The following year Roy was shot in his office by a mystery gunman, in an incident clearly mirroring the shooting of J. Roy also rubs shoulders with a number of other comic heroes in Football’s Comic Book Heroes by Adam Riches with Tim Parker and Robert Sandland.

publisher Rebellion has hinted they have major plans for Roy, the football ace first created for Tiger back in 1954 they now own after accquiring him from Egmont UK. Initially it centered on his bid to be allowed to form a soccer team at rugby union-playing Crowhurst School. Roy of the Rovers is a British comic strip about the life and times of a fictional footballer and later manager named Roy Race, who played for Melchester Rovers. Then-rights holder Egmont published a 64-page "collectors edition" of the comic strip in April 2009, [16] gathering together a number of 1980's era Roy of the Rovers stories in addition to other backup strips from the comic.In the first episode, Roy was spotted playing for a youth club by a talent scout for First Division Melchester Rovers (modelled on 1950s Arsenal) and invited for a trail. The confectionery company McCowans produced a pineapple-flavoured "Roy of the Rovers" chew bar in the 1990s. In 2016, Rebellion Publishing, owners of 2000AD, purchased the rights to many classic British comic characters, including Roy of the Rovers. A number of tie-in books were also published, including a handful of paperback prose storybooks in 1977 and 1993, and two football quiz books in 1978 and 1979. Since the monthly comic had closed, Rovers had been relegated and were close to bankruptcy, Rocky was playing for a rival team, and hated his father because of a mysterious car crash in which his mother had died.

He also later appeared in the Match of the Day magazine Roy of the Rovers strips between 1997 and 2001. In 1985, as part of a widespread revamp of Roy of the Rovers, The Hard Man transformed into Dexter's Dozen. In 1985, following the closure of Tiger, Hot Shot Hamish moved over to Roy of the Rovers, and immediately introduced the characters of Hamish and Mouse to each other. The character is one of the few Fleetway Editions characters that became part of Egmont’s portfolio in the mid 1990s when ownership was agreed as part of a wider rights agreement between them and IPC, now TimeUK). Shortly afterwards, Mouse was transferred from Tottenford Rovers to join Hamish at Scottish club Princes Park, and the strip was renamed Hot Shot Hamish and Mighty Mouse.

With his clean-cut good looks, innate sense of decency and sportsmanship, and a seriously fierce shot in his locker, Roy Race was always meant to be a positive force on the football field. It was split into two parts: the first an adventure game, in which– taking the role of Roy Race– the player had to find and rescue the kidnapped Melchester team, before then playing the second part, which consisted of a charity match to raise funds for the club.

The Guardian newspaper of 10 April 1995, for instance, described future England captain Alan Shearer as "the classic working class sporting hero. For 1959 and 1960, the title changed to Tiger Book of Roy of the Rovers, and after that the titles would be Tiger Roy of the Rovers Annual (or slight variations thereon) until the last one in 1975, after which the Roy of the Rovers Annuals themselves would begin, to tie in with the standalone comic. Buster Madden had been a top-class player for the club, but was killed in a car crash, and reappeared as a ghost to aid his former teammates on the pitch in a variety of bizarre ways. 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.Rocky, meanwhile, was playing for fierce local rivals Melborough, after a bitter falling-out with his father over a car accident in Italy in which his mother, Penny, had been killed. In 1986 Mike White took over as artist, and eight members of the team were killed in a coach crash in the Middle East. Fans made lengthy comments in the short time it took the ball to travel through the air; as the ball was struck towards the goal a member of the crowd might be seen saying "Racey's had a shot!