ROK Drops Crumb Into China

ROK Comics, a subsidiary of the ROK Entertainment Group Inc., the global mobile entertainment company, is pleased to announce that several top comic creators are having their work translated for distribution in China as part of the company’s ongoing development with over 30,000 downloads delivered in one weekend!

Crumb, created by top cartoonist David Fletcher whose cartoons are published in over 30 newspapers worldwide including New Zealand’s top-selling TV Guide (which has some 800,000 readers a week), the New Zealand Herald and the Australian Daily. The strip is now available in Chinese and through the whole ROK Comics mobile and online distribution network.

As previously mentioned here, David has developed his new strip, Crumb especially for mobile, which centres on the antics of an ever-hungry blackbird.

“Comics for mobiles seems to me to be the future for cartoon strips and comics,” David says of ROK Comics. “Readers can now choose which comics they want to read and not be told by an editor which comics they can read.

“I love the fact that the mobile cartoon strip is no longer restricted to the usual number of three or four panel, which allows the cartoonist far more freedom to express his idea. Comics for mobiles has come as a breath of fresh air for the comics industry.”

“Several comics artists have started to create comics for mobile format and David’s at the forefront of a whole new way of reaching his audience,” says John Freeman, Managing Editor of ROK Comics. “We think mobile comics have huge potential to reach a worldwide audience who may never see the print editions of some of the comics we’re publishing, which offers creators huge potential in promoting their work.

David’s commitment to Crumb, updated regularly, meant the title was an ideal choice for translation and re-publication in China and initial reaction has been excellent.

Other strips ROK Comics are offering to partners in China include Michael Colbert's Crazy Mary, Look and Learn's Robin Hood, Anomaly by Kennedy Rose and Team Sputnik's Fret for the Day.

ROK Comics supports new Charity Comic

ROK Comics is backing Floods, a new charity comic created to raise funds for the Red Cross and available now from lulu.com. Initiated by Adam R. Grose, publisher of Clown Press, a wide selection of writers and artists have come together to create this book.

Creators include Ben Womack, Simon Spurrier, Simon Mackie, David Hailwood, Tom Millsom, Nick Miller and others, and features a special drabble -- a 100 word story -- by Doctor Who writer Paul Cornell.

It was Adam who came up with the project last year after parts of Britain were hit by disastrous bad weather. Since then, of course, many places across the globe have suffered devastation from floods and other terrible weather, including Bangladesh, southern Africa and, only this month, Burma.

Adam was moved to try and inspire the comics community to create a collection of one page strips and raise funds for flood relief.

"The UK experienced some of the most horrendous weather, with a month's worth of rain falling in 24 hours," Adam explains. "During this time, many of our fellow citizens experienced flooding, unknown to many of us.

"I decided to put together a comic to help raise awareness of our changing world, the environment and the increasing floods and disasters, that seem ever increasing since the turn of the millennium.

"The book will help raise money for the Red Cross and victims of the floods. Hopefully, this will be available the world over and help to bring more awareness to our world community."

Some of the strips have also been adapted for the ROK Comics mobile format, as a means of promoting the project, with profits from sales going to the Floods cause. (ROK Comics has kindly agreed to do the adaptation work for any creators who would like to see their "Floods" strip in this format. (Contact us if you'd like to do a mobile "Floods" strip, but basically you need to come up with a ten frame strip, each frame 480 x 480 pixel in size, 18 point lettering with a "floods" theme or link).

Adam hopes to add to the existing book with more strips so if you would like to contribute a strip to an expanded edition of the book -- which may eventually see real world publication -- get in touch with him via the Clown Press web site.

• The ROK "Floods" comics can be viewed at www.rokcomics.com/floods.php
• Buy the Floods book from lulu.com

ROK Buys Jalipo Media

ROK Entertainment Group Inc., the global mobile entertainment group and owners of ROK Comics, has announced that it has acquired 100 per cent of the issued and to be issued share capital of Jalipo Ltd for total consideration of 600,000 ordinary shares.

Jalipo Media Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Jalipo Ltd and the only operating function therein, is a UK Registered IPTV company which offers live streaming of TV content over the internet. Jalipo is the first online marketplace for TV and video, allowing content owners to
use the internet to offer their channels, video-on-demand and live events direct to viewers around the world.

TV Channels currently featured on the service include BBC World, Sky News, Al Jazeera, and shows such as the anime Paradise Dolls, Cosmo Warrior, Saiyuki, Izumo and many animated short films.

“This acquisition is of great strategic importance to ROK,” commented Laurence Alexander, CEO of ROK, “as it furthers our presence in the mobile TV market. There are significant synergies between Jalipo’s product offering and our own, which we look forward to incorporating within and, as a result, enhancing, ROK’s delivery portfolio.”

• ROK Corp Web Site

ROK Acquires Mobile Applications Developer Geniem

ROK Entertainment Group, the global mobile entertainment company and owners of ROK Comics, today announced it had acquired a 51% controlling interest in Geniem, a leading Finnish mobile and web applications development company.

Geniem pioneered On-Device Portals (ODP) in 2003 and offer rich mobile marketing via these ODPs, Bluetooth marketing solutions and white label social networking applications for Media, Brands and Carriers. Currently their services are being used by household names including Nokia, Volvo, ABC, Pepsi, SonyBMG, Australian Broadcast Corporation, Mondadori France, Digital MultiChoice, Rotana, Samsung, Sanoma Belgium, Santander Bank and SonyEricsson.

"This acquisition marks another milestone in the development of ROK" said Laurence Alexander, Group CEO of ROK, "as it augments our existing mobile products portfolio by placing us in the forefront of on device portals, Bluetooth technologies and social media via mobile and web applications. With over 15 million mobile phone installations globally, Geniem's technology is ideally positioned to power the new generation of enhanced mobile media services."

"I see major opportunities in partnering with ROK to roll-out our exciting products for ROK's existing customer base. Especially with the introduction of the new white label mobile social networking product targeted mainly for network carriers," said Tuomas Kumpula, CEO of Geniem.

Meet Mister Hawk

Bristol-based comic artist and writer Kev F Sutherland, a contributor to weekly British comic The Beano and who regularly provides comics lessons to schools and other groups, is one of the latest creators to give ROK Comics a try.

In addition to the fun strip here Mister Hawk, which runs for three episodes he's made "free to view" on ROK Comics, also on view are strips such as the R-rated Mr Punch and Bristol Superhero.

Here at ROK Comics we like Mister Hawk because despite the supernatural connotations it reminds older team members of one of their favourite British strips, "Spot the Clue with Zip Nolan".

Kev is currently writing and drawing comedy adventures starring The Bash St Kids, Dennis The Menace and others, in the weekly Beano comic and annuals. He's also the comedian who does The Sitcom Trials (you might have have seen him in London and Edinburgh and, hopefully, on TV), and is also a close associate of The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre, "and I turn up at parties caricaturing people (my last solo show was Kev F Draws The Crowds, you can guess what the unique selling point was)", says Kev.

• Visit his web site at: www.myspace.com/kevfdrawsthecrowds

ROK Financial Results on the Up

ROK Entertainment Group Inc., the global mobile entertainment group that owns ROK Comics, has announced its financial results for the third quarter and nine months ended December 31, 2007.

Highlights of its latest report include:

• A revenues increase for the quarter by 518% to $7.0m (Q3 2006: $1.1m)

• In the nine month period revenues were up by 203% to $7.8m from the corresponding period last year (9 months 2006: $2.5m)

• Completion of reverse takeover into Cyberfund Inc. and consequent listing on the OTC Bulletin Boards

• Acquired controlling stakes in Fun Little Movies and Rock (a subsidiary of Eikon Group Ltd)

• Nokia is offering both versions of the Group’s mobile TV on its handsets. ROK TV is being pre-loaded onto the E and N series of handsets sold by Nokia in Europe and FreeBe TV on all suitable handsets in the United States

ROK is now well positioned to take advantage of the future growth in handset numbers, which is expected to increase from three to four billion and be concentrated in China and the Indian sub-continent, where ROK are focusing their immediate deployments: ROK Comics is already available in Pakistan via Telenor's djuice wap service.

“We are very pleased to report results that were slightly ahead of management expectations," commented Laurence Alexander, Chief Executive of ROK, "reflecting the increase in consumer spending on value added services provided by mobile operators.”

• For a detailed report, follow link Here

David Lloyd's Kickback Trailer on ROK Comics

ROK Comics is pleased to announce that a special mobile comics-styled preview of David Lloyd's crime thriller Kickback is now available to read on your mobile via wap.rokcomics.com.

The trailer comprises a special four-part preview for the book, first published in France by Editions Carabas and more recently in English by Dark Horse Comics.

"I enjoyed creating Kickback more than anything else I've produced in years," says creator David Lloyd of the book, an artist perhaps best known for V for Vendetta but whose credits include James Bond, War Stories, Captain America, Doctor Who, Sandman and many other titles.

"I always wanted to do a crime story that had the quality and style of some of the crime movies I admire," explains David, "where no-one says more than they need to in order to move the story along, and you care more about the people involved in it than the action sequences."

• The specially created four-part Kickback trailer is free to read on mobile and online, but if you want to take full advantage of the ROK Comics WAP site, subscribe to the service (www.rokcomics.com/subscribe) and access hundreds of comics at one low cost monthly rate.

When you subscribe a unique URL is sent to your mobile phone. Follow the link to ROK Comics, bookmark the page, and your access to all ROK Comics published strips is activated.

• For more information about Kickback visit www.lforlloyd.com

• You can buy the print edition from amazon.co.uk

Introducing Charlotte Corday

ROK Comics is delighted to announce the addition of a new adventure strip, Charlotte Corday of the Surete, drawn by top British comics artist Keith Page.

Keith's current work includes Ramsey's Raiders for DC Thomson's Commando and other stories, and a "prequel" of the original Dan Dare for Rod Barzilay's magazine Spaceship Away.

He decided ROK Comics is a good way to present Charlotte Corday in a newspaper strip-style way, at a time when many print newspapers worldwide seem to have abandoned daily, ongoing adventure strips, much to the dismay of millions of fans of the genre.

Written by screenwriter Stephen Walsh, Charlotte Corday of the Surete: London Calling is set in London in the early 1950's will also be a full length graphic novel, with a few surprises.

"I had the original idea for the character some time ago," Keith explains. "The outline concept was the adventures of a French detective of some sort getting involved in all sorts of arcane exploits in 1950's London which could best be described as "Brighton Rock meets Quatermass and the Pit".

"This evolved further in defining the motivations of the main character Charlotte Corday and the inclusion of a human-sized "Muffin the Mule" entity, (which had its origins in a strip I did for IPC's Revolver many years ago.)

"All this might sound strange but I can't reveal anymore without spoiling the plot!

"I drew a number of pages of my initial storyline, together with a lot of characters sketches and then set the whole thing aside for a while," he continues. "At this point I got in touch with script and screenwriter Stephen Walsh who was writing for Commando. Stephen took the original theme and came up with a brilliant graphic-novel length script incorporating a host of new characters.

"We decided to approach some French publishers, so the whole thing was translated into French by my wife. In this version, Charlotte is one of a team of French agents on a mission to London. The thinking was to leave scope for a series of linked books with a different agent's story featured in each.

"To cut a long story short, it proved too difficult to interest French publishers and Charlotte remained on the shelf for a while. Eventually, however, I decided Stephen's script was just too good to abandon , and I had a large amount of period reference material, location photos, so I drew the whole 50 page story.

"It features a variety of themes including the North London Vampire Squad (a little-known division of the Met) and what could have been the inspiration for John Steed of The Avengers. [Comedian] Tony Hancock and his landlady also put in guest appearances!"

We're looking forward to seeing how this strip develops, and perhaps finding out why a mule-headed character cannot be seen by anyone else except Charlotte. Check it out now on ROK Comics!

• Find out more about Keith Page and his work on his blog

Breaking into comics event this Saturday

Just a quick reminder that downthetubes and ROK Comics Managing Editor John Freeman is one of the guests at a Breaking Into Comics event in Leicester this Saturday, along with 2000AD editor Matt Smith and indie publisher Jay Eales.

"Breaking in to Comics and Graphic Novels" runs from 2 – 4.00pm at the Central Lending Library, Leicester. Whether you are a fan who has always dreamed of making your own comics but don’t know where to start, or a talented writer / artist on the brink of turning professional, this event will help you understand what it takes to break in to the comics industry.

Organisers say this is proving one of their most popular events ever, with plenty of pre-sales and lending numbers for graphic novels at the library way up on their usual numbers.

The event is part of Blam! a season of graphic novel and manga events organised by Leicester Libraries (www.leicester.gov.uk/libraries)

ROK strikes Film 24 deal

UK TV channel Film 24, broadcast by Sky, has struck a deal with ROK's mobile TV service, which will see its bi-monthly magazine show Film Extra made available to Rok's UK mobile TV subscribers. Film 24 will also launch mobile TV services in South Africa, Latin America and China.

The deal with ROK is part of Film 24's multi-platform plans to reach a global audience.

Happy Holidays!

A quick line to offer all our readers plenty of seasonal cheer and wish you all the very best of the season and a Happy New Year. Thank you all for your tremendous support for the ROK Comics on mobile project in our first few months of operation for what has, for us, been very much a "behind the scenes" beginning, with the hard work starting to bear fruit.

In addition to the main ROK Comics sites (www.rokcomics.com and wap.rokcomics.com) we now have partnership mobile comics service live in Pakistan via Telenor.

Translation work is proceeding apace on our service for China. Several creators' strips, including David Fletcher's "Crumb", Chris Reynolds "Moon Queen", David Hailwood's "Ups and Downs", Mike Colbert's "Crazy Mary" Markosia's "Dark Mists" and Nick Miller's "Fret for the Day" are in the process of being translated for the first round of ROK Comics publishing to mobile there, with potential readership in the hundreds of millions.

We also have partner services close to announcement in India and Africa, and several strong partnerships developing in the UK. If you've been reading our ROK Comics Blog, you'll know that we provided a comics service for ITV's "I'm A Celebrity" web site and to mobile this year, and we'll be delivering similar services with other content providers for 2008 worldwide.

None of this early success would have been possible without the support of numerous publishers, independent creators, ROK staff around the world and our early readers, so thank you, one and all.

The very best of the season to you -- and here's to a busy and rewarding 2008...

Compress This!

ROK Entertainment, owners of ROK Comics, have announced the launch of an upgraded software compression application for digital images – Blubox V4.0 – by its subsidiary, Blubox Software Ltd,

Blubox V4.0 offers compression of digital photograph images as well as supporting all non-proprietary ‘zip’ formats, thus ensuring complete compatibility.

It's designed for the digital camera and internet consumer market, allowing a user to dramatically improve the digital photo sharing experience over the Internet and ensuring the protection of private and personal information.

The unprecedented growth of digital image file sizes over the last three years has been partly driven by the consumer’s desire for higher mega pixel CCD capacity for their personal digital cameras and mobile phones.

“‘Zip’ provides acceptable compression for text-based files, but has been unable to cope with the demands of the modern file formats," says Laurence Alexander, CEO of ROK. "There's a massive gap in the market for software that can offer compatibility with existing ‘Zip’ products, but go much further by providing the user with the ability to significantly shrink their digital photos without sacrificing the Hi-Resolution quality of the original image file. This is the premium that Blubox offers.”

Using a blend of the most advanced software compression algorithms Blubox V4.0 provides a unique solution for optimizing digital images. Designed to support all non-proprietary ‘Zip’ formats Blubox V4.0 by being able to create, read and extract from existing ‘Zip’ archives, however this is where the similarities between Blubox and ‘Zip’ starts and ends as it is able to offer unprecedented compression of digital photograph formats.

• Download a free trial (PC only at present) from www.blubox.com

Night Owl Comes to ROK Comics

New to ROK Comics this month is Night Owl, just one of several heroes from US independent publisher Wham Bang Comics - the humorous creation of an imaginative teenager, with help from his father.

Night Owl, a 12-year-old superhero from Texas, holds the mantle of "Earth Shaman," the most powerful mage on the planet, and is charged with protecting the balance of the universe. A daunting task for a youngster!

Secretly Zack Finley, a seventh grader from Fort Worth, Texas, Night Owl is the child of divorce who spends weekends with his father and the rest of the time with his mother. He inherited his power -- derived from earth energy, the life force of the planet -- from his grandfather, Mack Finley, after the elder shaman was murdered.

Night Owl is still trying to full understand and utilize his powers. He knows he can fly, has super strength and limited invulnerability. He occasionally has prophecy dreams that come true, and he can use the staff left him by his grandfather to commune with the universe. His power animal, Grandfather Owl, is a constant ally in his fight against injustice.

Night Owl is an advocate for human rights and the rights of crime victims. He lives a lonely life, as he must keep his identity secret from even his mother, fearing that her life would be in danger if she knew who he was. (Plus, she'd be so worried for his safety she'd make him stop!)

Night Owl is written by 13-year-old Jake Tinsley (pictured) with help from his father, veteran journalist Ben Tinsley. Art is by rising manga star Jason Dube and colours are by Kristoffer Condes.

Publisher Ben Tinsley formed Wham Bang Comics, based in both Galveston, Texas and Las Vegas, Nevada, to showcase the adventures of Night Owl. Along the way, other writers climbed on board and Wham Bang's first comic, Two-Fisted Adventures, ended up as a 52-page anthology comic, available via their main online site: www.myspace.com/whambangcomics.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

John Townley, our office Christmas sprite, who has kindly been sharing "Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer" and "I Wish it Could be Christmas Every Day" with us for, well, whenever he thinks he can get away with it, took a break from formatting new Roy of the Rovers strips to give the ROK Comics site a bit of festive cheer...

Cheers, John - and a happy festive season to you from all of us at ROK Comics!

ROK buys ROCK

ROK Entertainment Group, the UK-based mobile technologies, applications and entertainment development company and owners of ROK Comics, has announced it has acquired a 51% controlling interest in Warwick-based company Rock, a performance notebook manufacturer (and subsidiary of Eikon Group Limited).

Under the terms of the agreement, ROK and Rock will share expertise in IPTV, place shifting, mobile internet and mobile entertainment platforms. This will take advantage of the synergies between the mobile phone and PC oriented technologies respectively as well as the increasing convergence between the phone and notebook market, with recent market research conducted by Intel finding that every owner of a mobile phone will eventually own a notebook.

This acquisition forms part of ROK’s strategy to expand in all mobile communications markets and will provide a further platform for the delivery of user-generated content, which constitutes a key strength of the Company’s product offering.

"Full-scale convergence of the notebook and mobile technologies - and how we use them both - has already begun," Laurence Alexander, CEO of ROK explained. "Three years ago, virtually no-one browsed the web on their mobile or received and sent emails. In three years time, people will be using their mobile in very similar ways to how they are using their laptops at present. It's all about technological convergence of the mobile with the internet to deliver ‘constant connectivity’.”

Rock are world-leaders in notebook technology innovation, such as being first to launch the world’s fastest graphics for the notebook platform, 8800M GTX by NVIDIA. Earlier this year, they made their first steps into Europe by offering three years pan-European warranty on all notebook products with a long term plan to hit the US by 2010, where ROK already operates.

“Rock’s customer base consists largely of early adopters, and make the ideal target for ROK’s products and services," commented Nick Boardman, CEO of Rock. "We will work extremely closely to bring some exciting technology to the market”.

ROK Acquires Fun Little Movies

The ROK Entertainment Group, owners of ROK Comics, has announced it has acquired a 51 per cent controlling interest in Los Angeles-based Fun Little Movies.

(FLM) for a combination of cash to be paid in monthly installments through September 2009 and shares in the company.

Under the terms of the agreement, ROK and FLM will jointly offer made-for-mobile content, such as comedy short films, to network operators worldwide.

FLM specialises in the development, production and distribution of original mobile-oriented comedy for global distribution such as Love Bytes, featuring Babylon 5 star Claudia Christian and Star Trek: The Next Generation's Wil Wheaton. In its nomination for Best Video Producer at the 2007 ME Awards, Mobile Entertainment Magazine said FLM “pioneered the advertiser-funded concept” for mobile video.

The first US company to produce comedic films for mobile phones worldwide, FLM’s “Fun Funny Phone Films” have won 20 awards including finalists' places at the Cannes Film Festival for Best Short and the 2006 and 2007 Mobile Entertainment Magazine Awards for Best Video, as well as CTIA's "World Smallest Film Festival." They've also been played on numerous TV networks worldwide including HBO, Showtime, CBS, Playboy, MTV and Comedy Central.

“ROK’s management team gets it. They see the same potential for the mobile space that we do,” said Frank Chindamo, FLM’s President and Chief Creative Officer. "We're excited about the new synergies created by joining with a company that understands ‘synergy’ the way we do.”

Mr. Chindamo founded FLM in 2004 and is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Southern California (USC), teaching “Mobile and Internet Viral Screenwriting and Producing.”

“We love what Frank Chindamo and his team at FLM have been doing in the mobile entertainment space. They really understand the medium and what people want from mobile movies,” said Laurence Alexander, President and Chief Executive Officer of ROK. “We look forward to expanding the footprint of FLM content worldwide and going forward to develop a whole new portfolio.”

FLM distribution deals include Sprint, Verizon and ATT, as well as several handset makers and overseas partners, from China and Japan to Europe, Africa and South America. ROK will be its primary distributor worldwide.

In addition to marketing ROK TV through Mobile Operators such as Vodacom South Africa, Avea Turkey, Telenor Pakistan and AIS in Thailand, ROK’s service is also available direct-to-consumers via Nokia Downloads on the Nokia E series handsets across Europe.

ROK completes share exchange, goes public

The ROK Entertainment Group Ltd. which owns ROK Comics and many other mobile services built up over several years, has announced the completion of its share exchange transaction with Cyberfund, Inc., a US public company.

The combined company will operate initially under the name of Cyberfund and will continue to be listed on the NASD’s Over-the-Counter (OTC) Bulletin Board under the trading symbol, CYFD.

The full press release about the listing appears on the ROK Corporation web site.

Following the share exchange that is part of the copany's transformation, ROK’s existing management assumed their same positions with the publicly-traded company.

Commenting on the transaction, Laurence Alexander, Chief Executive Officer, said: “We are delighted to complete this transaction which creates a dynamic new force in the global mobile entertainment industry. We believe the demand for mobile content is set to grow exponentially over the next decade. As an enlarged Group with access to public markets and a proven management team, ROK is well placed to exploit these trends for delivering shareholder value.”

“I am hugely proud of our achievements to date,” added Jonathan Kendrick, Chairman of ROK, “as it’s taken a massive amount of effort, initiative and perseverance by all our staff to have reached where we are today.”

As well as creating ROK Comics, ROK currently has three registered patents and 42 additional patent applications pending for new technologies which it has developed for the delivery of video entertainment to mobile phones. The technologies facilitate delivery of services, including, on-demand mobile TV streamed over mass-market 2.5G via GPRS, the storage of copy-protected movies stored on memory cards for play on mobile phones, Java, SMS and P2P games, place-shifting to mobile devices and VoIP mobile calling.

It is the Company’s plan to continue the roll-out of its products worldwide and maintain its investment in research and development to improve current products, and increase compatibility and user features, as well as work on new technologies and products.

A focus on technology exposes the business to risks of technological change and the Company is now actively acquiring, creating and aggregating content and services to deliver across the rapidly expanding network of content distribution.

The Company has a number of operational deployments as of the end of October 2007, including ROK TV with AIS (Thailand), Telenor (Pakistan), BSNL (India), Avea (Turkey) and Vodacom (South Africa), as well as ROK’s mobile TV service marketed direct-to-consumers. ROK Media has deployed a variety of innovative mobile entertainment applications to include ANSA, ROK Comics and Fonepark in the United Kingdom, the United States, China, Pakistan and Russia.

ROK New Net in China is providing lottery services and selling lottery tickets for the Beijing Welfare Lottery, as well as a number of other mobile value-added telecommunications service operators (VAS).

ROK also has a phone hardware division, supplying handets to several operators globally. (You never know you, may have one of our phones yourself). It has also launched a mobile conferencing system, RokTalk, which aims to make organising conference calls a doddle, and costs less for everyone involved.

Before the end of the second quarter of 2008, ROK aims to achieve a significant global reach in mobile television (FreeBe TV and ROK TV), as well as expand the Company’s product portfolio and breadth of commercial deployment of these services (through cross-sales of products and services), through ROK’s existing and growing partner distribution network which includes Mobile Operating companies and handset manufacturers.

I'm A Comics Celebrity!

ROK Comics has teamed up with UK TV company ITV to enable I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here fans to create comics based on the stuck-in-a-jungle reality entertainment show, which has just begun its seventh season.

The first of its kind for a broadcaster, this truly interactive services is a simple point and click solution letting any web or WAP user create a comic based around the current celebrities and the best of previous shows.

Users can make up their own quips using speech bubbles and insert themselves into comic strip. Once completed users can then choose to buy their masterpiece or send it onto a friend for £1.50.

UK residents can check out the special IACGMOOH Comic Creator over on ITV Mobile. (There's also a WAP version of the Creator that enables yout to create comics on your mobile).

Comics cost £1.50 each and you can also send them to friends (if you know their network). All comics are moderated prior to publication.

Also as part of the offering from ROK, a daily professional comic strip based around the exploits of the celebrities is being created by ROK Comics and published on both web and WAP.

2000AD artist Ian Gibson on ROK Comics

ROK Comics is delighted to announce the addition of Ian Gibson's comic strip Annie Droid to its comics-to-mobile service.

Working in partnership with Ian, ROK Comics will bringing mobile users worldwide this funny strip written and drawn by Ian Gibson, which was first published in Britain's The Saturday Times.

Annie Droid is just one of many characters inhabiting the mysterious Den City 4, battling Millennium Bugs, Program Errors and many other miscreants.

The strip joins a host of classic British strips and new creator-owned material on the ROK Comics mobile platform, including Garth, Jeff Hawke, Andy Capp and many others.

In addition to the ROK Comics web and wap sites (www.rokcomics.com, wap.rokcomics.com) Annie Droid will also be offered to ROK telecom partner sites worldwide, reaching new readers of comics in countries such as China, Pakistan, India and more in coming months.

Comics fans will need no introduction to the work of Ian Gibson (www.ian-gibson.com), whose many credits include 2000AD's Judge Dredd, The Ballad of Halo Jones and Robo-Hunter, DC Comics Mister Miracle and creator-owned classics such as The Chronicles of Genghis Grimtoad.

Ian is currently developing several creator-owned projects that will employ his unique and much-praised art style at its best.

"Believe it or not, the humble mobile phone may be coming to the rescue of comics," feels Ian. "Comics are now being made available to view as downloads to your multifunction pocket wonder. Now you can catch up with vintage comics strips and some new freebies done by aspiring amateurs.

"Thus, if your pocket starts to throb, glow, play a cutesy jingle or even the soundtrack from Psycho... I may be there - in the shape of some of my creations. So, maybe I'll do some drawing today. Tomorrow it may be on your mobile phone. There is no escape…"

"We're obviously delighted Ian has agreed to try ROK Comics," says ROK Comics Managing Editor John Freeman. "I've been a fan of Ian's work since my time at Marvel UK, when he was drawing Genghis Grimtoad, and Halo Jones is simply an unforgettable comic."

• You can view Annie Droid on ROK Comics at www.rokcomics.com/anniedroid.php

The first episode of the story is free to view online.

$10,000 Mobile Comic Winner Announced

ROK Comics is pleased to announce the winner of its first $10,000 humour competition is cartoonist Steve English, for an episode of his ongoing series "Madd Science".

Runners up in the competition, which ran on ROK Comics this summer and attracted hundreds of entries, were David Hailwood and Toshiro de Smeyter for and episode of their strip "Drink Like a Fish" and Paul Eldridge, who used the ROK Comics Creator Tool to produce a strip entitled "The Secret of Stonehenge".

Steve wins the $10,000 overall prize while the runners up will receive 12 month subscription to ROK Comics.

After two rounds of short listing, thirty cartoons were considered by external judge Alan Digby, editor of the best selling British weekly comic The Beano, published by DC Thomson.

"The standard was very high, and the different approaches to a inherently restricted art form, such as the 'three picture' strip cartoon, were refreshing," commented Alan.

"I wouldn't be surprised if one of the contributors who made the shortlist managed to make a breakthrough into the world of cartooning - and it might not necessarily be the most obvious entrant who does."

"We were blown away by the huge range of entries to the competition," said ROK Comics Managing Editor John Freeman, "Especially given this is a fairly new medium for comics. But the creators have shown how easy it is for comics to evolve and reach new audiences without forgetting how to make people laugh."

Commenting on his win, Steve English (left) said: "It's fantastic. The last time I entered a cartoon competition I only won a pizza!”

"It's nice to know that when you're staring at a blank page and banging your head against a wall waiting for an idea to drop out, sometimes something lands in your lap that makes others laugh too.”

"I'm torn between cashing in the cheque and framing it as proof that I made the editor of the Beano smile... No I'm not – a framed bank receipt will do the job just fine."

Shortlisted were Ian Alexander, Josh Alves, Vicente Aviles, Mike Carey, Paul O' Connell, Rich Diesslin, Mike Flanagan (Adult Themes, filtered), Lizz Lunney, Jack Noel, Howard Priestley, David Reddick, Kennedy Rose (Adult Themes, filtered), Paul Stapleton, Super Massive Studios and Dave Windett.

Congratulations to all those who won or were shortlisted and better next time to everyone who entered. ROK Comics will be running more competitions in future.