ROK Team Pick: The Return of Ugly Fruit

Curly cucumbers, crooked carrots and mottled mushrooms - odd-looking fruit and vegetables are making a comeback as 20-year-old EU rules are lifted.

Marketing standards for 26 types of produce have been scrapped, in a drive to cut EU bureaucracy, the BBC reports.

Glazed over Gaza

Santa Goes Strange in 'Stick-Man'...

Courtesy of Scottish cartoonist Malcolm Kirk, whose hilarious Stick Man discovers Santa has gone a bit, well, strange this year...



Check out www.myspace.com/mal_comix for more of Mal's work, and there are more of his Stick Man cartoons here on ROK Comics.

Cartoon Christmas

Cartoonist Rich Diesslin, a ROK Comics stalwart, came up with this Cartoon 12 Days of Christmas. You can check out more of his work at the-cartoonist.com

Team Pick: Looking Back... by Raymond Betancourt

Here's the latest of US-based artist Raymond Betancourt's "Looking Back" strips, which offer an alternative take on famous historical events. Here at ROK Comics, we think Raymond's on a roll with this one -- just look at the success of book series such as Terry Deary's Horrible Histories.

Brooklyn-based Raymond is a self-taught artist and poet who, in addition to cartoons and paintings has recently written and illustrated a children's book as well as several colouring books. "My work is mostly surrealistic in its subject matter," he reveals on his Artmajeur page. Some of this more surrealist work is being offered by ImageZoo. He's also a contributor to The Dream People, an online literary journal run in association with Eraserhead Press.

Several collections of his Twisted cartoon collections are available via CartooneBooks and lulu.com. You can also view some of them online at www.twisted.dostweb.com.

• To see more of Ray's works visit Breaking Art, Live to Paint, or Now Surreal

Hallowe'en Horror Fun: Fone Freaks!

Thomas Behe, author of the comic Contraband and artist Chris Walker have launched a new comic strip, Fone Freaks, via ROK Comics just in time for Hallowe'en.

Fone Freaks follows the adventures of Sally Snedley, a wireless scientist who seeks revenge on the nasty corporate criminals who stole her cell phone invention back in the 1970's.

Sally seeks justice by targeting the Fat Cat's cell phone customers by creating a haunted network that enables ghosts to zoom out and make people to do dumb things on their phone.

Illustrator Chris Walker has been creating comics for five years and hopes his new strip will appeal to sequential art fans of all ages. "Each Freak represents a silly, embarrassing or annoying social cell phone habit we all do - or see others doing - at some point in time.

"It's mildly self-deprecating at heart although we hope younger children will enjoy the characters - even if they don't fully understand some of the sometimes twisted underlying message. Most kids seem to have a cell phone now and (the ones I know anyway) really love being on them as much as possible."

• For more information about ROK Comics go to www.rokcomics.com. For more information about the Fone Freaks strip, please go to www.fonefreakscomic.com.

Fav Strip of the Day: The Norm

Fav ROK Comic of the Day: Joe's Blunder

Virunga National Park Promo

If you're a fan of mountain gorillas (and who isn't?) then you might like this unofficial promo I worked up for the new Virunga National Park web site using pics sent in an email...



Check out the web site at: www.gorilla.cd

Celebrating Talk Like A Pirate Day...

Machinima Comics?

The comic, right, is a concept I've been thinking about for some time now as a way for games companies to promote their games as a ROK Comic.

The art of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, a nifty looking First Person Shooter inspired by the 2007 Shadow of Chernobyl release from Koch Media caught my eye so I decided not just to run a press release on one of the web sites I write for, SciFiPulse in my spare time, but make something more of the stunning PR imagery available.

You can view the comic on the ROK Comics site itself and, since the comic is Fee to View online, grab the embed code and put it on other web sites, just like a YouTube video.

This is my first "Machinima Comic" -- a tip of the hat to the fabulous "computer game videos" fans of many games have created, which you can see on sites such as machinima.com. Admittedly, creating a comic from computer game renders is not as clever as some of the best Machinima, such as the Halo-inspired Red versus Blue, PEDS, based on Grand Theft Auto, or stunning projects such as The Dumb Man (created within Second Life), but the beauty of a ROK Comic based on game scenes is that it is of course much easier to create than machinima!

"Machinima Comics" could easily be used by games companies to promote their wares as well as providing an avenue for comic writers to create comics without (hem ham!) the need of an artist, offering a way for them to hone their scripting skills.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky is a survival FPS game for PC based on a 'what-if' scenario of the second Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant accident. The game is created as a warning to mankind against mindless play with technologies.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky is the official prequel to the renowned S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game created by the Ukraine-based GSC Game World studio, released in 2007. The game is set in 2011 and brings forth the events to have preceded the third campaign of Strelok to the Zone centre.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky introduces an alternative look onto the events of the original game and offers the player to try himself out as a mercenary s.t.a.l.k.e.r. in search of his own path in the world of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

• Official game site: www.stalker-game.com
• More information about the game is available on the official S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky channel on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/stalkerofficial

Glorious Twelfth?

Joe Gordon warns that Scottish grouse could get nasty over the next four months over on the FPI blog...

Spooky Tales...

British comic creator Malcolm Kirk has used ROK Comics to promote an appeal for creators for his new Scream-inspired project... and a fab little story it is too!



• Check out the Back from the Depths web site

Weird Web Finds

Weird Web Finds: Chinese Toilets

Josh Alves' Saturday Morning Show!

... well well, not exactly, but ROK Comics creator Josh Alves (check out Tastes Like Chicken here) has been experimenting with animation. "One of the things I always thought would be cool, would be to have my comic animated," he enthuses on his blog devoted to another of his creations, The Araknid Kid.

"A couple weeks ago, I started playing around with Anime Studio and quickly assembled this (while I learned the ins-and-outs of the software... that’s my disclaimer):



• Check out the first eight pages of his new Araknid Kid story on Zuda!

Josh Alves Interviewed

ROK Comics creator Josh Alves has just been interviewed by web blog Parable, talking about his new story, Thistles, reveals he is trying to get his comic Tastes Like Chicken, syndicated and updates fans on his progress on DC Comics Zuda platform.

In addition to other projects he reveals he's working on the first full-size Araknid Kid story for Sugary Serials and sketch cards for the Marvel Masterpieces 2 set from Upper Deck.

Weird Web Finds...

Father's Day Problems...

Cartoonist Rich Diesslin just posted this gem of a cartoon on the impending celebrations...

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.