The Original Dragon Lady on Queen Street West

The Dragon Lady!

It took me a while to unearth a photograph that showed her in her original location but I eventually found one.

According to the Wikipedia page about the store, it opened in 1979 and operated here until 1996 when the changing face of the Queen West strip drove the owner to relocate.

That is somewhat earlier than I would have thought, had I been asked but what the heck!  It also means that John Biernat, the owner, opened his store just 3 short years after 

Ron Van Leeuwen opened The Silver Snail.

In fact, The Silver Snail had moved from 321 into 323 Queen Street West in 1978, the same year that John Biernat began a 

mail-order comic book business.

I plead guilty to purloining this image of the Dragon Lady's second home from the Blog of Papa Joe, the manager of the venerable store, at least, until it closed it's doors.

I think that it is a lovely image and worthy of spreading about.

I don't know who took the photograph but it is thoroughly charming and I am captivated by it.

The new location was up on College Street and it operated there until the owner closed it down in early 2012, which is, coincidentally, the same year that The Silver Snail finally moved off the Queen Street West strip.

Until I wrote this piece, I had never noticed the way in which the histories, of two oldest comic book shops in the city, had almost mirrored each other through the years.

Thank you for reading.

A Merry Christmas to All!

It just occurred to me, with all of the fuss & bother of the next few days, I might not get around to adding to this site for a while.

With that in mind I would like to wish anyone who lands here 

all the best for this Christmas and the coming New Year.

So here is a cartoon to tide you over until next we meet.

All my own work!

See you soon.

Tales of the Snail Continued...

Paul M. Smith was "on fire" at this point in his career.

AFter becoming a full-blown star of the comic book world with his run on the Uncanny X-men, Paul shifted gears and wanted to do Doctor Strange, a character for which he had an affinity.

It started off well enough but after a couple of issues Mr. Smith 

was off the book for eight issues and then returned to do seven more, raggedly spaced out, before leaving the title for good.

Such a crying shame!

Anyway, during this time, he appeared at the Silver Snail to do a some signing, some sketching and some promotion,

for the revamped Dr. Strange.

I remember that he was a very personable guy, easy to talk to and full of information about learning to draw.

It was the first time that I had heard the name Andrew Loomis 

and I soon headed out looking for one of his books.

I was incredibly lucky and found a new copy of 

Figure Drawing for All it's Worth

at Britnell's Bookshop, then situated on 

Yonge Street above Bloor Street, a space that is now home to a Starbucks Coffee House.

Little did I realize then, that it would take me another 

fifteen years to gather together all 

six volumes in the Loomis canon.

They are wonderful books, full of information that will make a dedicated practicer a better artist and it has been a great joy to see Titan Books reissue them in recent years.

In an aside, interestingly, I bought the 

least well appreciated volume, 

The Eye of the Painter and the Elements of Beauty,

from John Biernat,

the owner of The Dragon Lady comic shop but

I bought it from him at an Old Paper Sale at 

the St. Lawrence Market!

The Jeff Jones Documentary: Better Things

I have just watched this trailer and the film looks to be my cup of tea!  The works of Jeff Jones have been a passion in my 

collecting life for a long, long, time and this is a lovely tribute to the man and the impression he made on the people around him.

I do believe that I am going to have to find out how to buy a copy for myself, so that I can watch the whole thing.

In a time that produced a number of very talented artists, Jeff was different and he remained so for the rest of his life.

Larry Mac Dougall's Tales from the Snail Cover

Here it is, the third Tales from the Snail and probably, the first cover illustration by the young Larry Mac Dougall.

Larry was working for the burgeoning Silver Snail/Andromeda Distributions at the time and sharing an apartment with 

Tom Stormonth, in a building on the south side of Bloor Street, between Spadina Avenue and Bathurst Street.

Interestingly but of no real historic value, they shared an outdoor landing and a interior wall with the young Bill Marks, who lived next door with his girlfriend, the young and lovely, Tanya Huff.

The ways of the world are truly strange.

Bill Marks was just getting Vortex Magazine off the ground and dreaming about Mr. X.

Larry was an amateur sketcher with dreams of doing some comic book strips.

Tanya had written the dialogue for the 

Peter Hsu story in Vortex #1 but I'm not sure how high her ambitions were at the time.

Only Tom didn't really have an axe to grind in the artistic field.

Thirty years on,

Bill Marks is a minor movie producer.

Larry is a well respected fantasy illustrator.

Tanya is a well known writer of fantasy and science fiction.

Tom Stormonth works for a living and lives outside of Kingston, Ontario.

But I digress.

Larry had shown me some cute cartoons of a diminutive guitar player wearing a black top hat and I was impressed.

Then he did the art for the cover above and I knew that he was the real deal.  It just took a few more years for his abilities with a pencil to be recognized by other folk.

The thrill of discovering this in the Previews Catalogue...

I was so happy that Larry had made it to a point where he had his own Art book!

 

Here is a "borrowed" photograph of Peter Meseldzija, 

(of The Legend of Steel Bashaw) who is no mean artist himself, 

buying one of Larry's watercolour paintings from him at an IlluXCon in 2010.  What better recommendation is there?

Finally, here is the handsome artist himself, Larry Mac Dougall.

Congratulations Larry, I am proud to say that I knew you when...

Tales from the Snail and other bits...

I visited the new location of the Silver Snail 

yesterday and chatted with the newish owner, 

George Zotti, about bits and pieces of the Snail's past.

It turns out, that quite a few folk have copies of

"Tales from the Snail", including George.  So if you want a 

copy or two, go down and ask him for them.

George also showed me a couple of pieces of art, that came to light when they moved out of the Queen Street store, which now have pride of place upon the shop & cafe's walls.

One is the original pencilled version of the 1986/10th Anniversary 

poster, by Ken Steacy and the other, even more impressive to me, is the original art for the first Silver Snail Poster/Change of Address postcard, by Paul Rivoche.

They look lovely, framed and matted, pieces of history, now safely under glass.

For anyone unfamiliar with the posters put out by the Silver Snail, 

this is the artwork, by Paul Rivoche, that I am referring too. 

Here is the cover to the second issue of Tales from the Snail, 

perhaps it is no surprise that it is also by Paul Rivoche.

Paul also designed the character and painted the "teaser" 

posters that Vortex put out in advance of the comic book it self.

One of these days, I will photograph the three posters in the set (at least, I believe there were only three) and post them here too.

Tales From The Snail

In February of 1984, the Silver Snail published 

the first issue of a short lived newsletter/Fanzine 

and they called it

Tales From The Snail.

It came with a neat front cover by Ken Steacy showing his robotic Silver Snail mascot character and I am fairly sure, a stylized portrait of the cashier of the time.

In my stupidity, I have often referred to the girl on the cover as Sherri Moyer but it couldn't be her because Sherri was hired by Janet Jones, the manager after Mark Askwith and he didn't leave the store until 1987.

Then I read the "Staff" list inside the issue and the editor is credited as being Judi Kensley (by the second issue her name had changed to Judi Young, so I'm not quite sure what happened there) and I have to speculate that the girl on the cover just might be her.

Other people involved with the production were,

Associate Editors - Mark Askwith & Tom Stormonth

Contributing Editor - Martin Herzog

Art Director - Robert Badali

Word Processor - Carol Wood

The contents were eclectic, 

Comic Sense by John & Anthony Van Bruggen

An Interview with artist Ken Steacy

Who's Column (Dr. that is) by Will Hendrey

What's Hot & What's Not by John Migliore

Howard Chaykin salutes the Eaton Centre by Mark Askwith

and

An advert for the forthcoming In-Store appearance by

Marvel Comics Artist 

Paul Smith

who was drawing Dr. Strange at the time and who was as HOT as they come at the time.

I included the scan of the back cover for a couple of reasons.

Number one, I love the painting that Paul Rivoche made for this early version of The Silver Snail Poster

and number two, it shows that the Silver Snail empire had grown to include the Hamilton store.

In the next posting, I will cover the next issue or so and we'll see where that takes us.

Andromeda Publications, Their First "Previews" Style Catalogue

This must have seemed like a good idea, in 1991, with

Andromeda Publications making so much money that the 

Silver Snail comic shops were more like a sideline!

In the mould of Diamond's Previews Catalogue,

today this is simply a list of coming comic books and things as seen in January 1991 but it is an oddity, now that Andromeda has been dead and gone for 19 years.

Who could have foretold that the idiots that ran the comic book publishing world, would manage, in just a few years to make such a mess of things.  Although, I am sure that Steve Geppi wouldn't agree with that idea, since he walked out of the bloodbath as the winner.  We now live in Diamond's world, wether we like it or not.

My only real complaint is, that in the fall of 1994, I moved up north to Elliot Lake and in order to stay up to date with the comic book world, I paid for a years subscription to Comics Etc.

Who knew, that in the beginning of 1995,

Andromeda would declare bankruptcy and go out of business!

Ah,well.  You live and learn.

More Later.

Silver Snail Stories & the 10th Anniversary Poster

In 1986, the Silver Snail reached a milestone and

celebrated it's 10th Anniversary.

As part of the promotional ephemera,

Ken Steacy put together this little four page comic

which ends with the presentation, drawn by Ty Templeton,

of the Poster/Invitation to the celebration bash.

The eagle eyed amongst you will notice that the storefront is

depicted very carefully by the artist and it accurately

describes the original doorway to the store.

What it doesn't show, is the beautifully crafted stained glass door,

that bore a slightly elongated version of Roger Dean's 

Dragon's Dream logo.

I wonder where that piece of glass art is today.

Ken Steacy, as I have mentioned before, had a special

relationship with the store and would often stop by with his 

camera, to take reference shots for the strips he was working on.

When he drew the Alpha Flight story for Marvel Fanfare #28,

it was a story that used Toronto as a setting and I remembered Ken getting us to pose as background characters for him to photograph.

Surprised the heck out of me when I found that, I think it was Ken, had posted this one on his Facebook page!

Left to right it's:

Ron Van Leeuwen

Mark Askwith

Francois (behind)

Judy Connoly

Me...squashed up against the box and the wall.

The background is the Original Andromeda Warehouse space,

that was in the bottom/basement of an industrial building on Adelade, just below the Snail's position on Queen Street.

That's all for now, more later!

  

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

The Silver Snail Presented Steve Leialoha

I don't really recall how many guest appearances,

by comic book artists of the day, 

that Ron Van Leeuwen held before he moved the

Silver Snail to 367 Queen Street West.

I know that he had a joint appearance of 

Dave Sim and Gene Day

in 1981, at 323 Queen Street West,

because I have a flyer announcing it.

There is only a date, December 5th,

but the illustration of Cerebus and Shang-Chi is dated 1981,

so I am probably safe in assuming that was the year.

The image below is from a Blog by Molly Frick aka Richardson.

I hope she won't mind me borrowing it until I can add a scan of my own copy of the flyer.

cerebus_shang_chi_1981.jpg  

Once Ron and his crew arrived at the new digs,

there were a lot more appearances, mostly due to the

new manager of the store,

Mark Askwith.

Mark was a wizard at enticing guests to the store and he had an amazing ability to pick up on the best of the new talent

that was coming along at the time,

Just ask Neil Gaiman.

Under his managership, the Silver Snail became a mecca for the comic book fans of the day and the guest appearances multiplied.

One of the local artists, who had a special relationship with the store, was Ken Steacy.  He designed the new robot logo and did the art for the store bags and such, just shortly before and during his work for Marvel Comics, in Marvel Fanfare.

This a "long walk around the park", to get to the in-store appearance of Steve Leialoha.  Who, at the time was probably best known as an inker over the pencils of people like 

Frank Brunner, on Howard the Duck and

Jim Starlin, on Warlock.

The poster for his appearance at the store was a little different,

instead of a piece of his artwork, it was decorated by a photograph of a maquette of the man himself, standing on top of issues of the comic books he had worked on.

The maker of the maquette was credited as being,

Joan Thornborrow.

Until I was preparing to write this post, it had never occurred to me to track her down, so imagine my surprise, when I discovered that she is now (and has been for many years) known as

Joan Thornborrow-Steacy! 

It all seemed to fit together.  When I had visited with Ken in 1990,

long after he left Toronto, in the mid 1980s and relocated to beautiful British Columbia, he had a bedroom in his home dedicated as the Steve Leialoha Room.  When I asked why, he explained that they were very close friends and that Steve had helped tremendously with their relocation.

I hope that the two of them are still as close as they used to be, so many things change over time.

One last image.

I took this photograph of the young Steve Leialoha,

at the WorldCon that was held in Brighton, England, way back in the autumn of 1979.

Steve and fellow artist, Frank Brunner were guests at the big Comic Convention, held in the summer of that 

same year, at the Hotel Metropole in the NEC grounds, 

Birmingham, England. 

Vaughn Bode's Cheech Wizard, in the flesh... more or less!

In the late 1970s, several guys that I used to see,

on a saturday,

when I went to the comic shops of Birmingham,

made the pilgrimage to the mecca of

comic book collecting known as 

Phil Seuling's Comic Art Convention.

According to it's Wikipedia page,

the event was first held in 1968 and continued to be

an annual gathering, until 1983; with some added wrinkles of history, that you can read elsewhere.

Getting back to the point of this post, one of those

intrepid travellers, took the photographs displayed below.

I wish that I could remember who it was but time has wiped away any clue to his identity, which is a shame, since I would like to credit him.

Those of you who view the images in their larger state will notice the lettered show cards on the display.

I have Googled many variations on Harvey Weintraub, who I assume was either the builder or the owner and Junkwaffel Express but to no avail.  It was so large and so well done that I thought that I would find some mention, somewhere, even if it was only another photograph of the same display.

Given the cult status that Vaughn Bode and Cheech Wizard have, I was surprised to find that there doesn't seem to be any mention of this display anywhere on the Internet.  So, perhaps I will be adding something new to the collective history of Fandom. 

Berni Wrightson & Michael Kaluta in Birmingham, England, 1979 : Pieces of the Past

On a wet and windy night in the autumn of 1979,

I got to share the company of Berni Wrightson and Mike Kaluta,

in a lightly attended book signing for 

The Studio.

Arranged by the Andromeda Bookshop, 

Rog Peyton & Company,

and held in a small and intimate venue, 

a wine bar, at the lefthand end (as one faced Andromeda) of

Summer Row, in Birmingham, England.

Jeff Jones was there too but he never left the far corner of the bar and the woman he was talking to.  A great shame, since I would have liked to have had the opportunity to talk to him but at least he was there.  The fourth member of The Studio, Barry Smith, this was before the Barry WINDSOR Smith days, had apparently refused to leave London!  At least, that is what I was told at the time and so, he wasn't there at all.

Berni and Mike were the best,

they chatted away, answering questions and being very polite and charming.  It was a magical night.

Rog Peyton got a Wrightson sketch for the cover of his next Andromeda Catalogue and I believe, that Berni was actually drawing it as the photograph below was taken.

When I find that cover again, I will post it here too.

The master of "feathering",

Berni Wrightson 

as he looked that day.

Here it is, as promised, the sketch that

Berni was drawing when the photograph,

above, was taken.

For those who delight in the details,

Berni dated the sketch and that ties 

my "wet and windy night in the autumn of 1979",

to the 23rd of October, 1979.

I guess that my memory isn't as faded as I thought!

The Shadow was never drawn as well as it was by

Michael Kaluta

although, he has drawn a lot of stories and beautifully, since 1979.

Thanks go out to 

Rog Peyton,

a wonderful man and much under-appreciated by

the much younger me.

Andromeda Publications or The Silver Snail publishes comics.

After making the post about

ANDROMEDA

and how the distribution arm of the Silver Snail empire had reused the name that Ron Van Leeuwen had previously used for his venture into publishing...

I present to you the covers of those books because they deserve to seen, in a larger format, than the few tiny images of them that I have been able to find on-line.

John Allison painted this cover in 1976

and together with Tony Meers, drew the main feature.

I have tried to find him by searching the Web

but so far, I am not having any luck.

Where are you today Mr. Allison?

Speaking of people that I cannot find.

Don Marshall painted this cover and contributed

stories inside too.

I have to admit that I love this cover and Don's use of colour in all of the examples of his art that I have.

Paul Rivoche,

young and full of energy, painted a terrific adaptation of

Exile of the Aeons and this wonderful wrap-around cover too.

I actually had the opportunity to chat with Mr. Rivoche

at the TCAF back in May of this year.

He is still a Toronto based artist and still tremendously talented too.

Okay, this cover is a total oddity because I have absolutely no idea who, Ramy Bar-Elan, the cover artist, is!

A search of the Web turns up nothing more than we already know, that he painted this cover but who was he and why was he asked to do the cover of this issue?

Another great use of colour on this cover,

John Allison does it again.

Tom Nesbitt got to show what he could do with this cover assignment and he turned in a great one!

I love the way he subtly changed the style of the title lettering and gave it the feel of the fairyland style characters in the background of the illustration.

I believe that I have actually located Tom Nesbitt.

Computers are a wonderful tool and when coupled to the Internet, anyone can be an amateur sleuth!

Judging by the style of his drawings,

http://tnanimation.blogspot.ca

is the place to find him on-line.  Physically, he says that he lives in West Vancouver, BC, Canada

and turns his skilled hands to a variety of artistic pursuits.

This was Franc Reyes baby and he is still very much active in the Animation Industry.  In fact, just a couple of years ago, he put out an art book, Visual Concepts, that showed a cross section of his work in animation.

Don Marshall, with his usual palette of beautiful colours,

did this cover but the lead story is the interesting thing here 

because it was written by

Ron Van Leeuwen and George Olshevsky.

Yes folks, the owner of The Silver Snail and the guy who put together the original Marvel Comics Index,

moonlighted as writers!

This, the third and last of the Arik Khan sagas,

is graced by a cover from the hands of Tom Nesbitt.

Tom also got the lead story in this issue, also from the talented pens of Ron Van Leeuwen and George Olshevsky.

All of these books saw the light of day before 1980!

Arik Khan #3 is dated June 1979 and

Andromeda #6 is dated November 1979.

Ron Van Leeuwen is now retired, having sold The Silver Snail to George Zotti, the former manager of the store and  Mark Gingras, his financial partner, in 2011.

The store had to move to a new location, at the intersection of Yonge Street and Dundas Street,

here in Toronto and they continue to serve the city's comic book collectors.

George Olshevsky,

lives in San Diego, if Wikipedia is correct and continues to be a cataloguer, only now it is dinosaurs and polyhedra

that keep him busy.

Andromeda Publications the Distribution Company

Ron Van Leeuwen had published a couple of Underground to Ground Level comic books back in the late 1970's with the titles of The Fantastic World of Arik Kahn and Andromeda.

The Fantastic World of Arik Kahn was a vehicle for the Filipino 

artist Franc Reyes who had been living in Toronto since 1976.

It was a Sword and Sorcery story, with an exotic oriental flavour and very well done.  I believe that Franc was already doing work for DC comics at the time, drawing stories for Tarzan, Weird War, Ghosts, House of Mystery, House of Secrets and Unexpected.

Franc Reyes went on to work as a designer in the Animation Industry and his credits are respectable.

Rock & Rule

Mulan

Tarzan

Brother Bear

as well as many others.

Andromeda, on the other hand, was a Science Fiction anthology and it contained work by many talented Toronto based artists.  Interestingly, this incarnation of Andromeda is officially Volume 2, because a previous publisher, Bill Paul of London, Ontario, had already issued a tabloid fanzine of the same name.

Bill Paul was a well known fan publisher and he also put out several issues of his flagship title, Media5, in the same tabloid format.

Which featured the early works of such people as Dean Motter, Ken Steacy, Ronn Sutton and even a memorable portfolio of drawings by the young Terry Austin.

The reason for all this preamble, is to segue into a photograph that I rediscovered in my files the other day.

The staff of the Andromeda Warehouse as they were in 1989.

I could name several of them without help, but Tom Stormonth and Brian Morton helped out with a few that I couldn't remember.

We haven't named them all yet but here is a list of the ones we remember:

Front Row, Left to Right

Manuel

Owen Baird

Barb Higgins

Alison Kent

Tim James

Craig Bryson 

Second Row

Tom Stormonth

Ron Van Leeuwen

Dennis Connolly

Shane Kenny

on the far Right Stuart Young

Third Row

Judy (Judi?) Brown

Jim Brigham

Girl in Red Pants?

Uli Havermann

Karen

Grimacing Guy?

Fourth Row

Scott Spence

Brian Morton

Fifth Row

The two guys on the left at the very back??

The guy on the right, wearing the cool shades, is 

Sven Patrick Larsen.

Where are they all today? I wonder.