Review: Roy Of The Rovers #3

Are you a fan of football, the round ball kind better known as soccer or association football over here in The States?  If so, Roy Of The Rovers may be the book for you.  A compelling fictional account that follows the Melchester Rovers and their star striker Roy Race, this book manages to give a look into possible locker room conflicts and real world problems that can arise in professional football.

Roy Of The Rovers follows the ups and downs of a team called the Melchester Rovers.  A team playing in League Two (The English third division of football), Melchester are hoping to win promotion and eventually return to the heights of first division football where their in-city rivals, Tynecaster, are currently playing.  For those who aren’t familiar with the concept of promotion and relegation; in most soccer leagues around the world a number of the bottom teams in the league are demoted to a lower division each year with an equal number of the top teams from the lower division being promoted to the higher division.  In American sports this would be equivalent to The San Diego Padres being demoted to AAA while a AAA team was moved to the majors.  I digress though.  Issue 3 of this book focuses on the first round of the promotion playoffs as Melchester is hoping to win promotion.  Writer Rob Williams (Asylum, Nomad) manages to introduce several potential (and real life) pitfalls that can hit a player or team.   Among those are a red card controversy, an owner who is seeking to move the team and destroy it’s culture, celebrity managers and the transfer of promising young talent to higher division teams.  All of these situations, though sometimes exaggerated for the comic, have happened in real life and the writing feels true to the intrigues which regularly pop up around football.

The art and color is not avant garde but adequately presents the football action as well as the personal drama around the team and its players.  The footie matches are presented in an exaggerated, over-the-top fashion but are still believable as actual in-game action.   The color is simple, giving the whole comic the appearance of a web comic.  There is no detailed shading work here and the inking on the book is relatively straight forward and uncomplicated.  However, the art complements the story well while the books flows naturally.

All in all this was a very enjoyable book and one I would like to read more of.  I am a football fanatic myself, following teams in The United States, Mexico, Germany and England.  I love everything about football and if you do as well I think you should give serious though to picking up this book.

Writing – 4.5 of 5 Stars
Art – 4 of 5 Stars
Color – 3 of 5 Stars

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Writing:  Rob Williams
Art:  Ben Willsher
Color:  John Charles, Guilherme Lindemberg-Mendes
Letters:  Jim Campbell