Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!

It hurts, God.
Like what they did to you.
Only worse.
Smite him, O Lord. Smite Him NOW.
The Third (and Final) Big, Stinky Page Full of the WORST Comic Book Super-Heroes Ever Ever EVER!!!

(This page is dedicated -- with love -- to T. S. Hughes: the modern-day Lenny Bruce)

You kids. I swear.

While I can certainly appreciate your amassed appreciation for the cheaper, more tawdry aspects of our medium's checkered history -- said sentiments being so eloquently expressed, via e-mailed missives and whatnot, by such elegant verbal parsings as: "Do More Feebs, Whydoncha" -- I'm afraid your kindly old Unca Cheeks is going to have to put his plush little foot down on this one, for good and for all:

This. Is. The. Very. Last. Time. We're. Playing. This. Game.

I'm old. I'm frail. I flatter myself in thinking that I deserve a little less pain and suffering in these, my Golden Years.

I'm just sayin', is all.

"Pain" and "suffering" (how's this for a quick and seamless "segue"...?) are two words which most accurately describe my initial assessment of one "Alison Blaire"; a.k.a., the roller-skatin', crime-fightin' disco diva cruelly fostered upon an unsuspecting fannish populace under the over- heated code name of... The Dazzler.

First introduced within the pages of the Chris Claremont/John Byrne X-MEN -- certainly, one of the most relentlesssly over-hyped (and overrated) pseudo-"classics" of this (or any other) era -- the Dazzler was Marvel Comics' cynical and harebrained attempt to cash in on the (justly) maligned "disco" fad in popular music.

It speaks volumes of the bone-headedness inherent in such an attempt to note that the Claremont/Byrne duo's shameless attempt at cross-genre pandering was at least five, six years too late in arriving on the scene to make any storytelling "sense" whatsoever. Thus do the literary gods lay low the aspirations of all those who seek pallid "inspiration" in hitching their (quasi-)artistic "horsies" to any/all of the more artistically bankrupt haywagons clogging up the fictive freeway. Caveat emptor, gentlemen.

As dire a character (mis)conceptualization as the Dazzler indisputably was, however: it cannot be fairly stated that this jewel-bedecked bimbette was the all-time worst hero (or heroine) ever foisted upon the comics readership by the creatively barren Marvel Comics of the late '70's/early '80's. Not so long as the two-for-one sale upcoming lives on in the hellish memories of a tortured fandom.

Ladies and gentlemen: I give you both Razorback AND The Savage She-Hulk.

It's okay. Really. I'd hate me, too, under the circumstances.

The end-result of what surely must have been countless generations of selective inbreeding, the Arkansian Avenger known as Razorback was (here comes that "jumping onto 'fad' bandwagons thing again) a big, burly interstate trucker whose entire crime-fightin' motif revolved around CB radios. (That ludicrous porcine headgear you see him sporting, in the accompanying illustration, enabled ol' Buford -- did I mention that, by the way? His name was Buford. God help us all. -- to "send or receive any CB radio transmission, instantaneously." (Jump back, Galactus -- !)

Our Man Buford also patrolled the spaceways (not a typo; don't ask, f'chrissakes) in an interstellar eighteen-wheeler which he'd affectionately christened "The Big Pig." And a darned good idea it must have seemed, at the time, I daresay.

The She-Hulk, on the other hand, was cobbled up solely in order to maintain proprietary copyright and/or trademark rights over any potential attempts by comics and/or television parvenus more creatively sterile than Stan Lee to "cash in" on Marvel's lucrative HULK franchise.

(This explanation -- it would take a man infinitely more charitable than I to grant it the status of excuse -- was, of course, utter tommyrot. As all good comics fans know: there were no working writers more creatively sterile than Stan Lee in the late '70's/early '80's.)

This, however, did not prevent longtime comics scribe Gerry Conway from giving it The Old College Try, twice or thrice in the course of his career.

The People's "Exhibit 'A' ": the inane quartet of pretenders to the JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA "throne" known as (from left to right): Gypsy; Vibe; Steel; and Vixen. [See cover reproduction, below]

In a thoroughly muddled attempt to boost the (then-)flagging sales of DC's JUSTICE LEAGUE flagship title, it was decided (I cannot even pretend to follow the argument) that what the comics readership of the day really hungered for was not either: a.) established, well-crafted characters such as Green Lantern, or the Batman; or: b.) failing that much, at least a demonstrably better writer than the aforementioned Conway... but, rather, the pointless maunderings and meanderings of four of the most wretched and ill-conceived "super-heroes" to be found anywhere within the annals of the medium, entire.

As for which one of the four managed to walk away with the tarnished loving cup award as Lamest of the Lame: whereas the red- white-and-blue garbed Steel was merely dull; the bedraggled ragamuffin Gypsy, inane; and Vixen, a "P.C."- inspired rip-off of the far more interesting (and innovative) Animal Man... it was the insultingly stereotypical Vibe [see pictures, below] -- a break-dancin', jive-talkin' caricature by the name of (waaaaaaaiiiit for it, people) "Paco Ramone" -- who managed to engender such universal and unrelenting loathing within the breasts of the JUSTICE LEAGUE readership, en masse, that his eventual death was greeted with the hearty sort of whistling and foot-stomping as is generally reserved for the sudden appearance in one's bedchambers of a nekkid and smiling Salma Hayek. Dangling a pair of handcuffs in one hand.

However: even this, ultimately, is not hideous and unspeakable enough an effrontery as to merit final awarding of this site's tattered blue ribbon for Highest Crime Imaginable Against Innocent Comics Fans Everywhere.

I'm giving you all fair warning, at this point: get out. Now. While you still can.

Fine, then. Just don't come squawking to me, years from now, when your firstborn male child arrives on the scene sporting something more than the standard compliment of heads, or what-have-you. I'm just sayin', here, is all.

Of course, it had to be a Charlton Comics character.

The dweeb-ola known as Mr. Jigsaw ("Man of a Thousand Parts!") was the staggeringly inept brainchild of a writer/artist pairing whose names I forthrightly refuse to drag into this account, on the assumption that there may one day be fanboy tribunals established on this continent; and that said august bodies may well be comprised of individuals more blood-thirsty and unforgiving than myself.

Suffice it to say: none of the parties involved in this sad, squalid four-color affair ever went on to anything Bigger and/or Better, anywhere within the industry.

This, then, was their joint magnum opus; their Grapes of Wrath; their Hamlet, if you will.

A more insulting backhand than that, even so studiedly the online comics curmudgeon as myself would have difficulty in attempting.

However: that's scarcely reason sufficient not to try, given the nature of the particular offense in question.

Let this much serve, then, in final, telling summation: Charlton's Mr. Jigsaw series was (and still is) the only mainstream American comic book able to give even the immortal BEE-MAN a run for the money, re: sole, uncontested claim to the title of Worst Super-Hero Comic of All Time and Space.

Now: let's have no more of this foolishness, re: really lousy super-heroes, shall we?

I am, after all, a gentleman of advanced years. I have my health to think of, for pity's sake.

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