Artist’s love of comics became a career
You might know Pyrogy Cat, the creation of comic-book artist Gareth Gaudin. The cat starred in Gaudin’s
Magic Teeth Dailies, a comic he drew every day for 10 years.
Those comics continue, and you have to wonder how the artist finds time to do this and run a legendary comic-book store on lower Johnson Street. Gaudin’s shop, Legends Books and Comics, has just celebrated its 25th anniversary and, on the occasion, I asked him about the history of comics in Victoria.
Gaudin was born in 1973, but to begin our tale, he took me back to 1952 and the corner store at the junction of Oak Bay and Foul Bay Roads, which was known for years as Freddy the Freeloader’s. The store sold comics.
“In the early days, comics were an industry run by gangsters,” Gaudin explained. During Prohibition, newspaper deliveries were used as a front for alcohol. “The comics would arrive every week, damaged, bent and folded. They came in random bundles, and nobody cared if anyone got to read consecutive issues.”
To return the unsold titles, shopkeepers were supposed to tear the cover off and send it back for credit. But the man who owned the store decided, in 1952, not to send the comics back.
“He just stored them,” Gaudin told me. Then, in 1970, the first price guide to comics came out. People started collecting them, and what was stored was sold from the store’s basement in bundles.
John Newberry, child of the original Victoria antiques store family, bought some of those bundles and in 1973 opened Victoria’s first official comic-book store. John’s Astonishing Books and Comics occupied the building next to Idar’s on Fort Street. By 1978, Dick de Ryk had moved to town, bought the store, and renamed it Island Fantasy. This store later moved to the centre of Market Square, where it became world famous and survived until January 1994.
Some time during those years, little Gareth Gaudin discovered comics.
“I bought my first comic at Turner’s in October 1978,” he fondly recalled. “My mom worked as a hairdresser at Ladybird Coiffure across the street. When I was about five years old, I begged her to take me to Turner’s, and that’s where I bought Godzilla No. 17 — because it had a giant monster on the cover.” These comics were another dimension to the weekly Monster Matinée, old movies aired on local television on Sunday afternoon for two hours.
Having his own comic book was compelling.
“I learned to read by that book,” Gaudin admitted, his elementary school training stumbling over words he had never seen, such as “puny” and “behemoth.”
Soon, Gaudin began making his own comics, featuring his original cartoon character Cosmic Kitty. And, as soon as the Oak Bay library got the neighbourhood’s first public photocopier, he began copying and selling comics to his father’s pals at the rugby club. Did he sell them to his peers?
“Never to a kid,” he assured me. “You wouldn’t even let the other kids know you read comics, let alone drew them. I’d have to get off the bus one stop early so nobody saw me going to the comic store.” Comics were the epitome of nerd.
With the money he made from his stapled and photocopied books, he’d go to the store and buy “real” comics. When he was eight years old, he discovered Island Fantasy. There he stood and gazed at the racks.
“I never had any money to buy them, so the covers were all that mattered.” Ultimately, he collected all 24 issues of Godzilla.
“Down there, I could see what comics were in demand,” Gaudin realized, “and then, when those titles showed up on the stands at the convenience store, I would buy up all the popular titles and take them downtown.” He could resell the $1 comic for $5 at Island Fantasy.
“I realized there was a business in this.”
As he got older, Gaudin began to create little skateboarding magazines, with maps showing how to get to the cool skating spots (tip: the parking lot behind the Rock Hound Shop on Cloverdale). At their peak of popularity, he might make 25 copies.
Then, at the age of 19, Gaudin was hired by Island Fantasy, a dream job for a teenager. While working there, he met Grant Wilson, who had volunteered to work at Island Fantasy when he was just nine years old, and he took it all very seriously. Over the years, Wilson “panned the comic industry to get the gold,” according to Gaudin.
Later, Phil Robbie, who owned Griffon Books in Market Square, sponsored Wilson, at age 26, to open his own store: Legends Books and Comics.
“On Nov. 7, 1992, Legends opened, and I was their first customer,” Gaudin noted with pride. “Grant knew I was really good at my job — I could sell comic books like crazy. So he offered me a job.
“It was a big deal for me to leave the big powerhouse comic book store. After all, every Marvel comic in the 1990s had an ad for Island Fantasy in it. We were fielding orders from all over the world. It was huge.”
Gaudin hesitated, but he eventually took the job.
“Thank God I did,” he sighed, “for otherwise I would have been out of comic books — Island Fantasy closed a few months later.”
To be continued. …