Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!
"Okay? O-kay? Lookit: this is me... answering the mail.
"Now: lay off, f'the luvva Odin!"
[Part Two]
This is the way I was raised.
You all tell me if this seems right to you or not.
Let's say you find yourself lolling about inside someone else's home.
Maybe you were personally invited to come on in and make yourself comfortable, while your host looks on, approvingly.
Maybe you just... y'know... nonchalantly strolled your way on in, through a front door left invitingly wide open one afternoon; headed straightaway for the sofa; kicked off your shoesies; and set about to monopolizing the television, the soda and all the potato chips.
Either way. The point remains: you're inside someone else's house... okay?
You're a g-u-e-s-t: invited, or otherwise.
Now... here's the question, pals'n'gals.
Once inside Your Host's domicile -- be it demesne or dump; Heaven or hovel -- do you:
A.) ... grouse, mutter and kvetch that the drapes don't "match" with the couch; that the paintings along the wall are all really sucky; and rudely point out that -- if only Said Host would listen to you -- they could really whip this place into proper shape, by golly; OR --
B.) ... comport yourself like a reasonably courteous human being; refrain from making any discourteous or dismissive comments, re: your host's accouterments and appointments; and confine your inborn urge to play The Snide, Swaggering Interior Decorator to your own bloody crib, Chester.
Any number of you good folk out there -- over the past just-shy-of-
two-years or so, since this site first made its demented debut -- have (whilst commenting upon this entry or that one; as we have already seen) elected to opt for "B," in this regard.
Whether offering up smiles; sotto voce asides; or the occasional sly suggestion... the vast and blameless majority of you -- plainly, and to your collective credit -- that "advice," unsolicited, should never be seasoned with the smug, sour flavor of "A."
Again: that would be the majority of you.
Subj: Improving your webpage.
Date: 99-10-13 20:01:55 EDT
From: [name withheld]
[...] the award from Fanzing must be granted looking not only for
content, but for accessibility as well.
[...] The former was my post in the Fanzing Forum about the frustration that we net-surfers faced every time we want to see your web site. Please do the needed steps in order to make your page more accessible [...] Thanks in advance.
Ooooookay, troopers and trooperettes.
Let's all
just sit ourselves down in a huggy half-circle, here, and go over all the
pesky details, re: The Facts of Life, just one mo' once.
..
1.) This Is a Privately Owned and Operated Web Site
What That Means, Is: ALL decisions -- whether revolving around questions of format; content; or even simple, brute aesthetics -- are resolved after a careful polling of said site's El Presidente For Life; said site's CEO and War Profiteer Numero Uno; said site's Vice-President and Officer In Charge of Graft and Payola; said site's Grand Lord High Poobah In Charge of Snotty Remarks (who enjoys complete and total veto power over all of rest of these guys, by the by); and said site's Secretary, Treasurer and Imperial Keeper of the Nekkid-Pictures-of-Salma-Hayek, Forever and Ever, World Without End, Amen.
By sheerest, staggering coincidence, mind: ALL of the aforementioned august personages just happen to bear an uncanny, nepotistic resemblance (it's a miracle, I tell you!) to a stooped, withered and (kinda) (sorta) congenial gent by the name of "Unca Cheeks."
Go figure, huh...? 
This site is not; never has been; and never, no never will be anything even remotely resembling either a democracy or a republic.
It is -- at its very innermost core; by cold, calculated design -- a (quasi-)benevolent monarchy; a freakish and demented duchy, wherein the landed gentry (i.e., Li'l Ol' Moi) enjoys the ancient, God-given right to gad about the fields and woodlands in their tattered and soiled BVDs, making faces at the dim and uncomprehending peasantry.
Deal with it.
2.) Said Web Site Is Shamelessly and Unabashedly "Low-Tech"; Both By Design, and By Brute Necessity
What That Means, Is: ALL decisions, re: formatting and
presentation, are dictated by the simple fact that your congenitally low-browed
and Luddite-ish Unca Cheeks has zero/zip/nada in the way of even the
most rudimentary knowledge, re: such arcane and unholy concepts as "HTML";
"thumbnails"; "coding"; "bpi"; or even (until fairly recently) "alternating
current."
Unca Cheeks' slender and shoddy tools, in this particular enterprise, are as follows:
a.) One (1) worn and dog-eared copy of NETSCAPE COMPOSER FOR DUMMIES;
b.) One (1) "let-the-computer-make-all-the-decisions-for-you"-type disc, accompanying same; and --
c.) One UMAX Astra 610P scanner; a wheezing, balky and arthritic thing, possessed of its own peculiarly spiteful sort of malign intelligence.
That's it.
That's ALL.
Unca Cheeks does not feel especially obligated, thank you -- as the same two or three correspondents out of the overall one thousand or so continually chide and/or berate him -- to "learn how to do HTML, for God's sake"; or to "fix things so that my crude, flint computer can download your images 17.6 seconds faster, you wizened and cranky old fart."
(Admittedly: the two examples above are both paraphrases; however...
the essential tenor and tone remains, I assure you, unadulterated.)
The unvarnished reason for said intrasingence -- plain and simple --
is: Unca Cheeks has not yet frittered away so much of his (rapidly dwindling)
stores of p-e-r-s-p-e-c-t-i-v-e that he has come to regard regular, bi-weekly
additions to said site as anything like a job; an obligation;
or a call to Holy Orders.
This. Is. A. Freakin'. Hobby. Chill'uns.
Unca Cheeks does this -- week in; week out -- for relaxation.
He'd DO this even if no one else ever dropped by to WATCH him doing it.
Mind, now: Unca Cheeks is nothing less than thrilled (no lie) that so many of you have elected to make His Humble Online Hovel and Den of Carnal Iniquity a regular "stop-by" site, every fourteen days or so; to the tune of something on the order of (at last glance; as per PageCount) well over fourteen hundred "hits" per WEEK, no less (!!).
Dead Serious. I mean it, now.
A telling and significant portion of the ol' Eff You Enn involved in
laboring over these dopey little rantings and ravings is the inevitable e-mail
deluge which accompanies them, over the following days; weeks; and months.
(It is, doubtless, the frustrated "ham actor" in me; the shadowy, secret
aspect of my rambunctious Id which will evermore regret that it never
enjoyed the opportunity to work for noted schlock auteur Roger Corman.)
How. Ever:
... the very second this whole silly, hunchbacked business becomes even one single jot or tittle more like honest-to-Allah work than it already is at present --
... the very nano-instant ANYone manages to hector; browbeat; or "guilt" Unca Cheeks into thinking that -- golly gee whillikers -- maybe he really oughtta learn hisself a friggin' computer language, before even so much as daring to attempt to enjoy himself, on idle weekends --
... then it will be right then and there, kats'n'kittens, that Unca Cheeks will simply stop doing ANY additional pages and/or entries for this site.
At. ALL.
I am old. I am in my dotage. And I tire all too easily.
Deal with it.
3.) On THIS Web Site -- If On No Other -- CONTENT Trumps SPEED
What That Means, Is: this site is predicated upon the simple; elegant; and non-controversial (or so one might easily have presumed, at any rate) notion that lollygagging about on the 'net -- cruising and chuckling over various and sundry web sites dedicated to old funnybooks, f'chrissakes -- falls pretty squarely and inarguablyy into the category of "leisure time activities."
Sainted Fellow Sitemeister (and Lord High Pope of the Bronze Age of Comics) Tony Isabella -- who has graciously recommended Mine Own Little Casa in the pages of his own something like twelve or fourteen times, over the past year or so (thanks, Tony!) -- copped onto this right away, from the very git-go; as is plainly evident in the following representative "plug":
***"It's been a while since I recommended Kent Orlando's amazing CHEEKS THE TOY WONDER website, a virtual Disneyland of information and images on the comic books of the past. Recent additions to the site include pages on 'Star Wars Comics of the 1970s,' 'If I Ran the Defenders,' and 'A Despot and a Gentleman: the Charismatic Life and Tyrannical Times of Victor Von Doom.' There's no standing in line for these rides, but -- be warned -- it does take a while for the images to download. Still, they are well worth the wait."***
[TONY'S ONLINE TIPS; 8/20; all emphasis courtesy of Unca Cheeks]
A good 99.999% of you -- in plain point of fact -- have (in the course
of nearly two years worth of e-mailings; both effusive and enmitous)
readily demonstrated that you, too, "grok" the (admittedly) rather... different
approach taken to such matters, hereabouts.
It's solely a hardcore two or three of you out there -- and, I've no doubt
whatsoEVER, a wholly and genuinely WELL-INTENTIONED two or three
(and this means you, in especial, "Mr. Long Ears"; yes, and you,
"Dr. Alchemy" <g>) -- who seem to have mistaken this particular online enterprise
for a track and field event.
IF the scanned images hereabouts cause any of the accompanying pages to "load" too slowly for your own respective druthers...
... then: turn the pictures off, f'cryin' out loud.
... or: just bloody e-mail your genial and endlessly
accommodating Unca Cheeks... and I'll send you the text for same,
"uncorrupted." (Or else I can send you the pics. Or BOTH,
even. God alone knows but that I'm notoriously "easy.") Which
you may then enjoy (or not) at your own frantic, pell-mell paces.
I mean: it IS the writing that's the big "sell" here in the first place... right?
You can still read the text whether the pics have fully "loaded" or not... right?
There's a great, honking WARNING on the very firstest "page," painstakingly spelling out the studiedly lackadaisical nature of said site... right?
These are all fairly rhetorical questions... right?
If the good and kindly folk over at FANZING (who graciously bestowed upon this site the revolving "award" thingie you see atop the "baseline" page for same, each and every week; and among whose numbers Unca Cheeks counts more than one Friend Good and True) genuinely DO feel -- as does (apparently) the rather sour individual referenced at the beginning of this entry -- that nearly two hundred paages of solo sweat; labor; and gallows humor on this site's behalf isn't, ultimately, worthy of their continued recognition and/or endorsement...
... Unca Cheeks will hand it back over, immediately upon e-mailed request.
Still won't change how he elects to "do" his own mother-lovin' site,
however.
This here is Play Time Central, people.
Slow the @#$% down, already.
Take d-e-e-e-e-e-e-p breaths.
Re-freakin'-LAX, willya...?
4.) Success Is Proof Positive of "Accessibility"
Within its first year of online existence -- sans virtually any other inter-site "linkage" or trumpeting whatsoever -- this site garnered approximately twenty THOUSAND "hits."
This year -- at its present rate of accrual -- it's going to end up closer to an additional thirty thousand.
Call me crazynuttykookoo if you all wanna, you tiny, clenched fist o' naysayers out there...
... but -- with all due modesty -- I think maybe I've already made
the case for this site's comparative "accessibility," thankyouverymuch.
The minority argument here seems to be (boiled down to its essentials) that this site is "guilty" of not being All Things To All People... or else not being set up the "right" way in the first place.
There's more than one "way" to do a web site, campers.
There's more than one correct "way" to do a web site, for all of that.
Deeeeaaaaal. Wiiiiiiiiiiiith. Iiiiiiiiiiiit.
Moving on to gentler, less contentious subjects (he said, coughing politely into one hand): our recent third installment of "When Fanboys Turn To Hate Speech... and Why" has elicited more reams of wildly complimentary congratulations and assorted huzzahs than any entry hereabouts since this site's other two all-time champeen record holders (in order: "God Save the King" and "The Twelve All-Time Silliest DC Comics Ever Published").
Mike from AOL weighs in on the blatant race-baiting documented on the message board referenced in said article with the following:
"Short answer, 'you're absolutely right.' I've read all the LSH issues in question, and remember them quite clearly. How anybody can twist them as they did, well...small minds, small accomplishments.
"Question--where is this sad substitute for intelligent palaver? I just want to know which message board to add to my list of 'they will never listen to reason, so don't go there' list."
Mike will be pleased to hear, I know, that said message board -- mere days
after the posting of the article aforementioned, mind -- has eased back on the
throttle, hateful rhetoric-wise, by a factor of, like, fifty or so.
(I just bloody knew some of them were regular visitors, hereabouts...!)
However: Unca Cheeks has already resolved to keep one watchful weather eye on the squalid little juke joint in question, for the immediate future...
... and -- should they elect to return to their venomous ways of yore
-- I'm thinking of rounding up a quick'n'nasty eighteen or twenty of
you scruffy, hard-bitten lot; and leading us all on a little online field
trip.
Take the racism and the bile to a private mailing list, fellahs.
Comic books are all about capes and cowls; not jackboots.
Martin from accn.org. -- who writes some of the longest and most thoughtful letters with which this site has ever been appreciably blessed -- has quite a little bit to say on the matter, his own bad self (severely abbreviated, solely in the interest of Unca Cheeks' finishing this article before our solar system's sun burns out):
UNCA CHEEKS (from the article): "As bluntly as possible, then: there simply is not (and never will be) any place whatsoever for the spiteful promulgation or proselytization of any such spiritual rat poison within the greater fannish body politic, overall.
It runs counter to the very notion of 'heroism.'
It runs counter, ultimately, to the very notion of right.
Most comic fans -- either instinctively, or else by dint of simple, brute repetition of immersal in the four-color storytelling verities and precepts -- understand all of this, certaainly.
[...] Nonetheless: there's actual, demonstrable acts of genuine racism...
... and then there's simple, blind and willfully pig-ignorant race-baiting, born out of carefully nursed and cosseted resentment. "
MARTIN: "I'd call these one and the same, really. It is just as racist to throw around false charges in the hopes of inciting those like you as to throw around false charges against those unlike you. It is a peculiar
self-loathing, in fact, to assume that those like you are so easily
manipulated. Those who race-bait are racist, pure and simple.
"No, strike that: they don't deserve the word 'pure.' "
POSTER FOUR (from the article): "This is either woefully ignorant or purposesly stupid. You should take a look at the culture in which you actually live once in awhile.
"See that rock over there ?
"Crawl back under it, please, and let the rest of us get on with
intelligent discourse."
MARTIN: "This subhuman should have his keyboard confiscated until he learns to play well with others."
UNCA CHEEKS (from the article): "Racism; bigotry; and prejudice rank high amongst the most vile and unforgivable sins of which the human race (of every ethnic variate) has, tragically, proven itself all too readily capable and practiced.
"Contrary to popular modern-day wish-cant: none of the foregoing necessarily require actual, concretized "power" (in, say, the business or governmental sense) in order to be exercised upon another. Only the most slippery or cretinous, for example, would attempt to gainsay the notion that words, themselves, can (and do) wield and exact their own terrible and peculiar sort of power over others, when utilized with sufficient malignancy and skill.
"(Indeed, were it not so: then garden variety racial epithets, for instance, would [obviously] lack any ability to anger or wound in the first place.)
"Practiced thusly, then: any member of any race-, gender- or religion-
situated enclave or clan can (and does) play The Hurting Game...
" ... and: anyone electing to transgress against the codicils of human civility lays themselves open, thereby, to our fullest and most emphatic censure, and scorn."
MARTIN: "See, here's where you run afoul of orthodoxy. Modern orthodoxy insists -- INSISTS -- that you are wrong, wrongg, wrong. Dare to argue, and you're automatically a racist. And THAT is the evil you're ultimately facing: 'right-thinking' people don't LIKE to be called bad names, and thus let wrong-thinking people bully them into siding with wrong.
"And now you dare stand up and say, 'The Emperor's buck nekkid!' Well, more and more, I'm convinced that the REAL ending of that story is: the Emperor sent his Brute Squad over to pummel the kid into a bloody pulp; and the rest of the townsfolk saw what happened, and decided to tell the Emperor how much they liked his new clothes."
POSTER ONE (from the article): "[...] As any reader of the Legion knows for most of it's [sic] history, the Legion stories never showed any black people, or Asians or any nonwhites living in the 30th century. [...] I thought this level of obfuscation on the part of DC had to be THE text book definition of the word, "blind spot".
MARTIN: "Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha! The (snicker) Legion? The (snck-hmph) LEGION? What book is this whacko reading?
POSTER ONE (from the article): ""His costume is a nightmare even by Legion standards, remember Element Lad's original Pink and white costume? well Jacques costume was predominantly yellow. And just in case you still don't get the drift, Jacques had a white streak in his hair much like a skunk. [...] A black man with the inclination to hide and the power to make himself invisible."
MARTIN: "Ex-CUSE me? 'Hey, I'm angry, and I'll find a reason to be angry. Just you wait!' This is the SINGLE DUMBEST argument I have EVER heard in ANY claim of racism. With reasoning this tortured, I GUARANTEE the writer can 'prove' ANYONE to be a racist."
Martin's well-reasoned (and refreshingly grammatical) letters are always occasion
for much in the way of whooping and hollering, hereabouts. Obviously.
Nicolas from utoronto.ca makes a welcome return appearance, as follows:
"Not knowing the context of the original argument from which you
drew the quote [re: the matter of LEGION character XS' parentage], I am briefly going to address what I saw as half the accusation therein, that XS was in fact OF MIXED PARENTAGE. She is, and that of course makes her one of the most progressive pieces of writing at DC.
"There are still people that believe that one should never marry
outside of one's race, as outdated as that sounds. That DC should defy
that, and moreover state that the daughter of one of DC's greatest heroes
was absolutely colour blind (as I always assumed Barry himself was, being
the paragon of reason and humanity that he was) is of course absolutely to the credit of the company and its writers.
"As to the matter of whether Arabs 'count' as black (and I too
missed any statement that XS's father was arabic), I think that
the entire issue is rather stupid. Even if we accept for a minute that
Arab's were a separate group... So what? XS would still not be white, and
still a great character (my favorite post-boot original, save perhaps
Gates) and still proof that the creators in question are not in fact white
supremacist bastards.
"In fact, when XS was created in '94 was more or less the period when Arabs were a prime target for the uglier elements of American culture. Remember the Oklahoma bombing being blamed on Arab terrorists by the media before proof emerged that it was actually not so?"
Nicholas -- as always -- is several good-sized steps ahead of the rest of
the pack.
Finally, Chris from AOL chimes in with the following brave admission:
"For the record, I'd like to state that I was a fan of Vibe (possibly the only one, it seems), and I never, never, not once figured him to be:
a) a racial stereotype, or:
b) killed off because he was "non-white". (Ugh. What a horrible term.)
"I always thought that his accent and stereotypical comments ('chu, wack) were put-ons by the character himself -- sort of living up to the stereotype. Witness the scene in JLA ANNUAL #2 where Paco is around his family -- Steel notices that the accent vanishes.
"I also considered Vibe's death to be the writer's way of saying 'fine, you fanboys all hate this character? Okay, bite me, I think he's a damned good character, but the editors want him to die. Fine, but he's going to die RIGHT.' (OK, maybe the writer wasn't saying all that.) At any rate, I think Vibe's best story was when he was killed. He proved that he was more than just a stereotype.
"Then I think "calm down, he was just a comic character."
"Why am I telling you this? I guess just to convince you that Vibe did have some fans out there -- and they aren't all crackpots.
"So when do we see that Human Target page you've been promising?"
A.) I never for uno momento thought that any fan of Vibe must -- ipso facto -- be a "crackpot," Chris; and umpteen raps upon the metaphorical knuckles for Unca Cheeks, if he (wholly unintentionally) managed to leave anyone with such an impression, due solely to his own congenital verbal maladroitness.
B.) Sooner than you think... as the helpful "preview" pick, below, should
amply demonstrate.
Well, then:
All these letters, finally answered and/or acknowledged...
... and an exhausted and wheezing Unca Cheeks has (still! Still!) only made but the most insignificant of dents in the pile, overall. ;-p
I still have way nifty keen-o letters sitting here from Greg; Quentin; Jack; Brent; Jason; Walt; and about another two hundred kind and thoughtful respondents (give or take).
At this point, then: I'm a-throwin' the whole ugly matter out onto the floor, for a straight up-or-down vote:
You people
wanna see Unca Cheeks undertake more excavations into the ol' mailbag,
sometime in the immediate future... or no?
Either way...
... good golly, but this old man is tired.
"Awright! Awright! I'm Answerin' the
Freaking Mail, Already -- !" (PAGE ONE)
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