Ken Steacy at the Hamilton Silver Snail

Once upon a time, there was just the

Silver Snail on Queen Street West in Toronto

but during the wild & wooly 1980s,

mainly because a couple of outlying comic store

owners owed too much to Andromeda Publications for their weekly supplies...

In a fairly short time, the Silver Snail had four locations!

The Flagship, on Queen St. West in Toronto,

the Eglinton and Yonge store,

the Hamilton Store and the Ottawa store.

The Hamilton store, located at 235 King Street East, closed down a long time ago but the Eglinton store continued to operate until the winter of 1997.

The Flagship store relocated to Yonge & Dundas in the summer of 2012 and the Ottawa store is still at 391 Bank Street,

where it always has been.

Anyway, to the point of this post.  The Snail used to have a fairly steady line-up of guests, doing signings and drawing in customers and this particular flyer is advertising an appearance by

Ken Steacy

who's close relationship with the Snail I mentioned last post.

Ken had done an Ironman story for Marvel Fanfare around this point in time and I think the little robot on Ironman's head came from a strip Ken did for Pacific Comics.  Ken depicting himself in a cockpit was a given, he had a deep and abiding interest in flying machines of all kinds.  He still does.

Ken's artwork, on the flyer, is dated 1984 and I have no idea

how I came to have a Hamilton Snail advertisement.

My best bet is that I visited the store, which I did on only three occasions, I think, while it existed and picked it up there.

Interestingly, one of the Snail workers in Toronto, in the early 1980s, was a guy named Larry Mac Dougall and he aspired to being an illustrator.  In fact, in a future post, I will display a copy of his cover illustration for one of the Silver Snail newsletters.

The last time that I saw Larry, was when I walked into the Hamilton Snail and found him working there, but I only remember that it was in the summertime and I don't recall the year.

Larry made good on his intentions and followed his artistic muse,

eventually becoming a well known illustrator and having his work displayed in the Annual Fantasy Art Collection known as 

Spectrum.

Anyone interested can find his beautifully illustrated Blog at the address below:  

http://mythwood.blogspot.ca