A number of official Melchester Rovers Subbuteo teams were produced in the 1980s and 1990s. There was also an officially licensed board game in the 1980s, which saw players take on the role of Roy Race and manage the club. [74] Replica Melchester Rovers shirts have been available at various stages of the series' life, up to and including a strip designed and produced by Hummel for the 2018 reboot. Roy also appeared in a short-lived daily strip in Today in 1986, drawn by Kim Raymond, and a longer-lived one in the Daily Star, which was drawn by Yvonne Hutton until her death at the end of 1991, and by Mike Western for four years after that. Roy of the Rovers comic magazine was launched as a weekly on 25September 1976, named after the established comic strip of the same name that first appeared as weekly feature in the Tiger on 11September 1954. The title ran for 853issues, until 20March 1993 [nb 1] ( industrial action prevented publication of 3 issues in December 1978 and a further 5 in May and June 1980), and included other football strips and features. In February 1989, the magazine merged with the similarly themed Hot Shot, and was known for a brief time as Roy of the Rovers and Hot Shot, but reverted to its original title shortly afterwards.

Billy's Boots" (1985-92, written by Fred Baker anddrawn by John Gillatt, Mike Western, formerly in Scorcher, Tiger, Valiant and Eagle) 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.

In 2018, following the acquisition of the strip's rights by comic book publisher Rebellion, a brand new rebooted Roy of the Rovers story, following the adventures of a 16-year-old Roy in the present day, began publication as a series of original graphic novels and prose novels. 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. Roy is gunned down in his office by a mystery assassin. It later turns out to be a disgruntled actor who played him on TV In the original strip, the club was only relegated to the old Division Two once, and made a hasty return the following year. In the years between the end of the 1990s monthly comic and the Match of the Day strips, the club was relegated from the Premiership to the new Division One, spending two seasons there before being promoted under Roy's guidance. 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]

They said, 'This is football! You're not interested in football' and I said, 'No I can draw anything.' People are people, figures are figures– just put a football shirt on them or whatever! Now of course I was sworn to secrecy and couldn't tell the Sunday papers that I didn't like football when I was doing the national footballing hero in comics! Obviously I've played it, but I'm a doer not a watcher. I loved playing football at school and in later years." [62] Candid, emotional, optimistic, and never nothing less than inspiring, the autobiography of the man all fans of the game know simply as Roy Race aka ‘Roy of the Rovers’ lays bare for the first time the truth behind soccer’s ultimate fairy-tale story,” the publishers informed. Football was used increasingly to sell boys’ comics during the 1960s and 70s, culminating in 1970 when IPC (successor to AP/Fleetway) launched two football-themed comics, Scorcher and the short-lived Score ‘n’ Roar. The explosion of soccer features owed much to ‘Roy of the Rovers’ combination of on-pitch drama with bizarre subplots and running commentary from the crowd, all lovingly parodied in Viz’s ‘Billy the Fish’. 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.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. Originally these were two different humorous strips, both written by Fred Baker and drawn by Julio Schiaffino. [5] 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. Published in 2014 by Century this is “the greatest story ever told by the world’s most beloved sportsman, Roy of the Rovers, in his own words for the first time.” 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.