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Ink Stains 116: RBCC 145

Ink Stains 116: RBCC 145

That’s right, the great RBCC gets two columns in a row. Deal with it!

RBCC 145: September 1978
Editor and publisher: James Van Hise

I have covered this incredibly long running fanzine (more of an adzine during the early years) three times before. In installment 6 (issue 135), 79 (134), and last column, covering the Special 8. Installment 6 was done way back in 2009…I have been doing this darn column for over 10 years! Wow. For the record, I am doing this on a sunday late afternoon, while munching on a tuna sandwich, some goldfish crackers and a dr. pepper (I am still trying to give up soft drinks…slowly but surely, emphasis on the slowly). I got to play tennis this morning for a few hours, but then the rain came. A lot the last few weeks here in southern cali…we need it, but it disrupts my tennis, fer crying out loud! Enough about me, what do you think about me? Seriously, enough.

I ordered a couple of issues of RBCC recently, since I only have a few of my own. I had forgotten how full of ads the first incarnation was, under G. B. Love primarily. I was going to cover an early issue, but scanning 60 pages of ads did not seem like the most fun way to spend the afternoon. Nice time capsule, though. When James Van Hise took over, eventually, he added a wide variety of content, until the ads only took up about one fourth of the whole fanzine.

On to this installments subject, issue 145. 145! Can you believe a fanzine lasted this long? And it still had five years left! For a good overview, see the wikipedia entry here. You can see the sumptuous cover painting by Kerry Gammill above (see his back cover below). Kerry has his own website here, where you can see some great stuff, including some conceptual art. Coincidentally enough, Gammill had his first work published at Marvel Team-Up issue 73 during the very same month of this fanzines publication! He also went on to do a lot of work for DC as well.

As usual, RBCC is chock full of articles…Van Hise did an awesome job of filling the zine with content. The usual gang of suspects are here…editor Van Hise himself with Critique and Commentary, Don Rosa with Information Center (questions from readers on all sorts of subjects), and Comicopia by R. C. Harvey.

Editor James Van Hise was kind enough to answer a few questions via email for me, see below!

1. To start at the beginning, how did you get into comics in the first place? Age? Any specific titles that stand out at the beginning? 

The first comic book I ever read was Showcase #29 which my father bought for me when I was sick. I actually still have that original issue (not reacquired years later like some collectors do). Because comics in the 1960s were 10 cents, 12 cents and 15 cents I bought a lot, DC, Marvel, Gold Key and sometimes Dell.

2. Did you have any particular aspirations in the comic field? 
I always wanted to write. I wrote non-fiction for magazines like Starlog and then for magazines I edited in the 1980s before I was offered a job to write comics by Now Comics in 1988.
3. What was your first exposure to fandom? Any favorite zines as a reader, there at the beginning? 
I saw one of those small ads for RBCC in a Marvel comic and subscribed. Then I started buying back issue comics and fanzines. I recently came across a box I had once had in storage in my parents house and found it had 45 1960s comics fanzines (not RBCC) and I immediately sold half of them for a thousand dollars and still have many left on Ebay.
4. Before RBCC, did you contribute to other zines? 
Not before RBCC. 
Any favorite editors or zines as contributors or friends? 
At the first convention I went to in Oklahoma City in 1970 I met Jerry Weist as I had already been buying Squa Tront after seeing a letter he had plugging it in MAD magazine.
5. How did you come to be G. B. Love’s assistant in RBCC? 
I met him first by visiting him in Miami and then got to know him better at the Oklahoma City con and we just hit it off.
6. When you took over, how long did it take before you started instituting changes? You added so much great content to the zine, was there a specific plan? 
Mostly I just immediately suggested things like having a contents page and putting the date it was published inside which came in real handy years later. Then and and other local fans came up with ideas for various features for RBCC.
7. Were there any particular decisions that you are/were really proud of ? Any specific artists/writers that you were very happy to bring into RBCC as a contributor ? 
Well I got to know Mike Zeck who had done one cover for RBCC before I took over and then I had him do a lot more. I also added Ron Wilber as a contributing artist after he sent me samples and he did a lot for me over the years. Sadly Ron died in 2016.
8. You maintained an incredible schedule…what would you say where the hardest challenges while you ran the zine? 
For a long time I did it every six weeks because I had a lot of support from subscribers and contributors, like Don Rosa.
9. Did you have much interaction with your ‘competitors’ at the time…people/zines like Light/TBG, etc? 
I dealt with all of them as I saw them at conventions regularly, especially San Diego which I started attending in 1975.
10. What were the causes of the zine’s run ending? Was it difficult to let go, or was it so gradual, you saw it coming? 
Another publisher, New Media, offered to publish it but they never never really did a good job which is why I only did a couple issues with them. There were supposed to be more but I’d turn in an issue of RBCC and they’d publish it as a Comics Feature Special, like the Russ Manning issue I did where the interviews in it still list RBCC as the one doing the interview!
11. Can you talk a bit about what you have done personally and professionally since then? 
In the 1980s I wrote for Starlog (for whom I visited the set of Blade Runner in 1981) for several issues and then edited a science fiction movie magazine for New Media after that.
 
Any particular projects, urls etc that you would like to plug? 
I sell on Ebay. My seller name is Jimvanhise. [He has some great stuff, I will vouch for him, his collection, and great service]
 
I worked for Now Comics for a couple years and wrote 50 issues of their titles. I did two stories for Bruce Hamilton’s short lived horror comics. For New Media & Hal Schuster (who is now deceased) I wrote more than 50 books in the 1980s and 1990s. I self published several books like The Fantastic Worlds of Robert E. Howard, Fantastic Worlds of H.P. Lovecraft, Pulp Heroes, Pulp Masters and Pulp Magazine Thrillers, and then four new revived issues of RBCC in the early 2000s. I also did some work for Byron Price including a Dune TV tie-in book and adapting two stories for their Ray Bradbury Comics series.

Other articles include a feature on film maker Willis O’Brien (King Kong) by Eldon K. Everett, an interview with comic writer, David Micheline, by Mark Burbey (and illustrated by Bob Layton, seen below, as well as a Jonah Hex piece by Mike Zeck, above this paragraph), The Horrors of Brian DePalma (part 2), also by Burbey, Don Rosa’s Cover Gallery (Ziff-Davis comic covers from the 50’s also seen below), and John Springs with Steve Ditko: Searching for Hidden Meaning (with a typically cute Fred Hembeck piece seen above).

The sequential department is ably filled by Ron Wilber’s series, Twilight of the Heroes. His labored stippling/cross hatching style produces some gorgeous imagery, even if the layouts are a bit static. Gorgeous light and shadow work, a favorite of mine. Below you can see 4 pages of this 10 page installment.

Several more pieces of really nice artwork appear throughout the zine, including illustrations by Eddings, Bruce Zick, Hembeck, Martin Cannon and below, Dennis Fujitake and Hilary Barta.

Well, that gives you a taste of this issue of the mighty RBCC…take a bow, James! Of course, you have to download the pdf from my site (kenmeyerjr.com, in the Ink Stains section) to see the rest, including the ads themselves…so you can salivate and then enter a deep depression over the prices of some of those treasured items from long ago!

Ken Meyer Jr.
kenmeyerjr@yahoo.com

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kenmeyerjr

I have been a working artist all my life, and lived many places (and had many jobs). Some clients include comic companies such as Marvel, Image, and Caliber, gaming companies such as White Wolf, Wizards of the Coast (and many more), and reams of general clients in many fields. Fun activities include tennis, too many movies and waaaaay too many cds.

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