A Long Time Away

It has been quite a while since my last post here and I apologize to anyone who may have been checking in.

I should now have more time and it is my intention to add new material on a regular basis.  As a collector of books, comic books and magazines, for the last four decades, that will be the mother lode that I will mine to fill this space; for my amusement, even if no one else is concerned.

I have a decided  interest in the illustrative arts and so, my observations will reflect that.  I love reading, don't get me wrong, both of my parents were readers and I caught the bug early on but I will probably leave literary criticism to the aspiring writers.  What I would like most to do, is to spread the little I have learned about making pictures on paper, in the hope of making life a little easier for aspiring comic book artists.

Just to add a little colour to this post, here are couple of my cartoons.

The Dragon Lady

On Saturday, January 7th, I was informed that one of the mainstays of the Toronto Comic Book collecting community would be closing forever, The Dragon Lady! I don't remember when I first visited their store but it was probably in 1980 when I came to live in Toronto and I have to admit that it always came in second place to my favourite haunt, The Silver Snail.

Way back then, the two stores were much closer together than they are now. The Snail was at 321 or 323 Queen St. West, on the south side of the street and The Dragon Lady was at 200 Queen St. West, on the north side of the street. From the postings made lately, about the imminent moving of The Snail and the closing of The Dragon Lady, it would appear that the Dragon Lady moved up to it's present location, at 609 College Street, in 1989 (although other reports say it was 1996). I'm sorry to say that it barely registered with me because I rarely came to the downtown stores at that time, I was getting my weekly supply from George Zotti at The Snail North on Yonge St. north of Eglinton Ave.

When I first began collecting comics, at the age of nine or ten in 1966 or 67, the only places to get them was on the spinner racks at the newsagents or from second-hand bookstores. As I grew into my teenage years, wishing for a dedicated comic shop, they began to appear and then proliferate! Unfortunately, nothing lasts forever and I have a terrible feeling that I will live to see a time without any specialty comic shops, at least none that I would recognize as such.

Comicon'79, Birmingham Metropole Hotel

I rediscovered some of the literature about the Comic Convention that Colin Campbell put on in 1979.

Colin was the owner and operator of "Biytoo Books", through which he sold imported comics, fanzines and art related books.  I bought a lot of things off him in those years and even worked on his tables at the Birmingham Comic Marts, it was a lot of fun.

So, because I lived locally to the Comicon venue, he asked me to be the head of security for the big show!  I should have said "No" but I was and still am, an idiot, so I said "Yes".

Given that I was pretty much of a loner, how the heck I thought I could find a crew of guys to help me out, I don't know... but I did it!  Thanks, then as now, belong to Nigel Whittaker, Mike Llewellyn, Barry Dawes and at least two other people that I can no longer recall.  I should have made more of an effort to tell you all how great you were at the time, because it's a bit too late now.  Mike Llewellyn got to protect Jim Steranko's portfolio for the entire convention, a job I'd like to think he enjoyed.

The only black mark on our record was the theft of several pages of original art from a display in the hotel lobby.  They were all early try-out pages by John Byrne and belonged to Colin Campbell.  The two displays were double sided, with art on both sides, and we were doing fine until the hotel decided to push the displays up against one of the lobby walls and when the time came to take down the displays, someone had crawled in behind them and stolen the pages.  I was mortified, but Colin was very understanding and chalked it up to experience.  Thank you Colin!

To the best of my knowledge, Colin Campell is now one of the owners of Forbidden Planet International.

The cartoon on the right is the work of my longtime friend Mike Robbyns.  He is a very creative guy and this was done way back in 1990, when he was taking a shot at becoming a syndicated cartoonist.  A dream that never came to fruition, but one that introduced him to a number of famous cartoonists and several became his friend too.

Mike is one of the nicest guys in the world.  He always manages to see the best side of everything and everyone, a less negative personality would be hard to find.

While he no longer cartoons like a demon, he still harbours his original dream of becoming an "animationist", better known as an animator, when he retires.  He may just surprise us all one day and actually do it.  I wish him the very best of luck.

When I landed in Toronto, in 1980, I was a Science Fiction Fan that moonlighted as a comic book buyer.  The Toronto Science Fiction bookstore, then as now, was Bakka and it sat right across the street from The Silver Snail on Queen Street West.  So, I thought I would continue to conduct myself as I had in England, Saturdays in the company of SF Fans, with a little comic book buying on the side but that was not to be.  Instead, I found Bakka to be a cold and cliquish place while The Snail was a much warmer and friendlier place to hang out in... so I quickly reassumed my position as a Comic Book Fan!

That is pretty much the way it has stayed, I still visit Bakka, now known as Bakka-Phoenix, once in a while but not as often as I should.  Have you heard that they will be mving in early 2010?  Their present location is on the south side of Queen Street, just passed Bathurst and their new location will be a building that they will own, up on Harbord Street, close to Spadina.

A few years back, Ron Van L., owner of The Silver Snail, had these coasters made up and given away...  I present one here for the edification of the few.

It's been a while!

I have been remiss in being a decent Blogger, to say the least and I can't honestly say that I will be much better in the future, but I will try.

I was going through some old papers yesterday and I ran across the only example that I have left from my earliest days as a comic book collector, at least as it pertains to buying them through the mail.  John, I forget his last name, sold me a heck of a collection of beautiful early Marvel Comics.  I first got in touch with him through an advert in the old Exchange and Mart, a weekly buy and sell newspaper, and he continued to sell me 10 to 20 comics each time he wrote.  I don't think that I ever passed over a single comic that he offered, why would I, when they were all in Mint condition!

I bought a lot of early Tales to Astonish, including the first appearance of Ant Man, Tales of Suspense, the first Iron Man, Journey into Mystery, the first Thor... but you get the picture.  There were lots of DC books too, works by Kubert, Ditko and Kane, there were a lot of comics changing hands and I wish I still had them all but, I was young and very foolish and while I still have some of the books I bought from John, most were left behind when I immigrated to Canada back in 1980.

This one is for John, where ever he may be.  We only ever wrote to each other and most of that was business related but I remember him fondly and wish him well.

Remembering The Andromeda Bookshop

To my shame, on my first meeting with Rog Peyton, at the tender age of 16, I promised to buy comic books from his newly opened store and then promptly forgot to go back for over a year!

What a rat I was.  What is even more surprising and shows much about the man, when I eventually returned, he forgave me and allowed me to become a regular customer.

That all happened about 36 years ago, Andromeda had only just opened at the Summer Row location and I had just discovered Fandom.

I believe that it was a fanzine named"Thing", an adzine for fans selling comic books to one another, possibly published by Dez Skinn ( that I had sent away for, after seeing an advert for it in the old Exchange and Mart) which had introduced me to a couple of local collectors.  It has been a long time but I think they were named Derek and John and they had collections of the oldest Marvels I had ever seen.

The original six issue run of The Hulk stands out in my mind, among other heady delights.  They were responsible for introducing me to Peter Lennon, then dealing out of his car and pretty soon after, to Rog, as detailed above.  Within a year, these two likely lads had cashed in their collections and gone off chasing girls and here I am, half a world away now, still collecting, albeit not the same titles or in the same quantities.

Anyhow, by the time that I had returned to darken Andromeda's door once more, Rog had hired Dave Holmes to work in the comic dungeon that was Summer Row's basement.  Dave was a character and we got along and I became a regular, every saturday, for my comic book fix.

Andromeda became a hub for fans and I met several very talented people there over the years, I still have a couple of three inch high, painted figurines that I bought from the guy who had painted them.  Perhaps the one who affected me the most was the young Chris Baker, who came to sign his art work "Fangorn".  He was a prodigious talent and blasted my fragile belief in my own drawings all-to-hell!

Young Chris did very well in the end, I won't bore you here, look him up on Google and see for yourselves.

I bought a whole bunch of his early art, partly finished paintings and continuity strips, before I left England at the beginning of 1980.  I'll post some examples next time.