A very late Christmas Card!

I happened to look back a few of my postings, here on the Blog and I discovered, that last christmas time, I had posted one of my hand drawn, christmas cartoons.

I forgot to it last year's end, so here is one, better late than never.

Please excuse the personalized dedication and I am sure that Mark and Annalee won't mind.

A belated Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all.

Bakka and Kevin Davies, a sign is painted!

Bakka was the hub of Science Fiction fandom, in Toronto, when I arrived in the city in 1980.

It was where Ron Van Leeuwen started out and when he moved his comic book selling operation, into it's own premises, he chose a site that was a stone's throw away from Bakka.

That made a short stretch, of Queen Street West, into Geek Heaven and it remained that way for many years.

There was a serious amount of cross-pollination in those early days and a lot of us genre fans spent a significant amount of time in both the Silver Snail and Bakka.

When I set out to find photographic evidence of the old storefronts, of both Bakka and the Snail, I could not find anything on the Web!

As shocking as it seems, with all of the information that can be found in a Google Search, photographs of the original Snail and those of Bakka, with the Kevin Davies painted sign, were missing.

To that end, I set about trying to find anyone with photographs, from those times, who would be willing to scan them and share them.  It took me a couple of years, to finally make contact with the old owner of Bakka, John Rose, but when I did, he generously agreed to share his personal photographs of the storefront.

On an earlier post, on this Blog, I showed my own photograph of the second home of the Silver Snail, at 323 Queen Street West and so far, I have not seen any others.

If anyone out there has any earlier shots, of the 321 Queen Street West location, I would love to see them.

However, this posting is about Bakka and the sign, painted by Kevin Davies, that was above it's doors.

Bakka 1991

Bakka in the Mid-1990's

Bakka 1998

So there you have it.

The quest to find images from my youth has come to a successful conclusion but it would not have been possible without the aid of several good people.

I would like to thank Lloyd Penney, for suggesting that I try again,

Kevin Davies, for being interested, and John Rose, for being so willing to give his time and effort to the cause.

Thank you all.

New Dean Cornwell Book & Stuff

It has been 38 years since the original, one and only, book about Dean Cornwell, was published.

Entitled "Dean Cornwell , Dean of Illustrators", it was a beautiful book.  Written by Patricia Janis Broder, it steadily increased in value, year by year, until it almost reached a price of $1000!

But all escalations in value come to an end and in the year 2000,

they reprinted the original book, with a different image on the cover.  They, in this case, being Collector's Press.

Today, The price varies widely, for either edition of the original book.

Just last week, a new book about Dean Cornwell came out, it's cover leads off this piece.  Published by The Illustrated Press,

it looks like another beautiful tribute to a great artist and I would love to own a copy.

I would have preordered it from the publisher, having dealt with them before, but I could not stomach the shipping cost.  The shipping would have cost me more than the book!

So, I will have to wait and see if I am fortunate enough to get one, through my favourite, spectacular and local, downtown store,

The Labyrinth, of Toronto.

Something that I ran across, the other day, was a portfolio of Marvel Comics Doctor Strange, from Sal Q Publications.  I have owned it, since it came out in 1983 and for a short while, I had the plates framed and hanging on my wall.

The artist is Michael Golden, who was great in 1983 and has only grown in stature and ability since then.

I present the envelope illustration and the plates, all six of them, although a couple of the images are a trifle small, for your edification.

Happy Valentine's Day

The image above was drawn by the young Robert Crumb

and despite his, often times, disparaging remarks about his earlier

drawing style, I find it to be charming.

There is no denying it's cute, cartoony appeal but underneath that, is a structure that shows that the young Mr. Crumb could really draw very well.

This is Mr. Crumb's valentine card from the following year and once again, he demonstrates his skill at cartooning and graphic design.  The drawing of the figure, is almost completely silhouette and reminds me of the "fade away" covers of Coles Phillips.

I know that it is a bit of a stretch but one must admit, that there is a certain similarity of approach.

I have been enamoured of cartoons and cartooning for almost as long as I can remember.  One of my earliest memories is of reading a comic book for children, Robin, published weekly, while lying on my bed.

These examples, pulled off the Internet, are from much later on and not long before the magazine was cancelled, in 1969.

It is only significant, because I am such an image oriented person and One does wonder where that fascination began.

It wasn't only a fascination with the images though, I remember hearing about 3D drawing, at about the age of seven and being mightily impressed that my father knew how to execute one.

The demonstration was a box, drawn in rudimentary perspective and I was completely deflated by how pedestrian it seemed... I was expecting fireworks and music!

It took me a long time to understand, that the "magic" of comic book drawing, takes a lot of time and patience, coupled with a comprehensive understanding of perspective drawing.

But, in comic books, the drawing is only one small part of creating magic on the page.  After many years of study and self education, I can finally "see" the sleight of hand, that a true craftsman in the comic book world is achieving and admire him for it.

In "sleight of hand" magic, the performer is concerned with misdirection, how to get an observer's eyes to to look away from where the hand containing an object is, allowing for a surreptitious disposal to be accomplished.

In drawing a comic book, the penciller must always be conscious of subtly directing the reader's eyes, directing them to see the information, within the panels, that will captivate their attention and aid in their "suspension of disbelief".

I love it.  I always have and I think I always will.

So, this is a small valentine, to my passion for cartooning and to anyone else who feels the same way.