May 6, 2001
Silver Anniversary
Rob Salem, Toronto Star
How appropriate that Toronto, inspirational birthplace of Superman, the greatest hero in the history of comics, is also home to one of the greatest comic-book stores on the planet.
This week the Silver Snail celebrates its 25th year as a Queen West landmark, comics institution, collectors' Mecca and toy store to the stars.
L.A. has its Golden Apple, a large, antiseptic space at the less trendy end of Melrose Ave., where you are nonetheless likely to find your favourite comics creator or TV cult hero perusing the racks (as I once did Billy Mumy, veteran comic-book scribe and Lost In Space waif).
In New York, it's St. Mark's Comics, a musty, multi-levelled labyrinth, stacked to the rafters with brightly coloured boxes and piles of decaying, stapled newsprint, housed inside a pitch-black building that could have been airlifted from one of the more threatening neighbourhoods in gothic Gotham City.
But the Snail . . . the Snail has got it all. Fun and funk and famous faces. Cards and posters and video cassettes. T-shirts and ball caps and watches and key chains. Model kits and handcrafted statuettes, armies of action figures, hundreds of heroes. Books and magazines, limited-edition box sets, trade paperbacks and graphic novels . . .
And, oh yes, comics. Piles of 'em. Miles of piles of classic, collectable and freshly minted comics.
For Ron Van Leeuwen, it all started in the closet. And then it moved to the bathroom.
"I was a closet comic collector," reveals the Snail's lanky, long- haired owner. "I got introduced to comic books at the Ontario College of Art. Everything came out of that.
"I was living in this nine-bedroom house just north of Queen, which I was also renting out to other OCA students. And it turned out that three of the other guys were also collecting comic books.
"But secretly. Back at that time, comics were still considered a kids' thing. So we would all secretly go out and buy our comics, and secretly bring them into the house, and secretly read them in our bedrooms."
This was back in the early 1970s, and it was pretty much the same across the continent. Comics were supposedly only bought by kids, and even then only as arbitrarily selected by a single "rack- jobber" magazine distributor.
"We were running around, virtually every week, looking for all the new comics. There were no comic-book stores. You would have to go to a half-dozen variety stores, a half-dozen magazine stores, to get all the Marvels and all the DCs that had come out that week. No store would get everything."
So he and his buddy George would tool around on a motorcycle, from store to store to store. And the more fellow fans they would encounter, the more comics they found themselves picking up.
"I started to think, 'Hmm, I've got 20 guys I'm picking up comics for. Maybe there's something to this.' "
In 1973, Van Leeuwen became a partner in Bakka, the science- fiction bookstore, another enduring Queen West institution. He first started selling comics out of Bakka's former bathroom.
"We tore out the sink, we tore out the toilet. . . . It took us two or three days. Judith Merrill (the late, great Canadian sci-fi writer) was there, giving us a hand. I remember we had already torn out the toilet, and Judy had to go. She ended up going in the sink."
After three years, Van Leeuwen and Bakka came to a parting of the ways. He and his comics moved out and right across the street on May 1, 1976.
"I opened up the Silver Snail with 20 boxes of comics and $10,000 I got from my cousin, who is still my partner."
Within two years, they would have to move into the larger space next door at 323 Queen St. W. Two years after that, they would double the store's retail space by expanding into the former warehouse at the back. In 1985, they opened up the second floor, to accommodate a growing secondary market in action figures and toys.
"The thing just kept going and going," he says. "There was growth every year.
"There was a big boom around 1990, '91. I had four stores and a national distribution company. We had figured in that last (boom) year, '94, we were going to do $20 million in national sales.
"But then, all of a sudden, the boom crashed. It was like everybody realized at once that 90 per cent of what was being published was crap. And it just died.
"There were, at the time, 7,000 to 8,000 (comic) stores across North America. And 14 distributors. Now there's one distributor, and they have maybe 4,000 accounts. And they're still losing them. All the little shops, the little accounts, they just can't survive."
Even the mighty Silver Snail empire has dwindled down from four stores to two (the other is in Ottawa). And Van Leeuwen has bowed out of the distribution business.
"In 1991, the industry was worth over $800 million," recalls Mark Askwith, a former Snail manager. "I don't know the current figures, but a year ago it was just over $200 million."
Askwith, on the other hand, has gone on to some success as a comics creator (including, in 1988, a print sequel to TV's The Prisoner, co-written with artist Dean Motter) and a television producer (TVO's Prisoners Of Gravity and, currently, at the Space cable station).
Askwith and those like him are part of the reason that, through boom and bust, the Silver Snail has somehow managed to survive and thrive.
"Ron has always operated on the basis of the store being an integral part of the (comics) community," Askwith explains. "When I came on board, in the mid-1980s, half the guys working in the warehouse were artists. And they've gone on to work for DC, Marvel, Disney, Nelvana . . . It's really quite extraordinary.
"Back then, if you were into comics, it was like a clubhouse. Ken Steacy, Dean Motter, Don Marshall, Ty Templeton . . ."
Templeton, in fact, at the tender age of 14, was the nascent Snail's first customer. He has since grown up to be a musician and actor, and a major-league, fan-favourite writer and artist, including the likes of Batman, Justice League and The Avengers.
Templeton also conceived and drew the layout for our celebratory front-page illustration superbly inked and finished by his friend and colleague, Pickering native Richard Pace (Pitt, Starman, X- Man).
"I remember Ty over at Bakka," smiles Van Leeuwen. "He was maybe knee-high, just a kid. I can still picture him handing me some artwork, looking up at me and asking, 'Can you tell me what you think of this?'
"To be honest with you, I can't remember if it was any good. I mean, this was happening to me almost every week. I do remember Ty, distinctly, but I honestly don't remember the artwork."
Local comics creators still congregate at the Snail though not so much on weekends, when the place is packed with civilians. They tend to gather Wednesday afternoons, the day the new books all come in.
"They have a choice of where to go," Van Leeuwen shrugs. "There are maybe 30 stores in the Toronto area. They just choose to come to mine."
And it's not just the locals, either. The biggest names in illustrated fiction show up at the Snail to sign their work, meet the fans and sometimes just hang out and browse.
Neil Gaiman, Chris Claremont, Grant Morrison. The Spirit's Will Eisner. Heavy Metal's Moebius. Spider-Man's John Romita, Sr. . . .
"Romita walked into the store and was blown away," remembers Askwith. "He said, 'Now this is what a comic-book store should look like!' "
"Eisner said the exact same thing," adds Van Leeuwen.
"I remember getting a call once from Todd McFarlane," recalls Askwith, referring to the Calgary-born creator of Spawn, now a multi- millionaire toy manufacturer whose high-end action figures dominate the Snail's retail racks.
"He was on a layover at the Toronto airport and wanted to know if he had enough time to make it in to town to shop. And I'm, 'Uh, I don't think so.' "
The toys, McFarlane's in particular, now constitute half of Van Leeuwen's business.
"We're a big toy store now," he says. "But it's still the same art form. Most of the action figures I sell are derivative of that art form. I still sell more comics than anyone else in Toronto, and more graphic novels, and more back issues. I just also now happen to sell more toys too."
It's not just what he sells, it's also who he sells it to. Industry heavyweights are not the only stars who've taken a shine to the Silver Snail.
"Mark Hamill came in," Askwith begins. "And John Larroquette and Harry Anderson. And most of the X-Men, when they were in town, including (director) Bryan Singer. Bob Dylan came in once he bought an issue of Porky Pig and an American Splendor."
"A couple of weeks ago," says Van Leeuwen, "I got to the store a little early, long before it would normally be open. And I see that there are customers inside. Turns out it was Harrison Ford and his kids. They had come knocking at the door to see if they could get in early. His kids had specifically requested the Silver Snail."
Robin Williams, when he was in town, was another frequent buyer. Even without kids in tow.
"He came in almost every weekend. Later on, at a hockey game, somebody stuck a microphone in his face and asked him what his most memorable experience in Toronto was. He said 'The comic-book store.' "
And finally, the big unanswered question: Why call it the Silver Snail?
"The name was chosen," Van Leeuwen has said, "so that if comics didn't work out, we could always keep the name and sell something else. Like pets."
And as to that Superman reference at the beginning of this story (and by that I mean the real Superman, as opposed to the sorry pretender whose cheesy logo appears above), let us go straight to the source, Superman co-creator Joe Shuster, who was born in Toronto in 1914 and lived here until his family moved to Cleveland.
"Cleveland was not nearly as metropolitan as Toronto was, and it was not as big or as beautiful," Shuster told The Star in his last published interview in 1992, 10 months before his death. "Whatever buildings I saw in Toronto remained in my mind and came out in the form of Metropolis."