ROK Comics Interview: John Freeman




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1. How did you discover Rok Comics?

ROK Media gave me the job of running it!

2. How do you feel about Digital comics over Print based comics?

I don't think there's any "contest" between digital and print comics, they both have different pros and cons. For example, you could never run a Bryan Hitch of Frank Bellamy spread on a mobile phone but conversely, there's more chance many more people will see a mobile comic and creators can use this to promote their print work (like David Lloyd has done with his Kickback promo, and Puffin Books did for Half Moon Investigations)

There's a lot of antipathy from a minortoy of comics 'fans' to any new comics form, but as Britih cartoonist and writer Lew Stringer often says, comics have always evolved as new ways of delivering them emerge.

Mobile comics aren't going to go away any more than web or print comics are.

3. What's your greatest achievement in the comics field?

This will probably sound facetious, but aside from downthetubes and some of the strips I've written like The Science Service, I'm actually proud of the fact that I helped get comics on mobile up and running. Graham Baines, who runs ROK Media, and I have been talking about comics on mobile for at least four years but it's only been recently that ROK came along and backed our enthusiasm with the resources to give it a try. The response has been mixed but the creators who've tried it have been brilliant.

4. What projects (both Rok Comics and non Rok Comics related) are you working on at the moment?

I'm assembling ideas and documentation for the next ROK Comics upgrade and doing a lot of viral promotion of the service at the moment. I'm writing Ex Astris under nom de plume and Brain Dead the Cat for ROK Comics.

Outside of ROK, I work on the downthetubes web site, write for Star Trek Magazine and a few other things.

5. What advice would you offer to new cartoonists?

Keep trying. If someone offers advice, listen and digest. (When they stop offering advice, that's when you should think about doing something else). Read a lot, and not just comics.

6. What's your favourite comics related website?

I don't think I should answer this. I'll be accused of bias! But if you like British comics, I'd recommend comics.co.uk, Steve Holland's Bear Alley and Lew Stringer's Blimey! It's Another Blog About Comics.

7. Where else has your work appeared?

The Really Heavy Greatcoat appears in Comics International. I've had comic strips published by Marvel, Egmont and others, but that was some time ago. I also write some custom strips for commercial client. Your Office Anywhere Man, drawn by Mike Collins, for Cardium, is one of those and the company are delighted with it.

8. Where/when did you get your first comics break?

In the 1980s, was publishing a fanzine, SCAN, which included a beautifully drawn strip by Matthew Bingham (who went on to work for FHM) called Cat and Mouse. John Tomlinson at Marvel UK read it, liked it and ran an episode in Mighty World of Marvel. At around the same time, Paul Gravett hooked me up with Rian Hughes to write The Science Service, which has recently been republished in Yesterday's Tomorrows.

It was shortly after that that I decided to move to London (I'd been in line for a job at Titan Books which suddenly evaporated but thought I should move anyway). It was Richard Starkings, who'd helped out on Scan, who got me through the door at Marvel UK as a designer on Doctor Who Magazine, and the rest is history (most of it fuzzy).

9. What comics are you reading at the moment (both web and print based)?

In print, I'm reguarly reading Thor, Northlands, the Star Trek comics (because I review them fro STM, although they do seem to be getting better, and about time, too), Classical Comics graphic novels, The Spirit, the occasional 2000AD, the even more more occasional Judge Dredd: The Megazine, Spacship Away and a lot of comics sent to me for promotion on downthetubes. I pick up other British comics now and then - The Beano, TOXIC, Viz - but I don't read them regularly.

In terms of web and mobile I read every strip published on ROK Comics and dip into web strips like Beaver and Steve.

10. Whose work do you most admire in the comics field and why?

I most admire the work of artists such as Frank Bellamy and Mike Noble because they were the first to inspire me to want to write and draw comics (I don't draw any more), and writers like Alan Moore because they showed me what could be done with comics to make them challenging as well as entertaining.

Also Will Eisner, because he was arguably one of the driving forces behind creator owned comics and A Contract With God was and still is one of my favourite graphic novels; and Bryan Talbot, simply because of Luther Arkwright and his much overlooked but beautiful Tale of One Bad Rat.

And all the writers and artists and other creators who rarely get the limelight but day in day out, contribute to comics: Dan Abnett for example, who has produced solid comics work for simply years; Lee Sullivan, Geoff Senior, Simon Furman, editors like Steve White at Titan and Matt Yeo (TOXIC) and the staff at DC Thomson for The Beano, Commando etc.

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