The childrenss educational magazine Look and Learn which published over 1,000 issues between 1962 and 1982, has announced a partnership with ROK Comics to bring its extensive archive of classic British comics to mobile phones. In addition, Look and Learn is making its extensive image archive available to ROK Comics parent company, ROK Media, to offer as mobile phone wallpapers via the Fonepark website.
ROK Comics aims to adapt some of the most outstanding comics from Look and Learn, including Jack and Jill, Playhour, Swift and Robin for mobile presentation, bringing the art and stories from the comics to a whole new audience around the globe, working with over 30 selected telecom partners.
The first strip to be adapted for mobile phones is Robin Hood which was written by Clifford Makin and drawn by Frank Bellamy, who went on to draw Dan Dare for Eagle, Thunderbirds for TV21, Garth for the Daily Mirror and Doctor Who for the Radio Times. The Robin Hood strip originally appeared in Swift in 1956-57 and is the first of a number of Frank Bellamy strips that ROK Comics is to publish.
The adapted comics are available for purchase via the ROK Comics website and WAP site at  wap.rokcomics.com via MMS delivery to any MMS-capable phone on almost any network worldwide.
Viewed on mobile phone, these comic strips and images have great retro appeal says Look and Learn Publisher Laurence Heyworth. We are delighted that this material is now being used in ways that could only have been dreamed of by its creators.
Although Look and Learn ceased publication in 1982, a new company was formed in 2004 to acquire the rights to the magazine, and others incorporated into it (excluding some comic strips), together with what remained of the archive of original artwork. Since then, a small team has tracked down much more of the artwork, so that the company now owns many thousands of the paintings used in the magazine.
As well as re-assembling the archive of original artwork, the team has written a history of Look and Learn, compiled biographies of the major illustrators, digitised the magazine and much of the artwork and created a website and on-line picture library. It has also digitised the entire run of The Childrens Newspaper, an issue of which is being re-published every day here.
Look and Learn is also currently publishing a limited series of 48 issues of a new magazine made out of the best of the original magazine.