Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!
HARD EVIDENCE OF A WASTED YOUTH
... or: "My Dinners With
Dick Giordano and (kinda; sorta; almost) Charlton Comics" (PART
ONE)
"You oughtta be writing these things, rather than simply writing about them."
Unca Cheeks hears this quite a little bit, from this site correspondent or
that one; and immensely flattering a sentiment it is, too, believe
you me. 
As it just so happens -- whilst rummaging around in various and sundry old cardboard boxes and suchlike, preparatory to his imminent moving and relocation (don't ask) -- your musty and nostalgia-minded Unca Cheeks happened to stumble across cobwebbed and yellowing remnants of that long-ago era (back in the days of his beardless, wastrel youth) in which he actually made the odd effort, every now and again, to do precisely that.
Be afraid.
Be very, very afraid.
How many of you out there remember a short-lived DC Comics title from '84 and '85 by the name of NEW TALENT SHOWCASE...?
Basically, it was a sort of "practice-makes-perfect"-type series, in which budding young scripters; pencilers; inkers; letterers and colorists might attempt to convincingly demonstrate their suitability and efficaciousness overall, re: regular, paying professional comics "gigs," via original and freshly-explicated characters and concepts.
Back in the proverbial day -- when fossil fuels still roamed the earth on
their hind legs; and the very notion of (say) a Rob Liefeld or
a Kevin Dooley making their respective livings within the comics industry
would have been derisively hooted all the way to heck and back again
-- enough of Unca Cheeks' old Nashville, Tennessee cronies kept at him
long enough for him to finally break down and submit a series proposal or two,
his own swaggering, self-adoring self.
Now, Unca Cheeks -- placing himself in the (metaphorical) shoes of an apple-cheeked and untested Gardner Fox or John Broome (i.e., My Heeeeeroes), and asking himself: "... well... what would Gardner do, in a situation such as this one?" -- elected to tear out a page from the notebooks of both worthy gentlemen, and "reinterpret" some long-
vanished comics character(s) for "modern-day" comics consumption. (Much
as the aforementioned pair had reworked the origins and bunting of, say, the
Golden Age, magic-oriented Green Lantern into his more science fiction-y
Silver Age counterpart. You get the idea, I'm sure.)
At that juncture, it had been well over fifteen years since the last regularly published appearance of those Silver Age stalwarts, the Hawk and the Dove (and the later Barb and Karl Kessel revamping of same -- and nicely done, it was, too -- was still another five years or so in the future beyond that); and so Unca Cheeks elected to try his hand at something along those lines.
Hence: the conceptualization of VENGEANCE AND MERCY.
Hewing to the baseline precept of Family Members Locked In Hellish and Unending Moral aand Emotional Warfare (and dropping the original "war/anti-war" shtick as being a bit too much "of its era" to parse as readily in the early '80s), VENGEANCE AND MERCY concerned the ongoing travails of a father/daughter "pairing": the former (Vengeance) being an ex-cop turned private investigator (after being bounced from the police force, anent charges of on-duty vice and corruption; charges which were entirely true, by the by); and the latter, his daughter: a resolutely pacifistic inner-city nurse, the state capital of whose own inner landscape was unfailingly headquartered in the shining city of High Moral Dudgeon.
Our Disgraced P.I., you see, had the genuine misfortune to have crossed paths with immortal, high-tech (and high sorcery) wielding crime lord Solomon Starr, whilst working on a case only tangentially involved with the latter's Machiavellian machinations.
The withered and ageless Starr (with skin like bleached sandpaper, and a voice like velcro tearing) [see reproduction, above] -- whose idea of A Really Good Time was generally something along the lines of (say) slow, methodical experiments designed to discern what sort of sounds, precisely, spiders make when they scream -- utilized a combination of technology and thaumaturgy to transmogrify Dear Old Daddykins into a super-strong, perpetually silent, rage- and spite-propelled engine of destruction; both to serve as an unswerving (and unstoppable) "enforcer" on his own fell black, fell behalf, and as an "object lesson" to his nemeses on both sides of the law in DC's long-established location of Suicide Slum (his preferred base of operations).
There was a third "side benefit" inherent in said ensorcling, as well: Starr had forevermore bonded one-half of the evil and implacable essence of one of his greatest, most unrelenting foemen -- a cruel, calculating demon by the appellation of Shh'shaarg'oth -- to the human soul of Vengeance; both in order to provide the necessary sorcerous "fuel" for the latter's powers, and to present his daemonic nemesis with a nicely insoluable dilemma (i.e., How To Bring Down Starr Without First Annihilating Starr's Most Favoritest Weapon... and, in so doing, likewise annihilating himself in the horrific process).
Such a cunning little necromantic nastybad, our Mister Starr.
However: you don't get to be a major "player" in the High Courts of Hell on simple good looks and sparkling personality alone, God wot... and the devious (and increasingly desperate) Shh'shaarg'oth stakes everything, eventually, upon a diabolical "double-or-nothing" stratagem.
To wit: he places the other half of his hell-born essence within
the soul of Vengeance's wholly unsuspecting daughter.
Gulling the idealistic and malleable young woman into believing that her own new-found super-powers (enhanced agility and stamina; limited pre- and post-cognition; and the ability to heal the injuries of others) are of divine (rather than malefic) origin, Shh'shaarg'oth easily manipulates her from within into donning a costumed second identity of her own: Mercy, "the Angel of Suicide Slum."
Now: the youthful and high-minded Mercy has No Idea Whatsoever that her newfound regular "sparring partner" -- the mute and destructive- like-you-wouldn't-bloody-believe Vengeance -- is (in actual point of fact) her own dear, purportedly departed daddy...
... nor does Vengeance, on the other hand, have so much as Clue One that the infuriatingly difficult-to-pin-down spandexed gamin Solomon Starr continually sets him against is his own once-beloved daughter, in turn...
... and: the coolly manipulative Starr, finally, is completely
unaware that he's presently ensnarled in a subtle, long-range "end game"
the likes of which he's never even dared imagine, up to this point in
his elongated existence.
Only...
... only -- if that's genuinely the horriific way of things -- then how to explain the presence of yet another "player" on the field: the embittered; contemptuous; and maddeningly independent armored colossus calling himself Sanktum...? [See reproduction, below]
Seemingly dedicated to making life ever-increasingly difficult for both Vengeance and Mercy alike (he's perfectly capable of -- and demonstrably willing to -- launch himself at either one of 'em, On Sight), the sour and cryptic Sanktum is every bit as much the maddening mystery to Shh'shaarg'oth as he is to Starr; even though the metal-clad myrmidon, himself, seems almost inhumanly well-informed as to the true identities and/or motivations of all the other pieces on the board, in turn.
Sanktum's own lair is (if the street scuttlebutt of the moment is to be given any credence whatsoever, at any rate) the blasted ruins of an old church, in the very heart of Suicide Slum itself.
The residents nearby report the occasional manifestation of blinding, coruscating lights and near-deafening thunderclaps at said church, every so often.
Often as not: these are acccompanied, in turn, by the sound of a man sobbing...
... and then screaming.
Well... in any event: throw in another couple of stray Starr
operatives, every now and again -- such as (say) the ruthless and amoral waterfront
scourge, Leviathan [see reproduction, back at the top of this page];
or the lethal (if emotionally child-like) Plague [see reproduction, directly
above] -- and you've pretty much the whole introductory scenario, really.
The extensive typed proposal for VENGEANCE AND MERCY (along with accompanying character conceptualizations courtesy of lifelong pencil-wielding pal Bob Blanton, which you've all been a-gandering at throughout. The man went all the way to the bloody wall and back again for your eternally grateful Unca Cheeks, he did.) was handed over directly to a gracious and genial Dick Giordano, at that year's Atlanta Comics Convention; as well as being mailed straightaway to the editor of NEW TALENT SHOWCASE, as well.
The former was encouragingly complimentary enough, if (quite understandably) noncommittal in the midst of such a casual setting.
The latter sent your Unca Cheeks a letter, some six or eight weeks
later, informing him that DC Comics, Inc. would be very much interested,
indeed, in having VENGEANCE AND MERCY grace the pages of NEW TALENT SHOWCASE
for an issue or two.
(Said letter was signed by one Tasmyn O'Flynn -- or else Tamsyn
O'Flynn, possibly; this was all nearly two decades ago, after
all -- who had, if memory serves, succeeded both Mike Gold and Marv
Wolfman in the position of Editor for said title. And a genuinely
charming and helpful lady she was in correspondence, too, I might add.)
Asked to provide an eight- or ten-page "sample" script, your star- struck and feverish Unca Cheeks rushed to apply himself to that very task; even including notes for yet another important recurring character (devised well after the fact) by the name of Shooting Star [see reproduction, above]: the scorned and illegitimate daughter of Solomon Starr, who had her own agenda-driven, family-style "issues" with the ghoulish ganglord; and whose inherent blood-thirstiness, in turn, would enable her to play moral "foil" to the violence-eschewing Mercy.
The completed "sample" was completed within a week of receipt of Ms. O'Flynn's missive.
It was most likely still winging its way to New York when DC made the decision to axe NEW TALENT SHOWCASE.
... and thus was born the modern-day urban legend of "Unca Cheeks'
Black and Venemous Kiss-O'-Death" for any series (or even comics
company entire) ever to exercise judgement so ruinously faulty as to
clamber into bed, creatively, with infamous li'l moi.
Eh...?
What's that?
"Oh, he's just imagining things," I hear you say...?
Fine, then. Fine.
Come right back to this very corner table, then, fourteen days from now...
... and hear the sad and terrible saga of how your guilt-wracked and abashed Unca Cheeks -- all unintentionally, mind -- drove the final creative "stake" directly into the barely-beating heart of Charlton Comics, a scant few years after doing the dirty to NEW TALENT SHOWCASE.
God knows but that I'm sorry.
If that helps any, I mean.
"One From the Vaults": Hard Evidence of a Wasted
Youth (PAGE TWO)
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