The Voice Of ODD!

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)