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''Roy of the Rovers'' is a British comic strip about the life and times of a fictional footballer named Roy Race, who played for Melchester Rovers. The strip first appeared in the ''Tiger'' in 1954, before giving its name to a weekly (and later monthly) comic magazine, published by IPC and Fleetway from 1976 until 1995, in which it was the main feature. The weekly strip ran until 1993, following Roy's playing career until its conclusion after he lost his left foot in a helicopter crash. When the monthly comic was launched later that year the focus switched to Roy's son Rocky, who also played for Melchester. This publication was short-lived, and folded after only 19 issues. The adventures of the Race family were subsequently featured in the monthly ''Match of the Day'' football magazine, in which father and son were reunited as manager and player respectively. These strips began in 1997 and continued until the magazine's closure in May 2001. Football-themed stories were a staple of British comics for boys from the 1950s onwards, and Roy of the Rovers was the most popular. To keep the strip exciting, Melchester was almost every year either competing for major honours or struggling against relegation to a lower division; a normal, uneventful season of mid-table mediocrity was unknown at Melchester Rovers. The strip followed the structure of the actual English football season, thus there were several months each year in summer when there was no league football. By far the most common summer storyline saw Melchester touring a fictional country in an exotic part of the world, often South America, where they would invariably be kidnapped and held to ransom. The average reader probably stayed with the comic regularly for only three or four years, therefore storylines were sometimes recycled; during the first ten years of his playing career, Roy was kidnapped at least four times. Roy also made numerous appearances for England, depicted playing alongside actual players such as Malcolm Macdonald and Trevor Francis. The stock media phrase "real 'Roy of the Rovers' stuff" is often used by football writers, commentators and fans when describing displays of great skill, or surprising results that go against the odds, in reference to the dramatic storylines that were the strip's trademark. ==Publication history== Roy of the Rovers first appeared on 11 September 1954, as a weekly feature in the comic magazine ''Tiger'', debuting on the front page of the first issue. After 22 years of continued popularity, the strip was judged successful enough to sustain its own weekly comic, the eponymous ''Roy of the Rovers'', launched on 25 September 1976. The comic ran for 851 issues, until 20 March 1993, and included other football strips and features. At the peak of the comic's success about 450,000 copies were sold each week. There were also hardback annuals and holiday specials featuring a mix of reprinted and original content, and for a brief period, starting in 1986, Roy of the Rovers was serialised in the now defunct ''Today'' newspaper. These were all-new strips, focusing largely on the relationship between Roy and his wife Penny, rather than the action on the pitch. Between 1988 and 1993, a ''Best of Roy of the Rovers'' monthly comic was published, reprinting older stories. Following the closure of the weekly title in 1993,〔"Roy of the Rovers sent off" (''The Times'', 16 February 1993)〕 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, which had in the late 1980s published a parody called Ray of the Rangers. The comic strip was resurrected in July 1997, printed as short (usually two-page) features in the BBC's monthly ''Match of the Day'' magazine. These strips ran until the magazine's demise in May 2001. By then the strip's wholesome tone, often espousing the virtues of fair play and strong moral character, was beginning to seem old-fashioned. The editor of ''Roy of the Rovers'' comic, Barrie Tomlinson, has commented that "everyone seemed to be growing up a bit more quickly, and they wanted stories that were more realistic". There has been no new material since 2001, but reprints of the strip have appeared online and in print. The ''Roy of the Rovers'' website has archived all of the ''Match of the Day'' years' material, in addition to excerpts from other classic strips. In October 2007, Setanta bought the original strips, which they featured on their web site. The present rights holder, Egmont, published a 64-page "collectors edition" of the comic strip in April 2009, gathering together a number of 1980's era Roy of the Rovers stories in addition to other backup strips from the comic. Two ''Best of Roy of the Rovers'' books, featuring successive runs of strips from the 1980s and 1970s, were published in June 2008 and 2009 respectively. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Roy of the Rovers」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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