Oskee Wee Wee

Hey guys! I am expecting an official Comic Book Daily ‘No-Prize’ for inspiring this week’s topic! Are ya gonna mail it or shall I pick it up at Big ‘B’ comics?? Lemme know.

I picked up a Mystery in Space #5 for $25.00 [VG] from the Hamilton Silver Snail about 35 years ago- that’s it. I bought no other book from any Hamilton comic store ever!
I never seem to venture into Hamilton downtown. Never have, & I don’t know why. Always mean to visit places like Dundurn Castle but never get around to it.
I DO spend a fair bit of time visiting waterfalls in the Hamilton area- THAT IS definitely time well spent!

Thanks Walt!- I’ll send you a photograph.

I have been thinking about the whole Hamilton thing & it all makes sense to me now. As a kid living in Oakville in the 1980’s, it made more sense to me to take the trip to Toronto & hit a number of stores, than go to Hamilton & hit one or two stores. From Union Station in Toronto, we could hoof it in any direction & enjoy mecca! We could go up Yonge Street & hit Sam the Record Man, Mr.Gameway’s Ark or the World’s biggest Bookstore [ we weren’t just after comic books- we had a wealth of interests]. We could trek along Queen St & hit a bunch of record stores, used book stores & comic stores DRAGON LADY, SILVER SNAIL & those rotten tossers, Grey Legion [boo hiss!]. I would check out BAKKA with every trip I took & this is where I bought my first pulps & ARKHAM HOUSE volumes! If we had any cash left, we could hoof it to Honest Ed’s & check out YESTERDAY’S HEROES & MEMORY LANE [ which was selling movie material by then]. Finally, if we had the energy, we would trek to Harbord St & check out THE BEGUILING [ before they moved to Honest Ed’s area of town]. There were so many good stores around back then & we could not hope to hit them all on one trip. Most of these stores are gone now, or have moved elsewhere & Queen Street has little interest to me now.

On top of this, Toronto hosted scads of Comic Conventions back then, big and small, at least a show a month somewhere in town, sometimes two shows a month! On one particularly poor bit of scheduling, Dragon Lady & another group hosted major comic conventions on the SAME DAY!! Dragon Lady had their show at a hotel down the street from their store and it was a knockout- the other guys had their show at a hotel a few blocks away & GENE COLAN showed up with his family along with HUNDREDS of pages of his original art for sale, which he had just received from Marvel. Sh*t-loads of original Daredevil pages, Tomb of Dracula pages etc from $60.00 to $200.00 a page !!! Like a FOOL I did not buy any…I was just a kid & did not see the value of collecting just single pages of art. For the price of a single page of art, you could fill a sack with pre-code horror, crime & other assorted vintage books. Why the hell would I want a single piece of cardboard when I could buy a few dozen complete books for the same price ??? WE DID NOT see today’s market coming folks!- nobody could predict today’s price levels back then!! I could buy Captain America #76, #77 & #78 in fair to good condition for the same price as a single page of Daredevil art on Gene’s table! Yep, a dealer had all three issues for $20.00 each right across the aisle from Gene’s tables. What would you do at a time like this ???
This convention was not a success as their air conditioning had failed & the hall steamed like the BLACK HOLE OF CALCUTTA!!! You could not think in the heat & we did not spend too much time in there. Gene was surrounded by fans, fanboys AND electric fans & both made a lot of noise. We left the show & went back to the Dragon Lady show where I gave Harley Yee the rest of my money!

On one memorable convention at the Ontario College of Art, I met Ed Furness. I almost never went to the artist’s alley at these conventions as I really only wanted the comics, not to waste time chin-wagging with some artist who was probably wishing he was somewhere else. This show featured Joe Kubert & sons Adam & Andy. I went to see Joe as I was very fond of his work. He was being mobbed by fans & was probably wishing he was somewhere else. He had brought a single page of art with him- it was a Hawkman page from Flash Comics #104. Very nice. In the corner of the artists’ alley sat an old man, totally alone, eating an egg sandwich. It was Ed Furness. I recognized his name from some of the Freelance & Grand Slam comics that I had at home. I ended up talking to him for some time, uncontested. I don’t recall what we talked about- just chit-chat. Although the hall was packed with comics, there was not a single Canadian Golden Age comic to be found! I had Ed sign the convention program for me as I simply could not find anything that he had worked on in the hall. I left the show kinda sad- here was a guy who had spent a chunk of his life in the comics & both he and his comics were now forgotten and ignored. Not one person came to talk to him while I sat with him. Very sad indeed !

This is why I did not have any reason to go to Hamilton & know so little about the city. Everything simply happened in Toronto…..’nuff said!

PS- If you guys see Ron van Leeuwen hanging around somewhere, pls remind him that he still owes John Biernat a dinner. I would like to know if he still has his monkeys or have they all escaped?? I am sure I saw some of them driving down the 427 a few days ago in a beat up van. Ho hum……