Pastime As Prologue or "Get Out Of My House!"

Following up on yesterday's tale, Maxor Of Cirod, from John Adkins Richardson, let's take a look at a few more of his works. I was sorely tempted to rerun his terrific Doctor Strange painting here, but instead i'll just note that it's worth looking back to that post if you've not seen it.

To wrap up this set, here's a self portrait of the artist - 

I've spoken a bit about him in the past, but just who is this JARichardson guy? That's the sort of question that pops up frequently when we look back at artists from the fan scene of decades ago. Fortunately for us, in this case there are interviews from back when. Today we'll look at one that ran in Golden Age #7 back in 1971 -

   John Adkins Richardson keeps martinis in an old peanut butter jar in his refrigerator. He is also a full Professor of Art at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, an elected member of the Faculty Senate, a writer of heavy books and of articles for learned journals, a nostalgia buff, a pipe-smoker, and a painter. I confronted on of his paintings in a gallery some years ago. it was a five foot square self-portrait composed of several dozen painted images mused together, montage-style, into an entity that reveals the man. His own face peers out suspiciously. His blond wife. The two sons. Captain America, bashing the bejazus out of some evil-doer with his mighty shield. Joe Louis. A few bushy nudes. A Bisley Colt. Captain Marvel. A Gee-Bee racing plane! (I thought I was the only man alive who remembered the Gee-Bee.) Hawkman. An elongated Stuka.

   I advanced on the painting and, after half an hour, decided that I knew the man who painted it better than I should know a man that I didn't know. So I hunted him up. He cheered my taste and culture; we got into the martinis. "You are a goodlooking S.O.B. and you know comics," said he. "hmmmm." "If you really like the painting, I'll do one of you." "Gawd." "Have another booze."

   My painting, a three-ply gasser, now hangs in my living room, but the conversations go on. "What was the Lone Ranger's last name?" "Anybody knows that it was Reid." "Damn! All right, who was Tank Tinker?" "Get out of my house!"

  Richardson knows things that an art professor has no real business knowing about. Early radio programs: "You mean that your wife can actually play 'Priscilla' on that piano?" "Of course, can't yours?" "Hmmmm..." But that's nothing. He knows about things like the history of modern mathematics. In fact, the University of Illinois Press is publishing a book of his on the history of modern art and scientific thought. He reads James Joyce. Gets around in the Paris subways. Knows about guitar construction, obscure jazz compositions, handguns, Capt. Midnight, home design. And, of course, the comics.

   "I just got a grant to go to the Library of Congress to study old comics books!" "I thought that was your major at Columbia University." "You mere Assistant Professors are a jealous lot." "But if my tax dollars pay you to -- !" "Get out of my house!"

Here's the actual interview. I'm too lazy to transcribe the entire thing -

For an extra bonus - here's RJ Shay's portrait of Richardson from when Gary Groth interviewed him in Fantastic Fanzine -

Yeah, we might get to that interview at some point. But wouldn't you rather check out that Elric tale he illustrated...?

I suspect we'll wind up there first, y'know?

art by John Adkins Richardson from Golden Age #7, Fantastic Fanzine #13, and Rocket's Blast Comic Collector #s 73, 77, 88, 111, 120, 138, & 149, and RJ Shay from Fantastic Fanzine Special #2 (1970, 1971, 1972, 1974, 1975)

Another notable figure to come out of the SFCA (Science Fiction and Comics Association, publisher of Rocket's Blast Comic Collector) was Don Newton.

If his name is not familiar to you, that's because Don got his big break in comics back in 1975, and he's another of those artists we lost too young, only nine years later. Before we touch on his professional career, let's look at some of his work in early 70s comic fandom from the above mentioned RBCC and Ronn Foss's Golden Age zine.

I think these are two of the earliest illustrations we have here today, from the first year he started to submit to the fanzine -

 

If Newton's artwork looks remarkably polished for his first months of submitting artwork, that's because Don is another who proves the foolishness of the notion that "those who can't, teach - those who can, do" notion. By this time he had been teaching art at Arizona State for a decade and a half. When his love of comics was re-ignited, he went and did.

Here's he recreation of a scene from Master Comics #27

Personally, i like Don's version better than the original. Most of you are probably too young to make the comparison, so here's some reference for you:

Let's take a gander at some of his zine covers, shall we?

It's not hard to see how it didn't take too long for Don to find professional work once he decided he was ready. He wasn't just doing covers and illustrations, he was also working on his story telling skills with his The Savage Earth series in RBCC:

Hopefully, i'll run some of this later. But currently i haven't been able to dig out two consecutive chapters from my scattered collection. (A similar hunt has been underway for sequential chapters of the series by John Adkins Richardson, our previous teacher. Having a bit more luck with the hunt for Maxor Of Cirod)

I skipped a few significant covers along the way. Here are the first two -

You may recall that one of Don's first submissions featured the classic Captain Marvel. He obviously had great love for the character, and for RBCC Special #8 he also provided this 2 page retelling of the World's Mightiest Mortal's origin story:

...as well as this lovely shot of Dr. Sivana...

The Captain Marvel portrait appearing above the covers was used to announce that Don Newton would be working on DC's new Captain Marvel revival with Cap's original creator, C.C. Beck. That's a helluva good way to get your career going, wouldn't you think?

Here's another cover we skipped:

I always loved the concept of The Phantom as a multi-generational superhero maintaining the illusion of an Immortal. So it came as a rather rude surprise to me when Groovy enlightened me, via a 10 year old post, of his Charlton issues of The Phantom that i somehow missed completely. Right from the first issues we get his cover paintings...

...and Don drawing the lead feature...

By the time he left, barely over a half dozen issues later, he had taken over completely -

There's a great cover for that issue shown on Groovy's post linked above.

I may have missed Don Newton's short tenure on The Phantom, but others did not. We'll let Don tell it from this profile featured in World's Finest Comics #272 -

all art except Master Comics #27 by Don Newton for Golden Age, RBCC, and The Phantom (1968-1972)

Captain Marvel Jr art by Mac Raboy for Master Comics #27 (1942)