I guess my subject header says it all.

Who owns Rog 2000 anyway? I know Charlton published it.

Rog 2000 was sorta named for Roger Slifer and myself, back when we were all working together on fanzines.

Br'er Byrne had drawn a bunch of small spot illustrations for use in Bob Layton's fanzine CPL, one of which was a funky looking robot. We decided to make it the 'zine mascot, and Bob jokingly lettered ROG 2000 across its chest, suggesting that we always use a "backup Roger" on staff. Plus, it gave us all someone non-human to blame for our occasional typos.

Since both CPL and Charlton have ceased to be, I'd say that JB owns ROGie now.

-- ROG 1000

Hmmm. Did anyone buy Charlton's assets when they went the way of the Dodo?

I did some research into this when hunting for iPhone books. According to Wikipedia:

Editor Robin Snyder oversaw the sale of some properties to their creators, though the bulk of the rights was purchased by Canadian entrepreneur Roger Broughton. He would produce several reprint titles under the company name of Avalon Communications and its´ imprint America's Comics Group (or ACG for short) (having also purchased the rights to the old American Comics Group properties), and announced plans to restart Charlton Comics. This had yet to occur as of the mid-2000s, beyond publishing a large number of reprints.

Roger Broughton is impossible to get in touch with. I'm guessing since Byrne has used Rog-2000 in his forum graphics, that Snyder got him the rights back.

Doh! I knew this above info, too. Just brain farted. Thanks, Steve. I read some of this
written about by Snyder in regards to Ditko's Charlton work.

Anyone know what recent Charlton reprints are out there?

I know DC has bought the rights to the "Action Heroes" and recently reprinted those in hardcover form. And Steve Ditko regained the rights to some of his Charlton horror stories (which are great, by the way). Robin Snyder sells a reprint collection of those. Are there any other Charlton reprints?

There was a fellow in Canada who supposedly bought the rights to much of Charlton's non-hero material...and another gent who glommed onto some of their romance comics. There was some reprint material issued by both, but I haven't heard any more in recent years.



-- Uncle Rog

I had to google "backup Roger" since I'm not very technically savvy, interesting thread, I've got Fanta's Rog 2000 oversized reprint in bw, In fact I think that was perhaps Fanta's first comic publication, IIRC. Another early one from Fanta was "Hugo" a funny animal mag sized comic by Milton Knight, I think it was. And Gil Kane's Savage!

IIRC the romance stuff was bought by John Lustig and appears on the web and in CBG
as a reworded comedy strip called "Last Kiss".

It was Pacific that collected the ROG-2000 stories, not Fantagraphics.

-- Uncle Rog

IIRC, it was Doomsday Squad (aka Doomsday+1) that Fantagraphics reprinted.

John uses Rog as his mascot to this day and has snuck him into various comics over the years--do you have any idea why he hasn't done anything more substantial with the character? More back ups or a one shot or--something? It seems a shame to create such a cool character and then neglect him. Any idea?

Nope, sorry.

There was some interest in an animated ROG-2000 project a few years ago, but nothing ever came of it.