Cooking with Gas

Apparently, celebrity chef Jamie Oliver is to become a puppet, prompting this response from ROK creator The Shadow...



More Celebrity Madness here. These are all free to view online and on phone.

Daily Cartoonist mention for ROK Comics

Comic creator Rich Diesslin, who delivers "Out to Lunch" to ROK Comics, kindly passed on the link to yesterday's The Times article on mobile comics to Alan Gardner's top comics site The Daily Cartoonist, and it's already attracting feedback which I've responded too on that site.

One interesting thing coming out of comics fandom and creator reaction to comics on mobile phones has been a strident defence of print comics, as though comics on mobile will somehow put an end to them. This of course is not the case: in fact, we have plans to do more to promote print comics down the line anhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifd we always saw mobile comics, like web comics, as a means to complement print comics (and web comics, come to that).

The other major point about this is that in some countries where ROK Comics is setting up WAP comics subscriber-only sites with telecom partners, like Pakistan, print comics are not big business, but comic reader numbers are still huge, largely reading strops via newspapers. PC use is also low compared with mobile phones, making even more sense to develop the delivery of comics to mobile there.

It also means that we can promote some independent creators creations alongside more well known licensed content, offering a platform for their work they may previously not had. Hopefully that's a big plus 9as well as the potential revenue stream for their work).

Interesting that the Times article got picked up by a blog in India, among others... the power of the 'net, eh?

The whole project is proving a learning curve both for us here behind the scenes and the creators, but it's also very exciting.

Times reports on mobile comics

Today's Times newspaper carries a feature on mobile comics, and highlights ROK Comics' operation. "The comic book, a staple of British childhood for 90 years, is to receive a 21st-century makeover as the adventures of characters such as Dennis the Menace and Desperate Dan are sent frame-by-frame to children’s mobile phones," it begins, drawing comparisons with how mobile comics have developed in Japan. (Papyless, a Tokyo-based specialist in electronic books, made $17 million - £8.5 million - in the year to March, more than double the previous year).

DC Thomson are among many comics publishers looking for a means to deliver comics to mobile phones - the very service ROK Comics offers comics companies worldwide already being exploited by the Daily Express, the Daily Mirror, Look and Learn, Broken Voice, Markosia and others.

Comics writer and columnist Rich Johnston, who specialises in the comic books industry and writes a regular column, Lying in the Gutters, for comics news site Comic Book Resources, tells the Times he predicted that mobile phones would become a popular medium. “The principal audience for comic books is young people, who are much more used to reading things in digital form,” he says. “Screen sizes are getting larger, and devices like the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP are ideal for viewing images on.”

The feature mentions ROK's offering of Look and Learn Ltd's Robin Hood and Mike Colbert's Crazy Mary strip.

You can read the full feature online here (subscription may be required after seven days).

Reboot Competition

With our ROK Comics humour competition to win $10K now in its final days (and is it going to be hard to judge!), here's some news of another competition (its deadline 26 August), courtesy of Josh Roberts, who runs the terrific comics web site comicspace - if you want to track down your favourite comic creators, try here!

Vancouver-based effects company Rainmaker Entertainment is working with Zeros 2 Heroes to bring back the classic ReBoot television series. As part of this campaign, Zeros 2 Heroes will be creating a new comic based on ReBoot.

Here's the twist: the art team will be picked solely from online submissions: essentially users upload a sketch, painting, even lettering work for one of the ReBoot characters. These sketches are then voted on by the ReBoot fans, with the winners being called on to make up the art team.

So, it's an unpaid audition, but it will be a paid gig starting in September. The winner will be announced at FanExpo in Toronto on August 26th.

If you've got the time/interest, here's how to get involved:

(1) Go to www.zeros2heroes.com and join the site.
(2) The ReBoot pitches are found here (http://live.zeros2heroes.com/content/view/87/118/) - you need to be logged in.
(3) Launch the Flash viewer by clicking on any of the pitch thumbnails.
(4) Browse through the pitches and pick the CHARACTER or WORLD you think is the most interesting
(5) Upload a sketch using the UPLOAD button

If you haven't got the time to get involved in this process (or you don't really think ReBoot is your thing), no problem. But you may want to join the site anyway... Zeros 2 Heroes will be hiring a LOT of artists in the next few months to work on a number of upcoming projects.

Markosia joins ROK Comics

I'm pleased to report Markosia has joined the growing number of publishers on ROK Comics. There will be a fuller press item later but in the mean time, here's the first episode of "Dark Mists", an adventure set in pre-war Japan...