Roy of the Rovers: The Best of the 1980s — Who Shot Roy Race?

This truly must be the editorial choice of the best of Roy's adventures from the 1980s. Back in 2008, Titan Books reprinted the same storyline (and more) in their The Best of Roy of the Rovers: The 1980s in a now-out-of-print flexiback format volume. It's not surprising, really, that this particular storyline is chosen. One of the strengths of the strip when it appeared in the pages of Tiger and Roy of the Rovers was that a storyline, or series of storylines, would play out over a whole season, and finding a self-contained few episodes to reprint is almost impossible. Storylines would often dramatically reboot the strip, involve the demise of major characters in the best soap-opera tradition of, say, EastEnders. Unlike EastEnders (and American superhero comics), dead characters were never brought back to life in desperate grabs for ratings or sales.

This volume reprints the weekly saga of Melchester Rovers from the pages of Roy of the Rovers between January 1981 and June 1982, picking up the storyline halfway through the 1980-81 season. The 1981-82 season contained one of the most heart-stopping of all Roy stories, as, on 12 December 1981, he was shot by a mysterious gunman. Inspired by the 'who shot JR' publicity that had surrounded Dallas, the identity of the mystery shooter was kept secret for months.

The book opens with an injury-depleted Melchester Rovers struggling to find form as the season opens. There's plenty of action on the pitch and, because a match can last for a month or more, every game has something vital to the plot, whether it's the form of old players, the arrival of a new team-mate or trouble at the top or the bottom of the league table that makes it crucial that Rovers win.

But the action wasn't always on the playing field: there was as much drama off the pitch as team-mates fall out with each other and—as in this volume—Roy has as many problems at home as he does at Melchester Stadium. Roy was one of the few characters in comics aimed at boys where Roy had a home life: he's married, to Penny, and has twin children, and author Tom Tully made sure that Penny was sometimes at the heart of a storyline long before WAGS took on a celebrity all of their own.

Roy's cousin, Arnie Meckiff, is another off-field troublemaker, as is Elton Blake, an actor who is to play Roy in a TV show... the list of people unhappy with Roy Race begins to grow as the new season kicks off, leading to the shocking sight of Roy being shot. Hospitalised and in a coma, Melchester Rovers' directors turn to one of the biggest names in football to take over the team—former England manager Sir Alf Ramsey.

And here we have another soap-opera staple: the strips are played out in a bizarre version of real time where a 90-minute football match can last four weeks but a season lasts a season and real world events are referred to (the Royal Wedding of Prince Charles and Diana Spencer, for instance). Real people were part and parcel of the storylines, making the standard "any resemblance to actual persons is entirely coincidental" notice at the front of the book completely redundant—star guests were always popping up to Melchester to visit the team, some playing key roles in various plots.

Keeping all these elements bubbling along season after season took as much skill as Roy showed on the pitch, so all praise goes to Tom Tully, one of the finest writers British comics ever had. His was the hand behind the twisting plotlines and constant Greek chorus of terrace commentary that kept Roy at the top of the comics' league for twenty years. For eleven of those years he worked with artist David Sque who saw Roy through his mid-1970s to mid-1980s fluffy haircut era.

The Rebellion reprint, although not as generous as the Titan volume — which offered two whole seasons, beginning in September 1980 — benefits from not removing all the yellowing of the newsprint the strip was originally printed on, which makes the colours stand out a little better. As a bonus, they also include a story from the 1982 Roy of the Rovers Annual.

Roy of the Rovers: The Best of the 1980s — Who Shot Roy Race? by Tom Tully and David Sque
Rebellion ISBN 978-178108896-8, 10 June 2021, 176pp, £19.99. Available via Amazon.

Real Roy of the Rovers Stuff

Barrie Tomlinson joined Fleetway Publications back in 1961 and rose to become Group Editor in the late 1970s after nine years in the editorial seat on Tiger. During that period he grew to know all the ins and outs of Melchester Rovers' most famous star, the most famous footballer in the UK, Roy Race. It was his suggestion that Roy deserved his own title, and Roy of the Rovers was launched in 1976 with Tomlinson as editor.

Nobody is better placed to write about Roy's history during that period, and Barrie's book is an enjoyable romp through the many ways he tried to get Roy into the public eye through newspaper publicity and a clever use of celebrity endorsement. The debut issue of Roy of the Rovers was endorsed by no less a person than HRH The Duke of Edinburgh, who penned an article for that first number. Over the years Barrie had brought in some of the biggest celebrity names either on the pitch (England's World Cup-winning manager, Alf Ramsey, footballers Bobby Moore, Malcolm Macdonald and Bob Wilson, amongst many others, cricketers Geoff Boycott and Ian Botham, etc.) or off (Peter Sellers, Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise) to write for and support both Tiger and Roy of the Rovers.

The additional publicity generated helped keep Roy in the papers and, therefore, reminded parents that he was still around. Comics were always seen as a parent-buy for their children and Roy's longevity meant that father's who had read the comic in the fifties could be buying the same title for their children to read in the seventies.

Just as unique amongst boys' comics, Roy of the Rovers was an ongoing soap-opera. While football may have been at its centre, the stories were built around Roy; the once eternally 29-year-old player began to grow older; he married, had children, suffered problems that affected his concentration and ability to play. Racey's Rocket would often win the day, but the skill of writers like Tom Tully was always to reflect real-world problems in the strip without letting up on the excitement on the pitch.

By mixing fact and fiction, stories were able to tackle hooliganism, Roy's family could cheer on the procession at the Royal Wedding of Charles and Di (Diana also being the name of Roy's third child, born around the same time as Prince William), and Penny could walk out on her famous husband. One of the most famous storylines of all, which left readers asking "Who shot Roy?", was inspired by the national attention a similar shooting had achieved in the end-of-season finale of TV series Dallas. Like "Who shot J.R.?", a number of suspects were introduced ahead of the shooting until the dramatic cover for 19 December 1981 saw Roy shot from off-panel. Inside were Get Well Soon messages from Trevor Francis, Terry O'Neill, Lawrie McMenemy and many other fellow footballers.

All this effort kept Roy in the spotlight for quite a few years whilst many contemporary papers were merged or simply folded. Tiger merged into Eagle in 1985, but Roy was able to sustain his own title until 1993. Roy himself has reappeared a number of times and any extraordinary action on the pitch will still earn a player comparison to Melchester Rovers' most famous son to this day.

Tomlinson's book covers this turbulent period of British comics, introducing some of the characters behind the scenes of the various comics he worked on and relating dozens of anecdotes about how he persuaded the likes of Sir Alf Ramsey to become a character within the story. He also covers turning Roy into the star of stamps, Roy's exploits in the Daily Star, the Tiger Sports Stars of the Year and many other aspects of the Roy story.

The book is packed with photos of Tomlinson meeting the many celebrities who populated the pages of Tiger and Roy of the Rovers. Perhaps the most interesting are to finally discover what his various sub-editors looked like (Ian Vosper, Paul Gettens) as photos of the real editors were almost unknown in comics that were "edited" by Tharg and Big E. Also the "before" photos of Tomlinson helping Suzanne Dando out of a sack is a treat as Roy's face was painted over the photograph when it originally appeared in Roy of the Rovers in 1982.

Hopefully this won't be the only time Barrie Tomlinson turns his attention back to his days at IPC Magazines. I'm sure there are many dozens of stories to be told about other titles he worked on, most notably the new Eagle and 2000AD.

Real Roy of the Rovers Stuff by Barrie Tomlinson. Pitch Publishing ISBN 978-1785-31212-0, October 2016, 192pp, £14.99. Available from Amazon.