Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!
...
or: "Grateful Thanks; A Time Table; and
a Death Threat." 
Ever have one of those weeks...?
The sort of week in which you feel (alternately) like giving everyone in the whole, wide world a great, big, sloppy wet kiss... AND slit A Few Extremely Deserving Throats, at the very same time?
Well... that's precisely the dyslexic sort of week your crotchety ol' Unca Cheeks has just had, these past seven days.
Lemme bore you all about it.
Earlier this past week: someone did some way serious hacking into this very site.
The routine, random-entries-type check I run, faithfully, mid-week, every week (testing to make certain links between pages are still working properly; checking to see if any pesky stray pic scans have taken it into their silly little heads to start overlapping text, and suchlike; etc., etc.) turned up instances where some verminous lout had managed to worm his sexually frustrated way into the uploaded text for a good-ish handful of posted entries, and... edited them.
Said "editing" -- and never, no never have I used the word as loosely as I do Right Here, Right Now -- consisted, chiefly, of four-letter sentences; the odd racial epithet or twelve; and similarly spavined attempts at self-
expression.
A few of you out there (judging from the bewildered e-mails I received) saw some of this garbage, alas.
For that: my deepest, most genuine apologies. None of you (I hope and trust) log onto this site, weekly, in order to encounter that sort of rubbish; and I am pained and humiliated that you had your noses rubbed into it on this occasion.
This will not be happening again.
Ever.
Unca Cheeks has learned a brand new word.
"Firewall."
Should our little Bill-Gates-by-way-of-Junior-Samples attempt any future burrowings into this (newly-fortified and secure) site: he's gonna add a new one to his vocabulary, as well.
"Prosecution."
Additionally: there will be a dramatic re-enactment of the pivotal "Yew
shore dew got a purty mouth" sequence, from John Boorman's 1971 flick,
DELIVERANCE. And I ain't gonna be the one playing Ned Beatty,
neither
In any event: between working double-overtime in fixing all of the damage done by He Whose Mother Worked Closely With Various American Soldiers Stationed In France, During the Second World War, and another little problem I've been having of late (which we'll be getting to, uno momento)... I haven't had time to cobble up this week's new entries.
I'm almost as sorry about that as I am the other thing, in all honesty.
You good folks take the time and effort to be-bop yourselves over here every
seven days, expecting a new something-or-other; which makes me feel all
warm and gooey inside, in turn. (Not that I'm bloody likely to ever admit
it to you mangy scruffs, of course.)
However... I can do this much, at least, to make partial amends:
1.) Thank you.
Said gratitude goes out, in particular and especial, to each and ev'ry one
of you -- and, believe me; you number in the umpteen-dozens -- who've
responded with such matchless generosity to the entry, last month, requesting
this borrowed comic or that one for scanning purposes.
The upside of this, of course, is that -- with all the "new" material
with which I've been all but inundated, these past few weeks -- I have
enough auctorial "fuel" to keep this site in brand spanking new entries for
(no lie) another fifty-two weeks. Bare minimum.
In the immortal words of notoriously amoral omnivore Martha Stewart: "... it's a good thing."
2.) Offer you good folks something this site has needed for a good, long while, now.
(No, no, no, you big sillies; other than a high colonic... !)
For all of you who keep pleading for me to answer the (atonal) musical question: "When are you going to get around to covering [Insert favorite Comic Series or Character(s) Here]...?"; the following hard'n'fast timeline should prove nothing less than a godsend.
(Just think of it as your online equivalent to TV GUIDE.)
Between 4/4/99 and 5/2/99: the final five installments of The 12 Silliest DC Comics Ever Published (including the three titles whose covers you see above); Luke Cage, Hero For Hire; Jet Dream and Her Stunt Girl Counter-Spies.
Between 5/9/99 and 6/6/99: The Joker's Daughter; Doctor Doom; The ARCHIE COMICS Super Heroes of the 1960's.
Between 6/13/99 and 7/4/99: Blackhawk (the real one, I mean; not the "super-hero" one); Star Wars; The Human Target.
Between 7/11/99 and 8/8/99: The 12 Greatest FLASH Stories Ever; Killraven's WAR OF THE WORLDS; The Spectre.
Between 8/15/99 and 9/5/99: The Elongated Man; The Various Insanities of Henry Pym; Skull the Slayer; Strange Sports Stories.
Between 9/12/99 and 10/9/99: The 12 Silliest Marvel Comics Ever Published (including such notorious stinkburgers as Kickers, Inc.; Night Nurse; IT -- the Colossus!; etc.). The Top 10 All-Out Brawls In Comics History.
Additionally -- as I can squeeze them in, during the (comparative) "lulls" some of the shorter of those above referenced will provide -- the following will be popping up here and there, throughout the aforementioned dates:
The 12 Greatest SUPERMAN Stories Ever; Gullivar Jones -- Warrior of Mars; Mal Duncan (TEEN TITANS); The Marvel Comics Western Heroes of the 1960's; Salphunter; Stalker; Howard the Duck; Lois Lane; Lex Luthor; Master of Kung Fu; DC Horror Titles of the 1970's; The Roy Thomas-era AVENGERS; Swamp Thing Vs. Man-Thing; Hot Wheels; Gunhawks; Tales of the Zombie; The Image of the Woman In the Comics of the Silver Age; E-Man; The Dell Comics Super-Heroes of the 1960s; The WILD CARDS Novels; and a few other cunning little notions, as well.
So... as you can see: there will be no "slacking," hereabouts.
The more perpicacious and astute amongst you, however, will have quickly intuited: said "calendar" does not list any specific entries for the next two weeks.
Okay. There's a very good (if rather difficult to explain) reason
for that.
When your red-faced Unca Cheeks -- all apologies and abject humiliation -- asked for a few of you out there in the great, trackless cyber-expanses if maybe he could kinda sorta borrow a few comics or two, a few weeks back... he was thinking something along the fatalistic lines of: Maybe I'll scare up a dozen or so comics, this way. Maybe.
In a lifetime seemingly (at times) dedicated to being just As Wrong As It Is Humanly Possible To Be, absent the dubious benefits of homemade bathtub pharmaceuticals...
... that prophecy, surely, ranks as the shining, crowning anti-
achievement in Unca Cheeks' career, entire.
Migawd, but I seriously underestimated you folks.
I am -- as of this writing (I'm almost afraid to check out the mailbox, these days, actually) -- sitting on over three HUNDRED and FIFTY borrowed comic books.
That's a Roman numeral 3. Followed by the number 5. And then a 0.
... and, as I've said: there's always this afternoon's mail delivery with which to contend (to say nothing of an increasingly cranky and suspicious mail carrier, who's manifestly beginning to wonder what all of those securely-bound packages address to an obviously fictitious "Unca Cheeks" might have to do with the illicit inter-state trafficking of high-grade contraband), as well.
Said barge-load of comic books (there's some duplication and overlap, of course),
pretty much covers the entire, elephantine "want list" posted a few weeks back...
and then some. (A few of the more industrious of you -- attempting
to make good and bloody certain I covered your own particular "pet" favorites,
on this site -- sent books not listed thereon, as well. A nicely
subtle touch, that, really. I doff my cap in frank and open admiration.)
Now: as your Unca Cheeks does not (understandably, I think) much want to hold anyone's four-color prizes for even an instant longer than is absolutely necessary, before returning same to their rightful (and kind-hearted) owners...
... I have some long, loooonnnnng days and days and days of simple,
brute scanning with which to contend, here.
Now: given that Unca Cheeks does have: a.) a job; b.) a sainted wife; and: c.) a beloved child -- all of whom (reasonably enough, I think) require that he spend [XXX] number of hours per day satisfying their peculiar emotional and/or logistical requirements...
... well: can you say "time crunch," boys and girls...?
It's one of those "good news/bad news" trade-offs, I know. It means that
this site (and your many and repeated requests for particular entries,
on same) will not go begging, after all. We're set. We're solid.
We're beatin' the bushes and loaded for big-time bruin, baybeeeeee.
Now: this does not not not mean that I won't have anything new'n'cool'n'groovy
awaiting you here, over the next few weeks, while Our Regularly Scheduled Entries
get pushed back a weekend or two. (I would never ask any of you
to undergo the rigors of "cold turkey"-style withdrawal, solely for MY
silly sake).
Next week (for instance), you'll all get to giggle and goggle as your terminally cyber-clueless Unca Cheeks regales all and sundry with his (mis)adventures in the online fun factory known as eBay; where he has, of late (and with some success), also spent a little time in the last week or so, scoring much-needed treasures for this very site.
If you've ever even paused to so much as consider buying and/or selling
comic books online, via this particular auction service... you'll want to read
that article, first. (No need for all of us to keep making
the very same mistakes, over and over and over again, after all.)
The week after that (if all goes according to plan), I'll have A Special
Surprise Entry waiting here for you, in turn. (I don't want to say too
much about this one, just yet; it's a surprise, you see.)
... and: two weeks hence, we will (the Good Lord a-willin', and the field
mice stay out of the flower beds) pick up right where we left off, once again,
with the articles referenced above; in the order listed above.
So: you can plan your weekly schedules accordingly.
(About the only thing[s] which might tip over that time table, in fact,
would be Unca Cheeks' happening to stumble across one of a very select
handful of comics, whilst engaged in his unblinking and remorseless prowling
of the eBay waters... so: I think we're pretty much talkin' "chiseled
into freakin' granite" here, certainty-wise.) (Do you have any
idea what some of those old issues of MILLIE THE MODEL are bloody going
for, these days...?)
In any event, campers: that's the lay of the auctorial land, as of this writing (5/15/99; 8:43 A.M., CST). Check back as you normally do (whenever you normally do, I mean) over the next few weeks, for a brand new CHEEKSRANT (re: "Adrift Off the Isles of eBay... Sans a Paddle"), among other things.
As of the first weekend in April... this place is going to friggin' explode.
I opened up with a nice little convention sketch from the talented pen of the fabulous Dave Cockrum (circa 1981, if I remember aright).
Allow me to bid you good afternoon, then, with a similarly savory bit of eye
candy.
See you in seven, people...
... and, once again: THANK YOU! )
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