ROK Comics announces it has launched ROK Comics as an application on the Apple iPhone.

Ligeia the Vampire by Rodrigo D. Ricci

With a new episode of Ligeia now available on ROK Comics, creator Rodrigo D. Ricci has revealed more about the background to the character in a posting for the strip’s Facebook page. What follows is a translation/adaptation of Rodrigo’s posting, which is in Spanish…

Ligeia was created in the summer of 2006 in Italy, inspired by the story of the same name by Edgar Allan Poe. The plan was that this vampire “with a touch of irony”, drawn in a style echoing the work of Alex Toth and Frank Miller, would be the kind of work an Italian publisher interested in publishing a graphic novel by Rodrigo would like.

Unfortunately, neither of the two projects were realized and have been buried on Rodrigo’s computer for some time. Then, when he put some of the pages of comicspace.com, a lot of people told him that they liked the character.

Ligeia is inspired by various sources. Poe first, mainly to capture as much as possible the environment with the use of black and white in high contrast. There’s also elements of the Lovecraft, especially his lesser known work “Medusa’s Coil” ( by Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop, read it online), more than anything because Ligeia’s hair moves in a lively, bizarre way.

The strip also pays homage to movies like La Maschera del Demonio), directed by Lamberto Bava, more than anything because of the use of black and white in that film.

Physically, Ligeia is a blend between Barbara Steele and Edwige Feneche and other actresses of the Golden Age of film.

Rodrigo decided to make Edgar a pet cat to avoid the horrible cliches of Igor in some bad movies. As a character it works well: cats have an extraordinary personality. “They do not need to interpret any role, since they are the role,” he says.

The story comes with the Nazis after reading the book Hanussen, a Jew in the court of the Third Reich. Rodrigo was astonished by this bizarre character, a Jew who was the magician of many senior Nazis, but hated by Gobbels who considered him a charlatan. Hanussen believed in The Temple of the Uunseen, but made the mistake one night at a party having a vision and predicting that a building would be burned, causing a major sea change in the Weimar Republic.

One day later someone set fire to the Reichstag and Hitler came to power. Shortly afterward, Hannusen was found shot dead in a park. (more about Hannusen here on Wikipedia. Werner Herzog made a movie about him in 2001 starring Tim Roth, and there have been others).

There is a definite morality to the comic although Rodrigo leaves the reader to choose whose morality they favour. Ligeia is a vampire, so in theory, evil. On the other side are the Nazis sent by Himmler, and those who might be the traditional heroes are a band of mercenaries, all united bya desire to loot the gold of the vampire.

“This series was born at time of many changes,” says Rodrigo. “Gradually, publishers are leaving paper behind and transferring their attention to the massive audience potential of the web cell phones and the iPhone.”

Any decision on the quality of the strip Rodrigo leaves in you hands, cordially inviting you to read… Ligeia!

Despite turmoil in world financial markets over the last year, the $1 trillion mobile industry continues to confound expectations, with spectacular and accelerating growth, says Portio Research in its report, ‘Worldwide Mobile Market Forecasts 2009 – 2013′.

The report, published this week, reveals that over half the world now uses a mobile phone and predicts that 80% of the world’s population – 5.8 billion people – will be doing so by the end of 2013.

Put into perspective, 5.8 billion mobile phones represents more than twice the total, combined, number of TV sets and PC’s globally.

Among the top 20 growth markets there are few surprises, the report says. China wins the top spot, just ahead of India. These two countries alone are expected to contribute over 1 billion additional mobile phone users in the next 5 years.

Africa, the Middle East and Latin America are also expected to experience high growth, estimated at 13.3%, 10.7% and 9.9% CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate), respectively.

Meanwhile, despite rising mobile data revenues, mobile ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) continues to decline, and is predicted to fall from $23.20 in 2005 to $15.80 by the end of 2013, largely because the additional subscriber growth is likely to come from low per capita income markets.

Nokia, the world’s leading handset manufacturer, shipped 437 million handsets in 2007, while Samsung has displaced Motorola from the number 2 spot. In the first two quarters of 2008, LG displaced Sony Ericsson from the number 4 spot.

Commenting on the report, Laurence Alexander, Group CEO of ROK said “We are enthused by the Portio report as it highlights not just the staggering and continuing growth of the mobile industry, but also the increasing need of operators and manufacturers alike to develop non-voice revenue streams, which is exactly what we offer”.

ROK Entertainment Group Inc., (OTCBB: ROKE) founded in 2004 and owners of ROK Comics, is a global mobile entertainment group. With approximately 200 staff worldwide, ROK has filed more than 40 international patents for its suite of innovative mobile technologies.

With 3.3 billion mobile handsets in use worldwide, the mobile entertainment industry is a multi-billion dollar business.

ROK TV enables the streaming of live and on-demand TV to mobile phones over mass-market 2.5G, as well as over 3G and Wi-Fi.

More Info: www.rokent.com

Ligeia, a vampire story by Rodrigo Ricci - now free to view on ROK Comics

ROK Comics is pleased to announce many of the comics published on the service are now Free To View on the web in an ad-supported format.

Marking a major change in the way ROK Comics promotes its comics to mobile service, almost all the comics on the web site (www.rokcomics.com) are now Free To View online.

ROK Comics, which offers comic creators and comic publishers the means to create comics in a format suitable for mobile phone presentation via WAP sites, is also making strips viewable via its web site in an ad-supported format.

The online versions of the strips can be embedded on almost any web site using players similar to many video sharing sites such as ROK’s own Newsjack.tv service or sites such as YouTube.

“We have allowed limited viewing of Pro Comics online since the service began last year,” explains Managing Editor John Freeman, “but an opportunity has arisen for us to promote the service in an ad-supported format on the web, and we’ve chosen to try that route.

“We think this is an appropriate move for ROK Comics,” added ROK Media CEO Graham Baines. “It enables full promotion of most of the comic brands we feature.”

There will be some territorial and contractual restrictions on certain strips being published under license but top independent creator strips such as David Fletcher’s humour strip Crumb, Ian Gibson’s quirky Annie Droid, Chris Reynolds’ superheroine series Moon Queen, Rich Diesslin’s Mobile Gospel, Kennedy Rose’ hilarious Anomaly, Rodrigo Ricci’s vampire tale Ligeia, John Maybrury’s SpaceBabe and Josh Alves’ Tastes Like Chicken are now viewable in full online.

“Reaction to the change has been positive,” says John. “From the outset, we knew ROK Comics was at the forefront of a new development for comics, bringing them to mobile, and the past year has been a tremendous and exciting learning curve.

“Many creators have been very positive about comics on mobile, recognising the potential of a huge market that big comics publishers are just beginning to wake up to. Like us, they see mobile comics as a way of raising awareness of their creations in a format that reaches many new readers, and the potential, ultimately, for making money from this new form.

“Many see mobile a great way to promote their characters and strips, complementing their other distribution methods.”

Creators and publisher will share in any paid-for ad revenues generated by the online presentation, just as they already share revenue on WAP subscription page views from ROK’s mobile subscriber services operated in partnership with key telecoms such as Telenor, Exact Mobile and retailers such as Claires.

Hand in hand with changes noted above, the ROK Comics design team have transformed the main subscription-based WAP site (wap.rokcomics.com). For pricing details in your country go to www.rokcomics.com/subscribe.php.

In the UK, for a free trial of the service on your mobile, text COMIC to 83736. For a full subscription text COMIC SUB to 83736. The UK subscription price is just £3 a month. You need to bookmark the site when you follow the link you are sent.
ABOUT ROK COMICS

• ROK Comics on Mobile (www.rokcomics.com) is a mobile comics publishing solution enabling comics’ creators and publishers to syndicate their works to mobile phone users worldwide. The service opens up huge worldwide commercial opportunities for all comic creators, artists, writers and publishers. The ROK Comics Creator Tool is also offered as a standalone ‘sticky’ content feature for a variety of companies and was utilised last year by UK TV network ITV to promote I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here.
With access to hundred of millions of handsets through existing Mobile Network Operator Agreements, ROK Comics can deliver digital comics straight to mobile handsets and collect revenue for doing so.
ROK Comics is a new opportunity for publishers and creators to reach a worldwide audience who will be able to download the comics via Pay Per Download or subscription via Multi Media Messaging (MMS) and WAP. Creators publishing professionally via ROK Comics will receive up to 50% of the available revenue on every sale, with full access to sales statistics, viewings and more.
In addition to several licensed comics that are being offered via ROK Comics, publishers can also create Free Samples of strips that can be viewed online and on mobile to promote their print editions, and let fans know about them by e-mail, and also provide an “Embed” of a strip, which can be posted on web sites, blog or company site.
Publishing partners include King Features, Egmont, the Mirror and Express national UK newspapers and comics publisher Markosia.

• ROK Comics, managed by ROK Media Ltd, is part of ROK Entertainment Group, founded in 2004, a global mobile entertainment group.
With approximately 200 staff worldwide, ROK has filed more than 40 international patents for its suite of innovative mobile technologies.
With 3 billion mobile handsets in use worldwide, the mobile entertainment industry is a multi-billion dollar business.
ROK TV enables the streaming of live and on-demand TV to mobile phones over mass-market 2.5G, as well as over 3G and Wi-Fi.

ROK Comics is pleased to announce we have not one but two great competitions to tell you about – open to everyone using the ROK Comics comics-to-mobile service, so pass it on!

Both offer the chance to win a top of the range Nokia 9500 phone, worth nearly £500 ($1000 US). It’s a great mobile phone with high memory capacity, a full set of applications, and versatile network connections so you can keep in stride while on the go.

The 2008 ROK Comics Humour Competition: We’re running another Humour Competition through to 1st September 2008 after last year’s proved such a success. Any humour comic created on the ROK Comics platform – Pro or Freefall and assigned as “Fun” – qualifies for entry. The winner and runners up will be published on a special page on the ROK Comics site, just as we did last year (www.rokcomics.com/winners2007.php).
• For full details of this competition, go to www.rokcomics.com/humour_competition2008.php
The ROK and a Hard Place Competition: We’re delighted to be partnering with the Birmingham International Comic Show (www.thecomicsshow.co.uk) on this, Britain’s premiere comics event, which takes place on 4-5 October. The winner of this competition will also get free entry to the event (travel and accommodation costs not included). While it’s yet to reach the giddy heights of the incredible San Diego Comic Convention, the organisers fully expect over 4000 fans to plough through the doors and they have a terrific line up of creators to see, including the legendary Michael Golden, Hellboy artist Duncan Fegredo, Thor artist Olivier Coipel, V For Vendetta co-creator David Lloyd and Watchmen co-creator Dave Gibbons and many more.

Our ‘ROK and a Hard Place’ competition challenges comics creators to come up with a comic featuring a life changing moment. It could be your life changing moment or someone fictional… Even an animal or robot! What you come up with is up to you.

The theme was the idea of Shane Chebsey, one of the co-runners of BICS and a long-time supporter of Britain’s huge indie comics press. We think this challenge will appeal to many creators worldwide, and we’re looking forward to seeing what they come up with.

“We at BICS love the way that Rok Comics is so accessible to both creators and readers,” says Shane, “and feel that working together we can help to bring the wonderful medium of comics to a wider readership. Mobile phones are now the most widely used method of communication in the world, so it seems the perfect way to present new comics to more people than ever before”.

• For full details of this competition, go to www.rokcomics.com/bics_competition2008.php • For terms and conditions of both competitions go to www.rokcomics.com/competitionTerms.php

Just launched on the UNESCO Social and Human Sciences website is a new weekly comic by Mychailo Kazybrid which aims to promote the battle against doping in sport.

Published by UNESCO in partnership with EDGE G3 Ltd., The Case of the Spoilsports, published in English, Spanish and French, stars Rattus Holmes and his assistant Dr. Felis Watson and dramatizes UNESCO’s anti-doping role and explores the importance of the International Convention against Doping in Sport, adopted by UNESCO’s member states in 2005.

The characters come from the pen of Sheffield artist, Mychailo Kazybrid who has been involved in the cartoon and comic book industry for over 30 years, with work covering a variety of licensed characters from Shaun the Sheep, Wallace & Gromit, The Tick to Duckula, Dangermouse and the Bash St. Kids, to name but a few. He also publishes his own strip, Do-Do Man, on the comics-to-mobile service ROK Comics.

“When Ed Chatelier of EDGE G3 Ltd, provided the script, he wanted something different, and the idea was to take a new approach to something that was already well known.” Mychailo explains. “So we came up with the pets of the famous having an encounter with pets of the infamous, with my partner, Sarah Sier naming the characters. When the rat and cat belonging to Holmes and Watson have to take on the evil bird of Moriarty, anything could happen!”

With the colour work produced by fellow artist Richard Thomas the story is in five chapters, published weekly.

Inspired by the famous detective stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, it will trace how twin athletes react differently to the pressures of competitive sport. One gives in immediately to the pressure put on him by his trainer and teammates, while the other athlete suffers as a result of the use of performance enhancing drugs by his competitors. From one sports event to the next, the plot will lead us to the 29th Olympic Games in Beijing, China.

Having also produced Rattus Holmes and the Case of the World Water Crisis, artwork is already being put together for the character’s third adventure.

• View the strip on the UNESCO Social and Human Sciences website

Moon Queen: Curtain Crawlers

by John Freeman

Comic creator Chris Reynolds, the groundbreaking talent behind the classic Mauretania graphic novel, has just added a new Moon Queen adventure to the comics to mobile service ROK Comics.

Titled Curtain Crawlers, the spooky tale is different to the previous run of Moon Queen stories, which feature Chris’ very own take on superheroes and superheroines, for a number of reasons.

“Because of their content, the previous Moon Queen stories all use ROK Comics’ ‘R’ rating,” Chris explains. “Curtain Crawlers is the first Moon Queen story I felt could take the ‘U’ rating without bowdlerising it into nothingness.”

The story also markes the first Moon Queen story where Chris has taken ‘as read’ the previous body of stories as knowledge that, really, is required of the reader – so if you want to catch up with what has gone before your best bet is to subscribe to the WAP subscription service for just £3 for 30 days, and then you can read all the earlier Moon Queen stories on your mobile.

“I wanted a to go back to a story like my prose novels that’s a bit more than just one, however interesting, incident from Moon Queen’s life,” says Chris of the haunting 24-episode tale. “In Curtain Crawlers, I wanted to write more of a novel-length type of thing – to cover that sort of ground – even if the final story isn’t actually very long.

My inspiration for this is the amount of content they fit into the 45-minute episodes of post-Eccleston Doctor Who,” he reveals. “I sometimes think some of these these zip by too quickly for me to get a proper grip on them, but that’s where comics have a unique advantage shared with text novels – that you can take them at your own pace and re-read at will!”

There are more developments in this story, further expanding the Moon Queen mythos. “By now, I wanted to link the stories a bit with the world and the journey of Mauretania Comics,” says Chris, “from which so far Moon Queen’s been at arm’s length. So Garnet Ross from ‘Pure Holiday‘ makes a cameo appearance (at quite an important moment) and the themes and the concerns of the whole story are quite Mauretania-like, connecting with ‘Pure Holiday’ again in using audio recordings as an element of the plot.

“I’ve even re-used one of the imaginary locations from ‘How To Do Your Own Dentistry’ for the place where ‘our’ Moon Queen is held while the story unfolds.”

Chris was one of the first creators to give ROK Comics a try when it comes to bringing comics to mobile and has some useful tips on developing new comics for the young medium.

“I found ‘mobile storytelling’ simple to get into because I nearly always draw strips using a uniform panel size anyway,” he says, “and my scenes are generally quite short, so the translation to ‘page-by-page’ format is straightforward.

“The most recent thing I’ve learned, in correspondence with [ROK Comics Managing Editor John Freeman], is that it’s best to have very brief episodes starting with a one-panel recap using the final panel of the previous episode.”

At present, Moon Queen stories can only be found on mobile and on Chris’ official web site MetroPoppyfield. While there are no plans for a print edition just yet, Marc Baines at Kingly Books, who, among other titles, also pulished The Dial by Chris and Voice of the Wilberforce by Ed Pinsent, is planning a new edition of the Penguin Mauretania.

• You can view all the comics on ROK Comics on your mobile by subscribing to the WAP service for a small monthly fee – $4 in the US, £3 in the UK, other countries also served. Simply visit this page on the ROK Comics site and choose the subscribe option. When you receive a WAP push message to your mobile, connect to the site using that link using your browser, bookmark it — and you’ll be subscribed to ROK Comics Mobile for the next month.

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Thanks to a deal between ROK Media (publishers of ROK Comics) and top Hollywood photographer Sue Schneider, you can now buy wallpapers featuring some top SF TV and film stars — along with other celebrities — for your mobile.

Mobile service Fonepark is offering a number of ‘wallpapers’ for mobile featuring the likes of William Shatner, Jeri Ryan, Robert Picardo and many others, along with TV theme ring tones and more.

More SF celebrities will be added to the service in coming months.

Fonepark is also set to add wallpapers by top comics artists already creating comics for mobile, complementing existing comics and magazine-sourced imagery from titles such as Look and Learn and The Bible Story.

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Chillin With Dreadman Fans can now buy merchandise from the Chillin With Dreadman Headshop on CafePress.

There’s a big range of stuff on sale, from t-shirts to mugs and more.

Satirist David Fennoy recently started adding some of his hilarious jabs at US politics and celebrity to ROK Comics, which you can check out in full if you subscribe to the WAP site!

David is relatively new to the comic world. While you may not know his face, you likely know his voice from dozens of TV shows, commercials and award shows like Showtime at the Apollo, as well as some of the most popular vide games on the market.

So how did he get into comics? “I spent many years as a radio personality, able to comment and joke about what was going on in the world,” he told ebonyjet. “I’ve been off the air for a number of years now and think I finally just needed an outlet for what I see and feel about the world we live in with out having to actually write a book that no one would read.

“I have to give a nod to Barack Obama also. His victory speech after winning Iowa inspired the first Chillin With Dreadman comic that I sent out to a few friends who were foolish enough say that they liked it and that I should do more. Since then I’ve created almost 200 cartoons and see no end in sight.”

Mobile comics seem to be growing in popularity worldwide, bouyed by better screen resolutions and the growing number of comic creators experimenting with the form. Further growth in the market might come from the increasing sales success for mobile comics (ketai) in Japan, a country which has already successfully exported manga print comics worldwide.

Reuters reported today that the Japanese love of mobile comics – which is already huge – could grow further with the arrival of Apple’s iphone next month. Analysts claim the device’s touch-screen will make it easier and more appealing to read comics on handsets.

With the number of mobile phone subscribers close to 108 million, or 85 percent of Japan’s population, carriers there are already finding e-mail, music downloads and web surfing hugely popular, and are looking for new opportunities to make money in a highly competitive market – and that includes comics.

Mobile Comics led the size of the Japanese mobile publication market to double in the last business year to 22 billion yen ($204 million), according to Internet and media research firm Impress R&D, almost three times bigger than the e-publication market for PCs.

“Until now, users had been extensively using mobile phones for email,” Shinko Securities analyst Tomohiko Okugawa told Reuters. “Now that’s shifting to games and comics … This is the area that’s going to be very interesting.”

“The importance of content has been growing,” agreed Toshitake Amamiya, general manager of telecom KDDI’s content and media division. “It’s crucial to pursue what we can do in this market where each adult always carries around a mobile phone and uses it as a life tool.”

The Mobile Comic phenomenon is not restricted to commuters aboard trains into Tokyo or Osaka. Comics on mobile aren’t just proving popular in Japan,” argues John Freeman, Managing Editor of comics-on-mobile service ROK Comics. “Translations of strips first published on ROK Comics for China have proven very popular in recent months.

“Selling comics on mobile to traditional comics readers is, surprisingly, a hard sell,” he acknowledges. “It’s hard to beat the beauty and versatility of the printed comic page either online or on mobile. But reaching a new, wider audience who have always read newspaper cartoons but never set foot in a comic shop is proving the key to making mobile comics a success.

“Webcomics creators argue a hardcore fan set of a couple of thousand readers is enough to turn a profit online (largely through sales of strip-related merchandise such as collections, t-shirts etc.) so the potential revenues are strong,” he argues.

“What we’re finding is that mobile comics are popular even in countries where there is no traditional print-based or web comic industry, and mobile reaches far more people than even web comic creators reach via PC delivery.

ROK Comics provides both a platform for licensed comic content including Andy Capp, Roy of the Rovers and Garth, and the tools for independent comic creators to upload their own comics, promoting their characters on mobile using a comic creator tool which also enable web blog and web site publication. The sale of downloads and WAP page views are creditted to creators’ accounts, with profits on sales shared equally between ROK and the creator.

“Delivering comics on mobile in the West is achievable – we’ve been doing that for over a year,” says Freeman, “but creators and publishers do need to take on board the creative challenges imposed by small screen delivery.”

• More about creating comics for mobile on the ROK Comics web site