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.