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