Rok Comics' Managing Editor John Freeman Interviewed

31st July 2007: Comics to mobile project Rok Comics' Managing Editor John Freeman will feature in an upcoming 'Nightgig' podcast, talking about the company's $10,000 Humour Comic competition which runs until end August 2007 -- and the opportunities ROK Comics offers publishers and individual creators alike to create and sell strips for mobile phones.

The Gigcast is an independent popular Podcast for fans of webcomics, by fans of webcomics which this week celebrated its 100th episode.

Publishers already signed aboard ROK Comics include the Britain's Daily Express and Daily Mirror, Egmont, Look and Learn, Markosia and more with "Garfield", "Doonesbury", "Too Much Coffee Man", "Robin Hood" and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" already available on site, soon to be followed by the likes of "Andy Capp", "Garth", "Jeff Hawke" and other classic strips.
ROK Comics also features "Half Moon Investigations", a mobile version of a comic strip drawn by British artist John Royle based on the book by Eoin ("Artemis Fowl") Colfer, in association with Puffin Books.

Creators publishing via ROK Comics include the critically acclaimed Chris Reynolds ("Moon Queen"), Michael Colbert and J.K. Woodward ("Crazy Mary"), Toshrio de Smeyter ("Scoff"), Steve Tillotson ("Banal Pig"), Dave Hailwood ("Ups and Downs"), Dave Berner ("Hunted", "Shades"), Josh Alves ("Tastes Like Chicken"), startrek.com's David Reddick, Dave Windett ("Wacky World of Animals") and Vince Aviles ("El Profe").

Creators and publishers can earn a 50 per cent share of revenue earned by ROK Comics on strip sales. The company has relations via its parent, ROK Entertainment, with over 30 telecoms worldwide including operators in China, Pakistan, India, South America and elsewhere.

ROK Comics launched its 'Hot Talent' competition with a grand prize of $10,000 in July. Simply create or upload a humorous comic strip on www.rokcomics.com and be in with the chance to win .

Full details are at www.rokcomics.com/competition.php but here's how you enter:

1) If you haven't already, sign up to ROK Comics at www.rokcomics.com

2) Create a humorous comic following the ROK Comic guidelines using the Creator Tool and categorise it as 'Fun' (The comic must be published in English)

3) Publish your strip as a Freefall or Pro "Fun" strip between now and 1 September 2007

4) That's it! You will have entered the competition and are in with the chance to win $10,000!

Here, Doggy!

The Secret of Stonehenge

New services from ROK

ROK Entertainment Group, the UK-based mobile technologies and applications development company, and parent company of ROK Comics has just announced the launch of ROK Media Store, following a four month trial and testing process.

ROK Media Store - www.rokmediastore.com - is a web-based application, available for free, which now enables the user to upload their music collection to their PC and to sideload it to the memory card on their mobile phone. Further music and video content is available for purchase online and is delivered to the buyer using ROK's proprietory content-compression and copy-protection technologies.

"More than 100 million iPods have been sold worldwide in the past five years, which clearly shows the enormous demand for music on the move" says Laurence Alexander, CEO of ROK . "Mobile entertainment is a proven market which stretches back more than 25 years from the days of the Sony Walkman, but when you look at the far bigger scale of the mobile phone market, with three billion handsets in use, being upgraded at the rate of one billion new handsets every year, ROK Media Store is designed to allow millions more people the opportunity, right now, to upload, manage and listen to music on their mobiles, in the same way those with an iPod have been able to do.

"Most handsets are now sold with a removable memory card and while the cost of memory cards has fallen considerably in the past year or so, their capacity is increasing all the time," he added, "so we see people building a library of memory cards containing their favourite music, managed via Media Store."

ROK believes Media Store is an "iPod killer" not because it competes with the iPod as another device like Microsoft's Zune, but because it offers a real and viable alternative designed for a device you already own - your mobile phone.

"We're not aiming to kill the iPod by simply offering yet another iPod-type device," said Alexander "we're offering an easy-to-use and free-to-use, mass-market alternative to having to buy an iPod."

ROK intend to monetise Media Store through a combination of online advertising and through offering people the chance to purchase additional content via the website for side-loading to their mobile phones, in a similar manner as iTunes.

"It's about time someone offered an alternative to iTunes in the mobile music space," feels Alexander.

ROK will also be adding video functionality to the service later this year.

"In addition to simply uploading their own music to their mobile phones, which is entirely free to use, we will be offering an ever-increasing portfolio of music and video content for people to buy online to augment their collections in the same way as iTunes sells music," he explains, "and we'll be adding more video content, going-forward, to include everything from full-length movies to music videos."

According to M:Metrics, 12% of people in the UK already download music to their mobile phones.

"We are very confident Media Store will prove a big success as it's a fantastic and timely addition to our portfolio of mobile entertainment technologies," said Jonathan Kendrick, Chairman of ROK, commenting on the launch.

ROK Entertainment Group is currently deploying its mobile TV service streamed over 2.5G via GPRS, 3G and WiFi networks to more than 30 operators worldwide as well as direct to consumers via Nokia Eseries devices.

As well as mobile TV service such as Freebe TV and ROK Comics, ROK also provides services such as the fun question and answer service, ANSA, and

Technorati

ROK Comics is getting a Technorati Profile

Venus Invades!

Only yesterday I was commenting how few people seem to have used the Freefall Creator Tool in the past few weeks for anything other than rude cartoons involving lots of tentacles, and then Paul Eldridge publishes this fab cartoon with aliens, nuns and eccentric scientists using it. How can you not smile at a strip that has a character called 'Doctor Bear on His head'?

Posh and Barks!

Prompted by news via the Sun that the Beckham's dog had been consigned to rehab for weeing in the new house, and Vinnie Jones was apparently a bad boy at an LA celebrity 'soccer' match...

Slippers

A gem of a freefal strip from "Lizzie"

Crazy Mary joins ROK Comics!

Acclaimed comic Crazy Mary has joined the ranks of a growing number of indpendently-created comics on ROK Comics.

Crazy Mary is a cyberpunk action series about a bounty hunter, Mary, who can see a twisted supernatural universe that overlays and interacts with our own. Mary uses this ability along with her military training to compete in the intense world of “freelancers” a blanket term applied to Bounty Hunters, Bodyguards, Detectives, Assassins, and any other folks who get their hands dirty.

Crazy Mary combines elements of SF, Action and Horror and delivers a heroine perfect for the new millennium on the new millennium’s hottest platform.

Crazy Mary is created and written by Michael Colbert and art by critically praised painter J.K. Woodward (Peter David’s Fallen Angel, Marvel’s X-Men Mythos: Beast).

A free sample promo and serialized episodes are now available for download through www.rokcomics.com.

Crazy Mary also exists in analog form through Digital Webbing Presents as an on-going series, starting in November 2007.

• Official Crazy Mary Website: www.whoiscrazymary.com

Fret for the Day

Really Heavy Greatcoat artist Nick Miller just sent me this gem -- just one of his regular "Frets for the Day" published on his blog.

It's about time some newspaper started publishing these!

Update 20/9/07:: Fret for the Day now features on ROK Comics

John Freeman interviewed on Nightgig

ROK Comics Managing Editor John Freeman is to be being interviewed for the comics podcast site Nightgig.

Check out www.nightgig.com/gigcast for the final interview over the next few days, which will centre on his work for ROK Comics.

The interview is to be conducted by hosts Tim Shea and Scott Gallatin.

New Digs for Kate Moss

War on terror set back

With news that Iran has arrested more alleged spies on its border - but this time some very furry ones - the Shadow responded with another poke at British Prime Minister Gordon Brown...



Wired points out that squirrel espionage -- Sky News reports 14 squirrels were kitted out with lisetneing devices, according to Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency -- would of course not be without precedent. Other members of the animal kingdom have been tagged as possible spies, including pigeons. During the Second World War, the Allied Forces used pigeons to fly vital intelligence out of occupied France.

Cats have also been used as spies and US marines stationed in Kuwait recently used chickens as a low-tech chemical detection system.

A UK Foreign Officer source reportedly told Sky News: "The story is nuts."

Satirical Cynicism from Shannon Wheeler

In a break away from his limelighted character, Too Much Coffee Man, who features on ROK Comics, Shannon Wheeler delivers Screw Heaven, When I Die I’m Going to Mars.

This new collection of Shannon's brilliant comics material, to be published by Dark Horse Comics in the US in August is described as "an intense packages coffee-fueled cynicism sheds a humorous light on life’s little nuances and annoyances". The trials and tribulations of several featured comic strip characters -- including the beloved Too Much Coffee Man -- come together to engage readers in a subtly intellectual, yet laugh-out-loud funny burlesque of irony and lampoon.

With an introduction from legendary Operation Ivy singer Jesse Michaels and guided by the editorial genius of Shawna Gore, this anthology joins several critically acclaimed Too Much Coffee Man books from Dark Horse, who say they are more than happy to be part of the rich history of the character.

And there's more Too Much Coffee Man news. An improbable marriage of classical music and comic book characters makes a new life in the Too Much Coffee Man Opera which will be presented by Comic-Con International: San Diego in a dramatic concert presentation running 27th - 28th July at the city's Horton Grand Theatre. The contemporary opera is based on Too Much Coffee Man and stirs scrutinizing sidesplitting satire with traditional opera.

Too Much Coffee Man creator, Shannon Wheeler, teamed up with Emmy Award winning composer Daniel Steven Crafts and cartoonist Damian Wilcox to form this one-act opera which chronicles the tragedy of Too Much Coffee Man, a caffeine-addled average Joe in love with a local Barista. Trouble brews when the cynical opportunist Espresso Guy also makes a play for the ambitious but frustrated young female coffee slinger. But the Barista has other plans that have nothing to do with either of the rambunctious men. The characters must resolve the modern age dilemma: Can coffee and romance co-exist?

“I haven’t been this excited since my last press release,” muses Shannon.

In addition to three performances for attendees of Comic-Con, the Too Much Coffee Man Opera will be performed in concert for a five-show run at the Horton Grand Theatre, and two public performances at 11.00 p.m. Friday, July 27th and 11.00 p.m. Saturday, July 28th. Tickets cost $20 and are available through Ticketmaster.

• Screw Heaven, When I Die I’m Going to Mars. is to be released by Dark Horse 8th August 2007.

Tastes Like Chicken

Cartoonist, comedian, graphic designer, husband, father and lover of ice cream Josh Alves is the latest creator to join the ranks of ROK Comics.

Tastes Like Chicken, which Josh is adapting for mobile format, appears in the American local newspaper The Weekly (latest headlines from Bangor, Maine, include: "Severed human hand found in Waldoboro garage" and "Wandering moose visits downtown Camden")as a weekly panel comic, offering Josh's unique take on things people might describe as ordinary or as "tasting like chicken".

Josh has a blog where he often discusse the comic creating process behind Tastes Like Chicken at joshalves.blogspot.com.

Summer time, and mobiles are busy

How much do tweens/teens use their cell phones during the summer? The answer, according to the new Disney Mobile Cell and Tell survey of 1,579 (I assume US) mobile phone using Tweens/Teens 10-17, is that summertime usage among this group grows to 3-hours and 45-minutes a day, versus the 1+ hour per day for an average school day. Conducted by Harris Interactive, Cynopsis Digital reports they also found that mobile phones are important enough to Tweens/Teens 10-17 that one third of those surveyed said they would give up listening to radio, playing video games, and shopping rather than give up their mobile phone.

One in five said they would give up TV. (They'll be reading ROK Comics instead, perhaps...)

Other findings include:

• 65% of Tweens/Teens 10-17 report using phones during school hours
• 58% of those surveyed that text message say they have texted during class
• 44% of respondents use text messages as their primary form of communication
• 52% say they text while at the movies and 28% at the dinner table
• 26% report they check for text messages or send one less than ten minutes after waking up in the morning.

Where's Amy?

The Shadow has solved the mystery of Amy Winehouse's many no-shows. It's nothing to do with her, erm 'social activities'. I'm sure she'll be relieved to have a new excuse...

Aled Haydn Jones, superhero!

When Chris Moyles declared Aled Haydn Jones was turning into a superhero on this morning's Radio 1 show, the ROK Comics team sprang into action and created this gem in response to Moyles' appeal for art of AHJ as a super powered wonder...

Are You Funny Enough to win $10,000?

Just a quick reminder - ROK Comics is running a competition to win $10,000 for creating a comic strip...

Simply create or upload a humorous comic strip on www.rokcomics.com and be in with the chance to win.

GET STARTED!

1) If you haven't already, sign up to ROK Comics create your own funny comic at www.rokcomics.com

2) Create a humorous comic following the ROK Comic guidelines using the Creator Tool and categorise it as 'Fun'

3) Publish your strip as a Freefall or Pro "Fun" strip between now and 1 September 2007

4) That's it! You will have entered the competition and are in with the chance to win $10,000!

Good Luck!

• Competition Page and full terms and conditions link: http://www.rokcomics.com/competition.php

Drink Like a Fish!

Dave Hailwood, the brains behind Ups and Downs and other strips, is working with artist Toshiro De Smeyter on another strip, Drink Like a Fish, now being published for mobile by ROK Comics.

Toshiro De Smeyter is the 21-year-old creator of another well known strip, Scoff, a dressed-in-black individual with an undying love for cuddly kittens and a sarcastic sense of humour.

Toshiro has been passionate about drawing ever since he was a little boy, and last year finally decided to draw a comic on a regular basis, publishing a new Scoff comic online every Monday.

Toshiro runs his own website and engages in all sorts of other projects, such as Drink like a fish, a comic he designs together with David Hailwood.

Check out the first mobile-formatted episode of Drink Like a Fish for free below:



In daily life, Toshiro works in the pre-press of a screen print company, but one day says he’'d like to start as a graphic designer, because designing is his real passion.

Meet the Spicy Girls

Great news that the Spice Girls have reformed. Well, great so far as The Shadow is concerned, it appears...

Banal Pig

Delighted to see Steve Tillotson's work on ROK Comics, including this, Jolly Bear...



Steve started Banal Pig comics with Gareth Brookes in 2005 and since then, they've published 12 books between them. Check their website for more info: Steve also has a blog and a myspace page to promote his work.

Meet Billy Bang

London based artist Martin Baines has just added Billy Bang to ROK Comics. Meet the man who explodes when he's angry -- literally!