. I’m really becoming a fan of author Tom Palmer through this series, and now I want to read some of his other novels.

Of the supporting cast, Roy’s sister Rocky has to be considered the breakout star. As I mentioned last time, she stars in her own comics story in the Tammy & Jinty Special. She also took center stage in a serialized novella written by Palmer for the National Literacy Trust. I read this as it came out, and thought it was particularly cool. In it, Rocky, Ffion and Roy go to France for the Woman’s Football World Cup, and end up having a bit of an adventure. 

The story was written as the matches were being played, so the chapters were able to incorporate real scores and real events as they happened. The story also commented on toxic male behavior in football fandom, which I appreciated. Overall, I’m glad that they’re doing a lot with Rocky as a character, and it sounds like they’re going to be doing even more. There’s no reason sports comics have to be about boys, and I’m glad Rebellion seems to agree with me.

Maybe I find this series so enjoyable because of the familiar formula. While I said at the start that I am not a sports person, I get that it represents a positive level of achievement for a lot of people. In reality, I think sports is responsible for a lot of the “win at any price,” “If you’re not a winner, you’re a loser” mentality that creates a lot of problems, and looking at news headlines, it often seems that actual sports people don’t actually support the kind of values that they purport to represent. 

However, in sports fiction, like Roy of the Rovers, we do get to see the myth of the nobility of good sportsmanship played out. While played out against a realistic backdrop of modern football, where money is a primary motivator for almost everything, Roy and his friends and teammates demonstrate a genuine love of the game. They play well, and play clean, and achieve their goals through hard work and support of one another. I root for Roy and the Rovers because they are good guys trying to make it in a world that doesn’t reward that behavior. 

I don’t know how Roy of the Rovers is doing in terms of sales, but it must be doing okay; Rebellion is producing a second season of three novels and three graphic novels. They certainly seem to be going about things the right way, in a way that maybe other publishers might take note. Instead of serializing stories in a traditional comic book, they are releasing the comics as graphic novels. According to an article in Judge Dredd Megazine, they recognize that children want a complete story in one package. Since not all kids naturally read comics, they are also publishing Roy of the Rovers novels, but have designed the series so that the prose stories lead into the graphic novels and then back. It’s smart, and seems to be paying off for them. 

As far as other Rebellion publications, the past two weeks didn’t bring any new special comics, but did bring two new issues of 2000 AD and the latest Judge Dredd Megazine.

Prog 2139 once again features Judge Anderson on the cover. The current Dredd story, The Samaritan, wraps up with a genuinely chilling ending, which serves as a fantastic reminder that while Judge Dredd may be a “hero” within the context of his own culture, that culture is a dark, fascist world indeed.

The highlight for me this week, though, is the return of Indigo Prime, by Kek-W and Lee Carter. 

I really don’t know how to describe Indigo Prime. It’s about an organization of agents (recruited after their deaths) who help preserve the multiverse from some really bizarre threats. It’s a weird, complicated comic reminiscent of the weirder Grant Morrison creations, like the Invisibles and the Filth, but created by John Smith and Chris Weston around the time Morrison was coming to the fore in the US with Animal Man. It’s a dark, creepy, disturbing, confusing series that really rewards multiple reads.

Most recently, Kek-W has taken over the writing from John Smith. From what I’ve gathered online and from reading the history of 2000 AD, Smith is an incredibly talented writer who isn’t very fast at all. I guess at some point, the decision was made that if the series was going to continue, it would need to be under a new writer. Fortunately, Kek-W preserves the tone of insanity that Smith brought to the strip.

Prog 2140 doesn’t introduce any new strips, but does feature a Dredd strip drawn by Tom Foster.

Foster is a relatively new artist to 2000 AD, and displays a strong Brian Bolland influence in his work. My first real exposure to Dredd was through a collection of Bolland’s stories; for me, as well as so many others, he remains a definitive Dredd artist. However, many of the more recent artists on the strip seem more influenced by artists like Mick McMahon and Cam Kennedy. So seeing a more Bolland-esque look to the strip is kind of refreshing.

Last time, I talked about my fondness for Judge Cassandra Anderson, so you can imagine how pleased I was to see her on the cover of the latest Magazine as well.

This issue features a new Anderson Psi-Division story; this may be the first time she’s had a series in both the Meg and the weekly simultaneously. This one feels more new-reader friendly than the one in the weekly (although I’m getting a handle on what’s happening there, too). The art, by Patrick Goddard, is really nice. It’s always interesting seeing Anderson interacting with cadets; on her own, she’s a very idiosyncratic judge who doesn’t seem to buy completely into the judge system. When she’s an instructor, however, she very much fosters unquestioning obedience in the system.

This issue also features a new series featuring DeMarco, PI, a former judge with a crush on Judge Dredd. And, as if an Anderson series in the Meg and one in the weekly weren’t enough, the reprint volume included with this issue also features recent Judge Anderson strips.

And that’s about it for this week. Please come back in two weeks, where I will (probably) talk about the recent cake decorating class my wife and I took.

See you then!