Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!
... or: "Where Unca Cheeks Has Been, These Past Few Weeks."
Trust Unca on this'un, campers and camperettes:
You really do NOT wanna know. 
Basically: Unca's been juggling the live grenades of Home; Work; Family; Finance; and Relationship(s), of late...
... and: in order to keep all of those bad boys decently airborne and... y'know... undetonated, like...
... he's had to take a (wholly unplanned, and extremely involuntary) sabbatical, vis-a-vis the unamalgamated joy of Talkin' Comics with the whole, wondrous unwashed lot of you.
Why, yes: I s'pose a hearty, heartfelt "That Sucks!" would be
the appropriate comment for an occasion such as this, upon sober reflection.
In any event: what with A Very Important Relationship nose-diving its way southwards on Unca, these past few weeks; an upcoming change in occupations (a good change, granted... but, still: one requiring a significant portion of Unca's energies and attentions, overall); and a beloved daughter who might best be described as Endearingly High Maintenance, even during the very best of times...
... Unca's gonna need another two weeks, at the outside, before all of the situational dust has settled; and we can get back to Praising the Four- Color Greats, and suchlike.
Look: I already said it sucks, all right...?
One good thing arising from all of this, however:
Unca's finally found the time to winnow his myopic way through the Indian burial mound of books which had been amalgamating itself next to the ol' computer monitor, over the past six months or so.
Unca would like to heartily recommend any/all of the following, to all of his loyal friends and readers; the better to tide you all over, for the next fourteen days:
MYSTERY/DETECTION/THRILLERS
This is Unca's genre of choice, often as not, nowadays; and the following are all darned good reads, for those of a similar fictive fancy:
THE BEEKEEPER'S APPRENTICE (Laurie King; Bantam Books; $5.99; ISBN #0553571656)
Brilliant "take" on the venerable Sherlock Holmes canon, with an elderly and crotchety Holmes (happily retired, and puttering about an English country estate dotted with bee colonies) forced to don the deerstalker once more, on behalf of his new (and unwanted) "partner": a smartassed fifteen-year-old by the name of Mary Russell, who is every bit as sharp-tongued and irascible as the long-departed Watson was servile and ameliorative.
There are at least two follow-up volumes in this series -- A MONSTROUS REGIMENT OF WOMEN, and WITH CHILD -- but: this is where you wanna start, by golly, by jingo.
Great, great stuff.
Other Waycool Myseries/Thrillers: BEFORE I WAKE (Eric Bowman; Jove Books; $6.99; ISBN #0515123536); PENNY DREADFUL (Will Christopher Baer; Viking Press; $22.5; ISBN #067088202; very highest recommendation); WATCH ME (A. J. Holt; St. Martin's; $6.99; ISBN #0312959974); and SPARES (Michael Marshall Smith; Bantam Books; $6.50; ISBN #0553579010).
HORROR
Unca's second-favorite source of fictive fun, these days; with a small (but extremely choice) handful of offerings, for the discerning devotee:
HOUSE OF LEAVES (Mark Z. Danielewski; Pantheon Books; $19.95; ISBN #0375703764)
Pardon Unca's uncustomary foray into the uncharted territories of online profanity, kids'n'kiddettes...
... but: godDAMN, what a piece o' work this one is!
There's this house, see...
... and: it's -- like -- one-sixteenth of an inch bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, right?
Initially.
And then -- slowly; oh, so inexorably and excrucciatingly s-l-o-w-l-y -- it gets a little bigger, inside.
And bigger.
And BIGGER.
And BIGGER.
This book is what the literary love child of H.P. Lovecraft and William S. Burroughs would look like, in its high school yearbook snapshot.
It is twisted in ways which Unca -- no stranger to perversion, his own self (meta-fictively speaking, I mean) -- had never even contemplated, prior to his chancing across it.
Read it. Read it. Read it.
Other Waycool Horror Stuff: THE TOOTH FAIRY (Graham Joyce; Tor Books; $14.95; ISBN #0312868332; sick, sick stuff); PUBLISH AND PERISH: Three Tales of Tenure and Terror (James Hynes; Picador; $14.00; ISBN #0312186967); and BLOOD AND SMOKE (Stephen King; Simon and Schuster; $27.50; ISBN #0671046179; available only in audiobook format).
SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY
No one ever, ever agrees with Unca's recommendations, in these categories...
so: no pressure, here.
SEX AND VIOLENCE IN ZERO G (Allen Steele; Meisha Merlin Publishing; $16.00; ISBN #096583459X)
Even if we hadn't grown up together -- from the second grade, onwards -- back in Nashville, Tennessee: Unca would regard The Right Honorable Allen M. Steele, Esq., as one of the greatest "hard" science fiction writers of the past twenty, thirty years. Easy.
This magnificently representative collection contains some of the gent's finest "near future" meta-fictive musings; including the Hugo Award-winning "The Death of Captain Future" and (a personal favorite of Unca's, this one) "The Return of Weird Frank," a ruthlessly extrapolated SF tale involving cryogenics and... ummmmm... necrophilia.
God bless and keep Allen M. "Famous the Author" Steele.
Other Waycool Science Fiction/Fantasy Offerings: OCEANSPACE (Allen Steele; Ace Books; $21.95; ISBN #044100685X; his latest novel); DAYS OF CAIN (J. R. Dunn; Avon Books; $13.00; ISBN #038079280X); EXPECTING SOMEONE TALLER (Tom Holt; Ace Books; $5.50; ISBN #044122332X); FLYBOY ACTION FIGURE COMES WITH GASMASK (Jim Munroe; Avon Books; $12.50; ISBN #0380810433; funniest damned thing you'll read all year; guaranteed); and BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH: OPUS (Barry Windsor-Smith; Fantagraphics; $39.95 [pricey, yeah; but worth it]; ISBN #1560973676.
NON-FICTION AND POPULAR CULTURE
WHICH LIE DID I TELL? (William Goldman; Pantheon Books; $26.00; ISBN #0375403493)
The name of William Goldman is (of course) known to all civilized and educated carbon-based life forms.
He penned the screenplays for (among other cinematic highlights) BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID; THE HOT ROCK; THE GREAT WALDO PEPPER; THE STEPFORD WIVES; ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN; MARATHON MAN (based upon his own novel); A BRIDGE TOO FAR; MAGIC (also based on his own novel); THE PRINCESS BRIDE (ditto); MISERY; MAVERICK; THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS...
... well: it's one holy heck of an impressive list, is what it
is, really.
Add to that, his seminal musings on The Holy Craft of Writing (THE SEASON: A Candid Look At Broadway; ADVENTURES IN THE SCREEN TRADE; HYPE AND GLORY; FOUR SCREENPLAYS; THE BIG PICTURE: Who Killed Hollywood?, and Other Essays; etcetera, etcetera)...
... and -- the man simply must be an inssomniac, is all -- the occasional top-flight novel or three (TINSEL; CONTROL; THE SILENT GONDOLIERS; THE COLOR OF LIGHT; HEAT; etcetera)...
... and, what you've got, here, is: The Original "Go-To"
Guy for insightful and intelligent observation(s), re: how to hammer
verbs and nouns together, for maximum efficacy.
Anyone who fancies themselves in any way serious about this whole "writing" business who doesn't scoop up this fat treasure trove (485 pages) of sagacious and straightforward counsel is -- quite frankly -- a feeb of the first water.
Case closed.
Other Waycool "Real World" Goodies:
SLEEPING WITH EXTRA-TERRESTRIALS: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety (Wendy Kaminer; Pantheon Books; $24.00; ISBN #067944243X; absolutely crushing, point-by-point refutation of the whole pseudo-scientific gamut of "New Age" codswallop and "P.C." piffle so sadly prevalent, nowadays); SATURDAY MORNING FEVER (Timothy and Kevin Burke; Griffin Trade Paperback; $17.95; ISBN #0312169965; a loving look backwards at the Saturday A.M. kidvid fare of the '60s and '70s); HOW TO OVERTHROW THE GOVERNMENT (Arianna Huffington; Regan Books; $24.00; ISBN #0060393319); SOMEWHERE IN THE NIGHT: Film Noir and the American City (Nicholas Christopher; Free Press; $25.00; ISBN #0684828030); and HOLLYWOOD KRYPTONITE (Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger; St. Martin's; $6.50; ISBN #0312964021; an investigation into the unhappy life and tragic death of original television "Superman" George Reeves).
All right, then, troops.
See you all again, come 4/3 or 4/4.
In the meantime...
... one (or more) of the foregoing tomes oughtta keep you decently entertained
and/or educated, ah reckons.
"MORE COMIC BOOKS," YOU SAY...?
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