You wouldn’t think a new comic by John Wagner & Alan Grant, the duo who wrote Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog and almost every other British comic strip you enjoyed in the eighties, would be a hard sell.
Yet with the Kickstarter to fund the second original graphic novel of Rok the Arkadian’s adventures closing on Thursday (31st October), the big red alien’s currently falling just short of the target Wagner, Grant & artist Dan Cornwell set themselves.
There’s only one reason for that – FOOTBALL! What should be the book’s strongest selling point turns out to be a handicap when persuading the core nerd constituency who back Kickstarter projects that Rok’s for them.
That perception problem persuaded the Kim Kardashian of 2000ad fandom, John Burdis – a social media influencer with a big arse – to produce a video explaining that Rok is a story about an alien, rather than a story about football:
Readers who overcame their memories of being picked last at PE and took the plunge into the first series were delighted to find Rok has more in common with Wagner & Grant’s Doomlord work for Eagle than Roy Of The Rovers.
The preview comic Wagner & Grant released of Book 2 (available here) shows this story in particular has more in common with something like Thor, with Rok reluctantly returning to his homeworld only to learn his queen is abdicating, putting him in the firing line of the various rivals to succeed her and take the throne.
Go support this great Kickstarter here…
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wagnerrok/rok-the-god
