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.
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