This is the story of the Abominations. This is the
story of Those Who Wait. Like L. Ron Hubbard and H.P. Lovecraft, my
late father, St. Clair County (Michigan) Board of Education member William
J. Brennan worked for that Citadel of the Old Ones, the pulp
magazines of the 1940s. Two issues of the 1940s Street & Smith companion to
WEIRD TALES and THE SHADOW, LOVE STORY magazine, carry my dad's
stories, under the authorship, Bill Brennan.
To serve the pulps was to serve the Old Ones; to
serve them, was to behold the NECRONOMICON, if only in dreams. Herman Slater, owner of the old Warlock Shoppe in Brooklyn, after he published
ME, the blood-stained legend, in the square-backed summer 1975 edition of
EARTH RELIGION NEWS (not to be confused with EAST WEST JOURNAL November
1984, page 13, which also carries a write-up on me - but that happened
in Berkeley, when they
tried to kill Manson, so I must talk about that
later, much later), published his own fictitious NECRONOMICON, what the
Necronomicon "might be like". No... No,
this is the story of…
-T. Casey Brennan
T. Casey Brennan, from Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA, has been
telling the world about his involvement in the JFK assassination of 1963; a
weird, unsettling, sometimes terrifying story about the story behind history.
But the powers-that-be tell us not to see the fnords, and not to listen to
voices that tell us to question orthodox truths. Something those who follow
this blog no doubt are well acquainted with.
Dave Sim has quite soberly said of him: T. Casey
Brennan is a remarkable writer and tremendous asset to the work of comic art
and James Warren's highly distinctive black and white comic magazines. His
contributions to the more intellectual comic book stories he enjoys so much are
not only appreciably ahead of their time, but also essential to the growth of a
medium.
T. Casey Brennan was one of the most outstanding
authors in the ranks of Warren Magazines. His story, “A Stranger in Hell”,
stands out in my memory since childhood as the single most disturbing and
fascinating horror comic I have ever read, and I have re-experienced it dozens
of times both in Spanish and in its original English version, in Eerie Magazine #38. A true masterpiece.
Author of short stories, rock singer, and one of
those handful of people who won’t stop forcing us to see that the world is
richer, more intense, and sometimes far more terrible, than we usually think.
While the world enjoyed the stories he wrote –among
them some of the finest Vampirella
tales- little did we suspect that many of Brennan’s stories share a dark
undercurrent, that which flows through the maelstrom that was the shooting of
John F. Kennedy.
This is what a comic book produced by T. Casey and
Dave Sim for Actor Comics Presents #1 (Hero Initiative) in 2006 (previously found online at A Moment of Cerebus) is about.
Here follows
Conjurella: Hypotetical Cerebus and the Necronomicon Monks
Written by T. Casey Brennan and Dave Sim (2006)
with a new cover by yours
truly, Luis G. Abbadie
(added by suggestion from Brennan himself).
After the story, more
information and context follows (including how this fake comic book cover illustration came about!)
But first, a shoutout to Skull & Bones fraternity from Yale, who have discussed the following comic; keep
reading and you’ll know all about it!
Now, follow us down this rabbit hole…
Of Vampires, Symbols and Outfits
As journalist Sara Waisanen summarized for Ann Arbor Journal (20 January 2010):
Brennan's most head-turning comics are the ones in
which he tells of his involvement in the JFK assassination, as a victim of
MK-ULTRA, an alleged CIA operation that involved brainwashing and experimenting
with drugs. In 1996, Brennan first wrote about what he says happened in the JFK
assassination in his comic Conjurella. "It seemed to breathe new life into
my comic career," Brennan said.
Prior to JFK's assassination on Nov. 22, 1963,
Brennan said he would go with his father who would get hypnosis from a Dr.
Earnshaw. While they were there, the doctor would drug them with or without
their consent, he said.
"I was a docile kid," Brennan said. "I
did what they told me to do."
Brennan claims that Dr. Earnshaw and David Ferrie,
who some conspiracy theorists believe was involved in the JFK assassination,
came at him with a needle and injected something into his neck. He was then
stuffed in a crate and flown to Dallas. Brennan said he woke up in a storage
room. A hood was put over his head and he was forced to fire a shot at the
president who was driving by on the street below. Brennan said he didn't know
if the shot connected, but he thinks it ricocheted off the pavement and hit a
pedestrian. He was then pushed out of the way and Ferrie continued to shoot.
Brennan said they left the storage room and ran into Lee Harvey Oswald on the
second floor, pushing a broom. Brennan was 15 years old at the time of the
assassination…
 | ||
| As my readers know, my decades-long obsession has produced this new, expanded iteration of the Necronomicon, available through Mandragora Ediciones. (In Spanish, though) |
Years later, after following the endless threads suggested by this strange narrative, while my search for Necronomicon-related material led to an increasing understanding of the ever-expanding realm of pseudobiblia, it also became increasingly clear for me why T. Casey had been so insightful in choosing the Necronomicon, the Book straddling unreality, as a key symbol for his haunting experiences.
 |
| Art by José González, from Vampirella #18 (1969). |
While I am a lazy artist, I recently made an
illustration as homage to this great writer, a comic book cover mimicking the
style of the DC covers from the seventies, which wildly mixed up the stories’
elements and crafted wild scenes that had little to do with the comic books’
contents. I imagined it as issue 23 of Conjurella; (as a reference to Eris and the Discordian Society, about whom, in another unsurprising instance of synchronicity, an intriguing article concerning their involvement in the JFK assassination has been popping up in my Facebook wall since I began work on this post).
there was no visual precedent for this faux-character, but the name was clearly an amalgam of Vampirella and the Conjuress.
there was no visual precedent for this faux-character, but the name was clearly an amalgam of Vampirella and the Conjuress.
 |
| Aaliyah as The Queen of the Damned. |
In the pages of Vampirella
in her original Warren run, Brennan created the enigmatic Conjuress is an
enigmatic character who gave even count Dracula pause (she has been rather
lamely retconned as Lilith -Vampi's mother!- in recent iterations of Vampirella). The Conjuress, whose visual aspect was blatantly
swiped for use by the late Aaliyah as The Queen of the Damned in 2002. So, I devised the Conjuress visually based on
both the original Conjuress (as depicted by José González) and Aaliyah’s outfit.
I portrayed T. Casey Brennan himself accompanied by a
Krishna girl (since he has written at length about his involvement with certain sui generis Hare Krishna gurus), and wearing a famous shirt which shows Brennan himself (in a
photo by Steve Pepple), a logo for the Bohemian Grove, and on the sleeves, the
Masonic Eye in the Pyramid, and the emblem for the Yale secret fraternity,
Skull & Bones.
Anyway, barely a few days after I sent T. Casey the
illustration and he re-posted it on his Facebook wall, a Facebook page called
Bonesmen made the first of a series of posts giving voice to Brennan, reproducing
his stories and photos, and telling the world about him (not only about the MK
Ultra involvement, but even the way he actively campaigned against the
portrayal of smoking in comics, for which Bill Clinton designated January 1990
as T. Casey Brennan month). The Bonesmen page is no less than the Facebook
presence of the selfsame Skull & Bones 322 as referenced in both the Dubai
shirt and my comic book cover!
And thus, self-birthed by circumstances, godfathered by the Bonesmen, Conjurella #23 Hypothetical Cerebus and the Necronomicon Monks becomes a true (pun intended) item of pseudobiblia, in its deepest sense: a crossing of true materials and fictiveness that, perhaps, are best suited to convey a terrible truth than straightforward exposition.
And thus, self-birthed by circumstances, godfathered by the Bonesmen, Conjurella #23 Hypothetical Cerebus and the Necronomicon Monks becomes a true (pun intended) item of pseudobiblia, in its deepest sense: a crossing of true materials and fictiveness that, perhaps, are best suited to convey a terrible truth than straightforward exposition.
Hypothetical Bonesmen and the Facebook Monks
There's been a lot going on in Zuckerberg's dungeons; these screenshots speak for themselves:
 |
| Skull & Bones talking about Hypothetical Cerebus and the Necronomicon Monks. |
So, Skull & Bones are clearly lending a hand to
break the muffling wall “something” seems to have cast upon Brennan’s voice
(and those of so many others of those seeking to tell a different story), by sending out
his tales to the world.
What does this mean? Like T. Casey himself has said:
This is the way of
conjecture:
To those who believe,
anything proven by the Qabballah is true absolutely. There is
simply no question.
-T. Casey Brennan
On a lighter note, I'm closing with a classic song by Alaska, very appropriate for this post: Vampirella.
"It's just possible that T. Casey Brennan is the
last great American visionary of the 20th Century, hallucinating a hundred
years of blood, horror, saints and madness in an attempt to cauterise the end
of the century."
