Secrets of Ligeia Revealed

With a new episode of Ligeia now available on ROK Comics, creator Rodrigo D. Ricci has revealed more about the background to the character in a posting for the strip's Facebook page. What follows is a translation/adaptation of Rodrigo's posting, which is in Spanish...

Ligeia was created in the summer of 2006 in Italy, inspired by the story of the same name by Edgar Allan Poe. The plan was that this vampire "with a touch of irony", drawn in a style echoing the work of Alex Toth and Frank Miller, would be the kind of work an Italian publisher interested in publishing a graphic novel by Rodrigo would like.

Unfortunately, neither of the two projects were realized and have been buried on Rodrigo's computer for some time. Then, when he put some of the pages of comicspace.com, a lot of people told him that they liked the character.

Ligeia is inspired by various sources. Poe first, mainly to capture as much as possible the environment with the use of black and white in high contrast. There's also elements of the Lovecraft, especially his lesser known work "Medusa's Coil" ( by Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop, read it online), more than anything because Ligeia's hair moves in a lively, bizarre way.

The strip also pays homage to movies like La Maschera del Demonio), directed by Lamberto Bava, more than anything because of the use of black and white in that film.

Physically, Ligeia is a blend between Barbara Steele and Edwige Feneche and other actresses of the Golden Age of film.

Rodrigo decided to make Edgar a pet cat to avoid the horrible cliches of Igor in some bad movies. As a character it works well: cats have an extraordinary personality. "They do not need to interpret any role, since they are the role," he says.

The story comes with the Nazis after reading the book Hanussen, a Jew in the court of the Third Reich. Rodrigo was astonished by this bizarre character, a Jew who was the magician of many senior Nazis, but hated by Gobbels who considered him a charlatan. Hanussen believed in The Temple of the Uunseen, but made the mistake one night at a party having a vision and predicting that a building would be burned, causing a major sea change in the Weimar Republic.

One day later someone set fire to the Reichstag and Hitler came to power. Shortly afterward, Hannusen was found shot dead in a park. (more about Hannusen here on Wikipedia. Werner Herzog made a movie about him in 2001 starring Tim Roth, and there have been others).

There is a definite morality to the comic although Rodrigo leaves the reader to choose whose morality they favour. Ligeia is a vampire, so in theory, evil. On the other side are the Nazis sent by Himmler, and those who might be the traditional heroes are a band of mercenaries, all united bya desire to loot the gold of the vampire.

"This series was born at time of many changes," says Rodrigo. "Gradually, publishers are leaving paper behind and transferring their attention to the massive audience potential of the web cell phones and the iPhone."

Any decision on the quality of the strip Rodrigo leaves in you hands, cordially inviting you to read... Ligeia!

Temple Digital Showcase launched

The first edition of British Amateur Press Association group The Temple's digital showcase is now available online from their web site to download as a free PDF.

The 36 page magazine contains contributions from 10 members, including the likes of ROK Comics creators such as David Hailwood, Paul Harrison-Davies, Simon Mackie and Malcolm Kirk.

Inside you'll find cartoons, full strips, previews of soon to be released small press comics, work in progress, and a behind the scenes look at making a webcomic.

If you're a comic artist/writer who's interested in joining the Temple APA, then more details are available on the site (it's as simple as clicking 'join'). Although this is the first digital issue (apart from Issue 0, which is also available on the site), the Temple's been running for more than ten years now and seen a wealth of talent come and go. Everyone's welcome, from the rawest amateur to the most seasoned pro.

It's a good place to learn from each other and hone your skills, or simply draw more attention to upcoming projects.

Web Link: www.templeapa.ning.com

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ROK Launches GeekSpark

With the mobile social network market predicted to grow from 54 million users in 2008 to 730 million user in the next 5 years, ROK Entertainment, owners of ROK Comics, has announced the imminent worldwide launch of GeeSpark, the world’s first mobile viral messaging service.

The fastest growth in the mobile social networking market will come from the Far East and China, according to Juniper Research in a report published this week. In addition, Juniper predicts it will be advertising-funded mobile social networks which will drive the revenue growth of user-generated content from $1.1 billion in 2007 to $7.4 billion in 2013.


Following the hugely successful adoption of broadcast messaging on computers, where users share messages with multiple friends at the same time, GeeSpark will enable users to chat, share messages, images and YouTube videos on their mobile phones and forward these to their friends and groups, in a viral fashion.


GeeSpark has been developed by ROK’s Finland-based mobile services development company, Geniem. GeeSpark is currently in invitation-only Beta mode and will be advertising-funded. The service is free to join from www.geespark.com and is free to use providing the user has a data plan in their mobile tariff. 



“In the past few years, there has been a phenomenonal uptake in, and migration from, the use of email onto instant messaging and now onto multi-person ‘broadcast’ messaging using PC-based social networking services" said Tuomas Kumpula, Managing Director of Geniem, “and we believe the next evolution in the networking space will be through mobile phones wherein GeeSpark users can share messages, images and videos from YouTube with all of their friends at once, on a viral basis, through their mobile phones."


Commenting on GeeSpark, Laurence Alexander, Group CEO of ROK said “To be launching the world’s first mobile viral messaging service is tremendously exciting and is another major milestone in the development and deployment of our suite of revenue-generating mobile services and technologies.”