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RBCC, one of the most consistent and long running zines with a Big Red Cheese special!

Ahhh, RBCC. Other than maybe The Comic Reader, I can think of no fanzine that published as long, and as well, as this one. G. B. Love, despite having  cerebral palsy, not only published RBCC for over 10 years, but was active locally and helped start one of the first comic cons. His influence cannot be overstated.

RBCC was actually two zines combined, The Rocket’s Blast (from Love) and Comicollector (from Jerry Bails, and later, Ronn Foss). It became RBCC in 1964 and continued until 1983 (with James Van Hise taking over in 1974). It aided in the careers of so many, including artists Don Newton, Mike Zeck, and many, many more. You can see the Wiki entry for the zine here.  So, onward to this particular issue.

Several fanzines produced specials, reprinting work from earlier issues along with new work, and to be honest, I am not sure if that is the case here or not. But what is sure is that it is a Captain Marvel special…and by that, I mean the Fawcett (and later, DC) version. DC actually sued Fawcett on the grounds that CM was too blatant a copy of Superman…and won. Ironic that DC would later publish him. There is a fair amount of background and historical info along those lines provided in the zine, along with several gorgeous illos, including the cover above (and the frontispiece) by the late and easily great Don Newton. There is also a nice post on the Voice of Odd! website focusing on Newton here. Also, check Facebook for the Don Newton page.

Below you can see the wonderful illustrations by the crew from this issue (C. C. Beck, Robert Kline, and Newton).

Don Newton even went so far as to redraw a new version of the origin story of the character, seen below.

This ended up being a pretty short column…but this particular zine is only about 18 pages long, so sue me! I wish I could say I know where I got this specific digital version, but thanks to whomever it was!

Ken Meyer Jr
kenmeyerjr@yahoo.com