'Roy of the Rovers' Annual

Product Information

There was a time when Mirror Books (an offshoot of the Mirror newspaper) published quiz books, and the first Roy of the Rovers Football Quiz Book was published in 1978 (above, featuring a foreword by comedian Eric Morecambe), followed by another the following year. Both were edited by longtime Roy of the Rovers editor Barrie Tomlinson. Of the overall readership, 9percent were aged seven to eight, 18per cent were aged nine to ten, 57per cent were eleven to fourteen, 6per cent were fifteen to sixteen, and 10per cent were aged seventeen to nineteen. [4] The format must have been a success because Roy of the Rovers wasn’t the only comic character to front a quiz book around this time. Published in 1980, the 2000AD Space Quiz Book was compiled by Roy Preston.

Roy of the Rovers taught sportsmanship, etiquette and why a fractured ankle, a broken rib and an early case of Polio should never stand between a determined team captain and victory in the FA Cup." [13] After 22years of continued popularity, the strip was judged successful enough to sustain its own weekly comic, the eponymous Roy of the Rovers, launched on 25 September 1976. The comic ran for 851issues, until 20 March 1993, [a] and included other football strips and features. Arguably the most famous British comics character of all, ‘Roy of the Rovers’ sixty year playing career began on the cover of Tiger Number One in September 1953. Since then, the phrase ‘Roy of the Rovers stuff’ has become part of the English language, regularly invoked by pundits to describe the essence of footballing dreams. Thousands of football fans up and down the country used to follow the fortunes of Roy Race and Melchester United in the weekly Roy of the Rovers comic stripsGordon Stewart would later be rebooted to appear as Melchester Rovers' goalkeeper in the 2018 Roy of the Rovers revival. Following the closure of the weekly title in 1993, [8] the strip appeared in a relaunched monthly publication in September that year, with grittier storylines intended to attract teen and young adult fans who had read the weekly comic in their youth. Between January 1994 and January 1995, the monthly strips were mirrored by a weekly edition in Shoot magazine, [9] which had in the late 1980s published a parody called Ray of the Rangers. [10] The relaunched Roy of the Rovers comic ended in 1995. Roy also rubs shoulders with a number of other comic heroes in Football’s Comic Book Heroes by Adam Riches with Tim Parker and Robert Sandland. Published by Mainstream, published in 2009, it’s a celebration of the football comic genre and the many legendary characters they produced. The Quiz Books

Re-launches as a monthly comic with grittier storylines aimed at teenage readers. Roy’s playing days are ended after nearly 40 years when he loses control of his helicopter and crashes into a field The first non-comics Roy of the Rovers tale, published by New English Library, was released in 1977. Written by James Hart, and simply called Roy Of the Rovers, the story revolved around Melchester’s bid for the European Cup Winners’ Cup, hampered by acidental team injuries and deliberate sabotage. Mighty Mouse, a Roy of the Rovers strip that began in 1979, featured Kevin "Mighty" Mouse, a successful, skilful Division One player despite being a morbidly obese, short, bespectacled medical student. Hot Shot Hamish, meanwhile, followed gentle Hebridean giant Hamish Balfour, the man with the most powerful shot in the world, and began its days in Scorcher and SCORE, before that title was merged into Tiger. a b Wilson, Chris (23 March 2009), "Roy of the Rovers profile: All You Need to Know About the Classic Football Comic", Daily Mirror , retrieved 10 June 2010 This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.None of the issues were numbered; the total of 853issues is given in Duncan McAlpine's Comic Book Price Guide 1996/97 Edition. [2] The monthly stated that the Roy whose career ended in 1993 had been born in 1954 (the year the strip first appeared), and had debuted, aged 16, in the Rovers' European Cup Final win of 1970 (which had actually taken place in 1969, not 1970, in the strip). All stories before then were implied to have featured his father, also named Roy. Division One Champions – 1931, 1932, 1933, 1951, 1958, 1960, 1963, 1968, 1972, 1973, 1977, 1980, 1988, 1992 The Spandau Special", Roy of the Rovers.com, archived from the original on 22 June 2008 , retrieved 27 March 2010 Roy was created by the author Frank S. Pepper, [57] who had created the similar strip, Danny of the Dazzlers, but he only wrote four installments of Roy of the Rovers because of his commitments to another of his characters, Captain Condor. Pepper's role was taken by the strip's first artist Joe Colquhoun, who used the pen-name "Stewart Colwyn". [58] He was replaced after four-and-a-half years by Derek Birnage, the editor of Tiger, who had commissioned the strip. In 1960, in an attempt to whip up publicity, it was announced that the footballer Bobby Charlton had taken over as writer, although in reality it was still written by Birnage (who claimed that he did consult with Charlton occasionally for story ideas). [59] The longest-serving writer of the strip was Tom Tully, who began in 1969 on an intermittent basis and then continuously from 1974 until the end of the weekly comic in 1993. Ian Rimmer became the main writer for the strip during the Match of the Day years, until the magazine's closure in May 2001. [57] The 2018 reboot is written by Rob Williams (graphic novels) and Tom Palmer (novels).

Rose, Neil (April 2004), "Race Against Time", When Saturday Comes, archived from the original on 28 August 2010 , retrieved 21 June 2010 Tomlinson, Alan; Young, Christopher (2000), "Golden Boys and Golden Memories: Fiction, Ideology, and Reality in Roy of the Rovers and the Death of the Hero", in Jones, Dudley; Watkins, Tony (eds.), A Necessary Fantasy?: the Heroic Figure in Children's Popular Culture: Vol 18, Garland Publishing, pp.177–206, ISBN 978-0-8153-1844-6 Especially during the 1980s, real-life personalities often made appearances. Former Division One stars Bob Wilson and Emlyn Hughes were brought out of retirement to play for Melchester in 1985, along with longtime fans of the strip Martin Kemp and Steve Norman, of the pop group Spandau Ballet. [54] Geoff Boycott served for several years as Melchester's chairman, [11] and Sir Alf Ramsey had briefly taken over as manager of Melchester in 1982, while Roy lay in his coma. [2] Players such as Malcolm Macdonald and Trevor Francis would sometimes line up alongside Roy in England matches, despite the fact that the clubs they played for in real life were never featured in the strip. [55] Comparisons have been drawn between the fictional Roy Race and the captain of England's 1966 World Cup winning team, Bobby Moore, whose playing career spanned a similar time-scale to that of Roy's. Moore's death in 1993, just days after the last edition of the Roy of the Rovers comic was published, produced a "literature of tribute", framed around themes "remarkably similar to those at the center of the Roy Race fiction and ideology... there was a clear sense of mourning for the loss of an age". [67]The Daily Mail describes Steven Gerard as a modern Roy and commissions special art to illustrate their story The 2018 revival series of graphic novels and younger reader novels follows 16-year-old Roy Race as he attempts to earn a trial at Melchester Rovers, a once-proud club that now sit down in League One. Roy divides his time between college and looking after his disabled father, but dreams of playing for Melchester as a striker. He impresses Melchester manager Kevin "Mighty" Mouse and coach Johnny "Hard Man" Dexter at his trial, and is signed on as a trainee – but suddenly finds himself, along with the rest of the youth team, promoted to the first team squad when the club's entire roster of professional players are sold to ensure Melchester's financial survival. The first season follows Roy and the Melchester squad as they strive to qualify for the playoffs and gain promotion to the Championship. Football-themed stories were a staple of British comics for boys from the 1950s onwards, and Roy of the Rovers was the most popular. [1] The strip usually saw Rovers competing for honours at the top of the English and European game, although in some years the storylines would see the club struggle for form, including a relegation from the First Division in the early 1980s. As well as dealing in on-pitch action, Roy of the Rovers featured high drama off the pitch, with kidnapping storylines a recurring feature of its early decades. From the 1970s onwards, stories included a shooting, a terrorist atrocity, and several celebrity guest appearances. Rovers played in a fictional universe made up of invented teams; however, real-life players including Emlyn Hughes, Bob Wilson and Malcolm Macdonald made appearances in the strip, as did former England manager Alf Ramsey. In 1985, following the closure of Tiger, Hot Shot Hamish moved over to Roy of the Rovers, and immediately introduced the characters of Hamish and Mouse to each other. Shortly afterwards, Mouse was transferred from Tottenford Rovers to join Hamish at Scottish club Princes Park, and the strip was renamed Hot Shot Hamish and Mighty Mouse. It was later shortened to Hot Shot Hamish and Mouse, and finally Hamish and Mouse. The series ran continuously from 1985 to 1990, with a brief break that year before returning. The final new stories were published in January 1992, with the remaining issues until Roy of the Rovers' cancellation taking the form of reprints.