In the immortal words of Darth Vader, "Now I am the master." And a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, there was a website known as Torgo's Shack. I believed in this web site. I cherished my every moment in its presence. My room was virtually a shrine to the powers of Torgo. Torgo became, eventually, my God. I downloaded every file, every bizarre version of the main index which Torgo created, every question of the week, every message board entry, every trace of Torgo there was on the web. Torgo was my obsession.

Then one day, the magic stopped. The dream left us. Sometime in February 1999, Torgo disappeared. Nobody knew why. Eventually, everyone stopped caring. Except me. I, after all, was Torgo's biggest fan. I bought all the Torgo Action Figures from my store's *rival*, Fanboy Collectors Center in northern Wisconsin. I had to track Torgo down. I had to ask him why there were no more Questions of the Week, why we were no longer graced with the joys of reading his new replies to the neverending flood of complaints. Of course, I had to wait until after "The Phantom Menace" had come out and I'd had to chance to buy all the corresponding action figures before I could try, but when the time came, I leapt on the opportunity.

And then I happened upon some stunning new revelations. This was nothing new to me, skillful sleuth that I am. When I was six years old and really liked the movie "Dumbo," I discovered to my shock that elephants, in fact, cannot fly, nor do they even have ears at such an alarming size. I was a dissillusioned young man. The joys of my youth were lost. Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny are one thing. Disney films are another entity completely. Losing Dumbo is like losing everything you have in the world. Life meant nothing to me after I knew that there couldn't really be a Dumbo. For a while, at least. By the time I was seven I was more keen on Superman, who quite obviously could exist. Sure, humans can't fly, but we don't know WHAT an alien could do. So there.

But my tragic Dumbo discovery was repeated last summer when I once again found something which consumed my faith in all that is good in this world forever.

There is no Torgo.

Torgo is a myth. He is a metaphor for the pulsating ego of some high-school student I've never met. A high-school student who, when I e-mailed him and demanded to know why the fuck there weren't any updates to his site, melodramatically explained that "there has been too much going on in my life; the Shack is too much for me." What a fuckin' bonehead. A high-school student. I had fallen at the altar not of the brilliant Torgo, but of a bizarrely imaginative teenager. I wrote a song about this internal fall.

"Torgo is a concept
By which we measure our pain
I'll say it again
Torgo is a concept
By which we measure our pain

I don't believe in pizza
I don't believe in cannibalism
I don't believe in questions
I don't believe in complaints
I don't believe in the FAQ
I don't believe in GeoCities
I don't believe in blinking pages
I don't believe in Torgo
I don't believe in Nathan Phillips
I don't believe in "Manos"
I don't believe in the things
That Torgo didn't finish

The dream is over
Yesterday, I was the follower
Now I'm an Atheist
Nathan was Torgo
Now he's Nathan
The dream is over."

Pretty brilliant, huh? Then I began to rethink my position on Torgo's status. So I began to swamp him with e-mails. Message after message after message, I just kept rolling them out to Nathan, and after eight months of struggle and hardship, he gave the web site to me. So I'll be maintaining it (changing the name, of course, to Wheeler's Shack after everyone gets to know me better) on the side along with my beloved position here at Poison Mail Comics & Cards. In other words, since I am a creative genius, it's going to be a very wonderful, exciting time for all of you. So be here on the 15th or you are, quite simply, nobody.

- Max Wheeler
maxwheelertotallyrawks@yahoo.com