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.

   

Ty Templeton the Amazing Young Man

One of the people that used to work for the Silver Snail

was a charming young man named William P. Marks;

who spent a lot of the time smiling and chatting with the customers.

I think that it was Ron Van Leuween or Tom Stormonth who

dubbed him "Smiler" or some such nickname.

William was an entrepreneurial sort and he joined forces with another young wunderkind of Toronto fandom, Kevin Davies, on the last four issues of the Fanzine turned Magazine, "Miriad".

Art by Kevin Davies

Art by Kevin Davies

Art by Kevin Davies

That was back in 1981.  The magazine and the publishing partnership fizzled out after their fourth issue together (#7) but it led to Bill's next publishing venture, "Vortex Comics".  Which in turn led to him publishing the cult hit comic, Mr. X and later on, Howard Chaykin's "Black Kiss".

Courtesy of Dean Motter .com

Not forgetting, Chester Brown and his contribution,
 "Yummy Fur",
which was not my cup of tea but garnered a lot of critical acclaim in it's day.

That eventually led to my seeing the early artwork of the incredibly talented and very young, Tyrone Templeton.

Ty was something else back then, charming, witty, talented and handsome... overwhelming in a lot of ways and a conversation with him was often akin to being slapped in the face, repeatedly, with a wet fish, by the whole cast of Monty Python!

At least, that is how I often felt.

Anyway, Ty was a regular member of the ebb and flow of the Silver Snail regulars and I watched, in awe, as his skill with pencil and ink continued to improve.

That brings us to the oddity that I present below.

I have a vague but persistent memory of actually receiving this flyer from Ty himself, while milling about in the foyer of the Snail.

I didn't attend.  I'm a lot of things but a party person I am not, invite me at your peril!

I would be interested to know if anyone else managed to hang onto one of these flyers or am I alone in this?

That's it, time to call in the cat and head for bed.
See you all next time.

The Silver Snail at 323 Queen Street West, a little History.

I was twenty years old, living in Birmingham, England and making plans to visit relatives in Toronto, Ontario, for the very first time.  I was already a comic book junkie and had been for at least seven years but I had never been to North America, the Promised Land of Comic Collecting!

It was the summer of 1977 and in the pages of the Overstreet Price Guide for that year, I found a full page advertisement for the Silver Snail.  I knew that, once in Toronto, I had to visit the store and discover the untold treasures awaited me there.

As it happened, in the twenty or so days that I was in Canada, I visited the store three or four times and came away with priceless things like the missing issues of Charlton's/John Byrne's Doomsday Plus One... amongst other things.

More to the point, looking back, it was the first time that I met Ron Van Leeuwen, the owner and his girlfriend/wife Uli Havermann.  It was also the first address of the Silver Snail,

321 Queen Street West, Toronto.

Being young and stupid, I neglected to take a photograph of the store and I really wish that I had done because it would be wonderful to look at it today. 

Although I didn't have any plans to emigrate to Canada at the time, within two years I was doing just that.  I landed in Toronto on the last day of January in 1980 and very soon thereafter made my way downtown to visit "The Snail".

That first visit was a trifle confusing and I thought, at first, that the store had been renovated.  For a start, I was sure that the check-out counter had been on the left, as one came through the door and yet, here it was, on the right.  Of course, once I spoke to Ron, it became clear that he had moved his business into the store next door,

we were standing in

323 Queen Street West, Toronto

the second home of the store.

It took me another two years to get around to actually photographing the new address but in the winter of 1982 into 1983, I was about to return to England for a visit and I wanted to show

 my old collecting buddies where I got my books from.

Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to show you this :

and here is the beautiful business card, for this incarnation of the store, painted by the talented and at the time, very young, Paul Rivoche :

It may not seem like very much to be excited about but to a lot of people, this store was Mecca and we all visited it regularly; new comic books or not, just to hang out.

I don't think that I ever told Ron, at least not in so many words, how much he and his store meant to me.  I'm sorry that I didn't because I should have but I was young and thoughtless.

With that in mind,

THANK YOU RON

for all the good years

and the good memories.

This one is dedicated to Mike Bothelho

of Toronto's Comic Book Lounge

and his enthusiasm for the history

of the comic book shops of our city.

Missing Release Dates!

As I have grown older and my avid interest in all things Comic Book related has mellowed, compounded by the absolute inability of almost any artist that I admire to keep to a regular publishing schedule.....

Well, the upshot of it all is that I miss books when they come out.

The latest example would be 

by Brian Stelfreeze,

someone that I have watched with awe since his first book,

Cycops, from Comics Interview, way back in the 1980's.

Mister Stelfreeze drew in a very stylized fashion but with a great deal of self-assurance and he has never lost either quality.  It has always been a shame, to me, that he has done so many covers and that I could not afford to buy a comic book just for a cover!

Anyway, back to the point.  I don't buy the Diamond Catalogue, "Previews", anymore and it is easy to miss things on the long list of Independent Comics that publish, on their web site, each week.

As a consequence, I missed the fact that the fourth issue of Daymen had been released, way back at the end of July and I only realized that fact a week ago.

Luckily, the helpful guys at The Beguiling were able to find one for me in their racks.

Thanks very much guys.

It happens far too often and sadly, I don't really care as much as I used to.  There was a time when I was sure that my passion for collecting would never wane but I am older and wiser now.

One more beautiful image from Brian and it's off to bed for me.

Page Layout in Comic Books

The western world reads from the left to the right and the top to the bottom of a printed page of text and these rules apply to a comic book page too.

In the early days, when comic books were made by reprinting comic strips from the newspapers, no one gave any thought to how well the cut up strips would "read" in a different layout.

The original format, of probably four panels in a row, for most cases, read well enough in a left to right orientation but cutting those four panels up and rearranging them in two tiers of two panels per tier... exposed some short comings in design for easy reading.

Despite the commonly held belief, that comic books are merely an arrangement of images in a grid, why do some examples of the medium stand out from the crowd?

READABILITY

It is a fine art, one where the artist subtly leads the reading eye through the panels on the page, reinforcing the pattern of reading that we all learned in childhood.

LEFT to RIGHT and TOP to BOTTOM

I was a very slow learner and it took me a very long time to be able to separate the storytelling from the story.

It is also very interesting, that in all the books about making comics, all the interviews with the artists make comics, most of them never remark on the importance of 

learning how to direct the reading eye.

In the summer of 1989, I sat in a seminar given by the very talented Ty Templeton at a Comic Book Convention at the Westbury Hotel on Yonge Street, here in Toronto.

Ty did his best, within the limits of a one hour tutoring session, to give us an idea of what was involved in the designing of a comic book page and it still took me another twenty years to really be able to see it!

Anyway, enough chatter.  Here is an annotated page, drawn  by the talented and prolific Matt Howarth, that displays his clear understanding of his craft.

In fact, this page almost acts as two pages because a page turn over could have occured at the point where the diver enters the water... What happens next?... but instead, the reading eye is dragged up to the top of the page and then pulled back down through the last two panels for a more interesting page turn over (human interest is now involved with the introduction of a new character) when the diver lands on top of the girl.

I hope that someone out there finds something helpful in my ramblings about making comic books.  It is a fascinating subject and I have enjoyed tracking it down, through the years, to arrive at the understanding that I have today.

One last thing.  JOE KUBERT had an amazing understanding of page layout and anything that he drew, especially in his later years, should be considered to be Comic Book Layout 101.  The two books that he wrote on the subject,

Superheroes : Joe Kubert's Wonderful World of Comics

and

Joe Kubert's Comic Book Studio

should be required reading for anyone who is interested in learning how to be a comic book artist.

McGinnis, McNeil and Barbara Bode

I ran across a listing for this the other day

a new book about Robert McGinnis and I hadn't

heard a word about it!

Titan Books of the U.K. are the publishers and they

brought out the Artist's Edition of Walt Simonson's

"Alien", a lovely piece of work, last year.

I think that I first took notice of the art of Mr. McGinnis after reading an article about him in Greg Theakston's "The Betty Pages".

And then, there is Carla Speed McNeil...

I discovered her "Finder" stories in the original collections,

at a comic store in Kingston, Ontario.  I had never heard of the series and I was amazed to discover a "New" talent who had already published a large volume of work!

 I am very happy to see this new collection appearing on the market, it has been too long.  The stories are collected from their original appearances, in the new Dark Horse Presents, a fine publication.  Unfortunately, as an anthology, it simply contained too many strips that I wasn't interested in, to justify buying it as it came out; despite the presence of Finder.

Finally, there is Barbara Bode.

The image bellow is the only one that I could find on the Web and I was surprised by that.  Barbara was the wife of Vaughn Bode (the creator of Cheech Wizard and a whole universe of other colourful characters) and Vaughn always sited her as the model for his "Bode Broads".

The life of a muse is never easy and from all reports Vaughn was not the easiest person to peacefully co-exist with.  Mark Bode, Vaughn and Barbara's son, said, "...we had just ridden on the tail of a space cowboy comet, which was Vaughn's life with us."

Vaughn died in 1975, as the tragic result of a consciousness raising experiment and in that same year, she met Rick Falcon.  From all accounts, Rick was a exactly what she needed after the turbulent years with Vaughn and they were very happy together.  

Barbara passed away in 2007.