ACBA Shazam Award Winners

[Zonker]

Some time ago I started collecting the winners of the annual Academy of Comic Book Arts (ACBA) "Shazam" awards. These awards were given out for work published from 1970-1974 (anybody know why they apparently stopped in 1975?), and were loudly publicized in the Marvel Bullpen Bulletins and DC Direct Currents pages of the day. I've also tried to identify every story nominated for an award, and this has become more difficult, and so I am posting this note to see if anyone knows the missing pieces of information, and to alert the rest of the Bronze Age community to some great reading out there in the back issue bins.

 

Here's what I have pieced together so far (I've neglected the Humor division here, just listing the Dramatic division. If anyone is interested in the humor results, I can pull together perhaps 75% of that information.)

 

For issues published in 1970 (sources: July 71 and Dec 71 Bullpen Bulletins):

Best Continuing Feature: GL/GA

Other Nominees for Best Feature: Avengers, Amazing Spider-Man, Fantastic Four

Best Individual Story: "No Evil Shall Escape My Sight" ( GL 76)

Other Nominees for Best Story: "Lair of the Beast-Men" ( Conan 2 )

Three other best story nominees, unknown to me (Marvel noted there were 5 nominees total)

Best Writer: Denny O'Neil

Best Penciller: Neal Adams

Best Inker: Giordano

Best New Talent: Barry Smith (in 1970??)

 

For issues published in 1971 (sources: Conan 17,20 letters pages):

Best Continuing Feature: Conan

Other Nominees for Best Feature: GL/GA, Amazing Spider-Man

Best Individual Story: "Snowbirds Don't Fly" ( GL 85)

Other Nominees for Best Story: "Tower of the Elephant" ( Conan 4 )

"Devil-Wings over Shadizar" ( Conan 6 )

"Swamp Thing" ( House of Secrets 92 )

Best Writer: Roy Thomas

Best Penciller: Neal Adams

Best Inker: Giordano

Best New Talent: Mike Kaluta (in 1971??)

 

For issues published in 1972 (source: Tomb of Dracula 14 letter page & misc.):

Best Continuing Feature: Conan

Other Nominees for Best Feature: King Kull, others?

Best Individual Story: "Dark Genesis" ( Swamp Thing 1 )

Other Nominees for Best Story: "The Death-Dance of Thulsa Doom!" ( Kull 3 )

"Black Hound of Vengeance" ( Conan 20 )

Best Short Story: "Demon Within" ( House of Mystery 201 )

Did DC lobby for a new category after having 1971's Swamp Thing short compete against its own GL/GA?

Other nominees for best short story, unknown to me

Best Writer: Len Wein

Best Penciller: Berni Wrightson

Best Inker: Tom Palmer, John Severin (tie)

Best New Talent: (seem to recall Mike Ploog won, but have no reference for this)

 

For issues published in 1973 (source: Swamp Thing 16 letters page):

Best Continuing Feature: Swamp Thing

Other Nominees for Best Feature: Conan, Tomb of Dracula

Best Individual Story: "The Song of Red Sonja" ( Conan 24 )

Other Nominees for Best Story: "Finally Shuma-Gorath" (aka Death of Ancient One) (Marvel Premiere 10)

"Clockwork Horror" ( Swamp Thing 6 )

Best Short Story: "The Himilayan Incident" ( Detective 437 )

Other nominees for best short story, unknown to me

Best Writer: Archie Goodwin

Best Penciller: Berni Wrightson

Best Inker: Giordano

Best New Talent: Walt Simonson, Jim Starlin (tie)

 

For issues published in 1974 (source: Aug 75 and Feb 76 Bullpen Bulletins):

Best Continuing Feature: Conan

Other Nominees for Best Feature: Man-Thing, Tomb of Dracula

Best Individual Story: "Gotterdammerung" ( Detective 443 )

Other Nominees for Best Story: "Night of the Stalker" ( Detective 439 )

"Red Nails pt 2" ( Savage Tales 3 )

Best Short Story: "Cathedral Perilous" ( Detective 441 )

Other nominees for best short story: "Jenifer" ( Creepy 63 ) "Burma Sky" ( Our Fighting Forces 146 )

Best Writer: Archie Goodwin

Best Penciller: John Buscema

Best Inker: Giordano

Best New Talent: P. Craig Russell

 

 

 

 

 

[Gladstone-migration]

Thanks for the list Zonker. You also might want to check through Warren magazines (Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella, etc) of the early 70s. They also had their own self promotion section. I have a few from the mid-late 70s where they announce there own awards (I'll check), best Warren writer, artist, story, etc. Archie Goodwin did stories for Warren's earlier mags. For the early 70s, if you found the month of the year where they announce the winners, then you'd only need to check a few magazines. BTW, I would be interested in the humor catagory, if you have them. The early 70s wasn't much of a heyday for humor stuff, Gilbert Shelton maybe.

Mark

[Zonker]

Will do, Mark, but I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. The ACBA was strictly above-ground: "comix" need not apply. The most subversive humor they recognized was Marvel's Crazy Magazine (e.g. "Caspar's Dead Baby")...

 

No Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, I'm afraid!

 

Cheers,

Z.

 

 

[Zonker]

Bumped because I now have a bit of additional info to add to the puzzle.

 

For issues published in 1970 (sources: July 71 and Dec 71 Bullpen Bulletins):

Best Continuing Feature: GL/GA

Other Nominees for Best Feature: Avengers, Amazing Spider-Man, Fantastic Four

Best Individual Story: "No Evil Shall Escape My Sight" ( GL 76)

Other Nominees for Best Story: "Lair of the Beast-Men" ( Conan 2 )

Three other best story nominees, unknown to me (Marvel noted there were 5 nominees total)

Best Writer: Denny O'Neil

Best Penciller: Neal Adams

Best Inker: Giordano

Best New Talent: Barry Smith (in 1970??)

 

Came across a rather odd web page in the course of a Google search. It is a fiction piece, but references a 1970 ACBA nomination for "On the Wings of a Bird" by T. Casey Brennan (the author of the web-fiction) and Jerry Grandenetti. I've now gotten copies of both Eerie 38 and Creepy 36, and it does check out.

 

So looks like we know 3 of the 5 1970 nominees: GL 76, Conan 2, and this short story (it's good, not great IMHO: An allegory, but too Jonathan Livingston Seagull for my taste. Then again, it was the 1970's!)

 

Cheers,

Z.

[hobbes]

Roy Thomas and Stan Lee were nominated for "Best Writer" in 1970.

Gerry Conway and Berni Wrightson were nominated for "Outstanding New Talent" in 1970.

 

This from "Conan the Marvelous: An On-Going History of Conan the Barbarian" - By Roy Thomas.

 

If I find anymore I will let you know.

 

Russ

[T. Casey Brennan-migration]

Thanks for providing the data on my nomination, Zonker. The JFK page about me that you cited has gone down, but here are a few others: http://tcasey.inri.net -- http://www.geocities.com/avalard/brennan/contents.html -- http://www.angelfire.com/me/carcano -- Email me direct at tcaseybrennan2002ATyahooDOTcom. Best -- T. Casey Brennan

[Norrin_Radd]

Check this out Zonker...

 

http://www.twomorrows.com/kirby/articles/11prisoner.html

 

Here is the title splash!

 

[T. Casey Brennan-migration]

This is the story in question, posted at a different site -- it is now at:

 

 

http://tcasey.inri.net/necronomicon_monks.html

 

Conjurella Messiah:

Necronomicon Monks

Abomination Scripture

by T. Casey Brennan

 

© 2004 by T. Casey Brennan

 

[Adult Content]

 

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

This is the story of Conjurella Con II. No, the blood has dried now; the Conjurella memories are no more. Gone the voices: "Lift him up!", gone the memory, gone the blood.

 

It is a decade beyond 1963 now: ten years are passing. No longer Dallas, but Toronto. David Ferrie is dead. We are free.

 

No, this is the story of Cosmicon II, the last weekend of January, 1973, a comic book convention held at Winters College, part of York University in Toronto, an extravaganza that would include future Tonight Show guest host, P. J. O'Rourke, Ted Nugent, the first computer game installed in North America (in the basement of Winters), and, at the last moment, the blood-stained legend, T. Casey Brennan

 

No, this is the story of women named A, of abbreviated names, of Vampirella, of the Absinthe Cafe, of secrets and legends and dried blood.

 

This is Cosmicon II. The sixties that spilled the blood of John Kenedy were over. A memory. A blurred vision of high school years, followed by the early sales of fiction stories by T. Casey Brennan...was the first a cover-featured story in the Major Magazines/Candar Men's Group men's magazine Charger, Feb. 1968? (they left out the "T" on my name on the cover), or was it "Family Curse" in Jim Warren's Eerie magazine, 1969?

 

Who knows? This is 1973. David Ferrie is dead; Dallas is an aborted memory, a dream that couldn't be.

 

But Cosmicon II will be the scener of another murder, the murder of the mind of the greatest comic book publisher that ever lived, Jim Warren. A quarter century later, a zine called Hungry Freaks would publish Jim's accouint of a condition which seemed to attack his central nervous sysytem, a condition which left him helpless as his company was led to ruin, and a court-ordered Chapter VI bankruptcy.

 

Dr. E is close behind; I can feel his cold presence. Jim Warren has taken to publishing a great many of my stories. Dr. E is displeased. I am so unsure of myself; the sudden conversion from being a shy country boy with few friends and a secret life, to an overnight celebrity for the award and award nominations I received for "On the Wings of a Bird", drawn by the late Jerry Grandeneeti, in Creepy #36, November 1970 issue, all at the New York Comic Art Convention at the Statler Hilton in July of 1971. I stepped off the stage at the awards presentations, with the Ray Bradbury Cup of Warren's own Frazetta Awards, and nominations for both the Comic Art Fan and Shazam Academy of Comic Book Arts awards.

 

Eerie #38 carried pictures of me receiving that trophy in 1972; I think there are copies of that issue floating around Cosmicon II. Flash-bulbs popped, fan journalists stormed me with tape recorders, mikes, and questions, and a new era was born in my life. Somehow, I imagined that, in and amongst the sad, melodramatic artistry I had perfected -- Warren's letter columns referred to "the classic T. Casey Brennan allegory", and compared me to Dali and Rod Serling -- I could drop little hints and clues of those secrets I carried so well.

 

One of my Warren stories began with a man who resembled me leaning out the window with a rifle, thinking "Something's going to happen soon...", but I didn't know then, not all the time, couldn't bear the Conjurella memory yet.

 

Some months earlier, I had written "shadow of Dracula" for Warren's Vampirella comic book; it was recently reprinted by Harris Comics, who bought Jim's properties at auction after a court-ordered bankruptcy, as Vampirella of Drakulon #3, in May 1996. It was about the Van Helsings from the Bram Stoker classic, Dracula, it's back in 1897, and they're attempting to create a blood serum to cure vampirism. Comic book writers often like to emphasize certain words in bold-face, and when I showed Daddy, I had emphasized the words "The Project" on the manuscript, in a reference to this anti-vampirism nonsense.

 

Daddy points at the words "The Project", and says: "You can't do that."

 

I say: "Why not?" Then I stare in bewilderment, but inside, that bewilderment is a lie.

 

Deep within, the Conjurella memory lurks; deep within, the truth that cannot be: I am only a boy, shy, frail, sensitive, artistic, but it was my hand that pulled the trigger. Kidnapped, drugged, tormented, injected: I am the true cold, dark legend, Lee was innocent. I killed the President. I shot John Kennedy.

 

Daddy growls the name of Dr. E.

 

Closer comes the Conjurella memory; Daddy is right, I know, but I don't know how, can't remember how Dr. E could loom forth from the 1950s to forbid me to write something in a comic book in the 1970s.

 

In one world, The Project is the Port Hope office of MK-ULTRA, a hellish reality of forced drug and hypnosis experiments on children, that will lead to the asassination of the President.

 

In another world, The Project is a component in a vampire comic, a skillful plot device involving a cure for Vampirella, from the socially inept but brilliant comic book writer that many readers now feel is Jim Warren's best ace: T. Casey Brennan.

 

The two worlds must not collide, but they do, only for a moment, and I say, inexplicably: "I'm not a little boy any more. He can't tell me what to do any more."

 

And now it is 1973 Toronto. Time has washed away the blood; Dr. E's injections have washed away the memory. Kennedy is a name in a history book, like Howard Leslie Brennan. I carry no guilt, no shame, no recollection of the blood here: JFK in this world was killed by a lone nut with a defective weapon and no motive.

 

I never knew him. I never wept. Not here, not now, not in the parallell world of Toronto, 1973.

 

In the days preceding Cosmicon II, I had met, first Asian A, then American A, and fallen in love with them both. They weren't spies, public figures, or comic book publishers, so to put them among the Necronomicon Monks, they must be half known and half concealed: Pretty girls named A____ who loved me, once.

 

Now they are gone, like their love for me. Now they are memories; now their words of love are as distant as Dr E's words of torment, or Jim Warren's words of praise for my comic book stories.

 

Once they were real. The taste of memories is bittersweet. In November of 1972, Asian A and I took the train to Toronto. Asian A put her head on my shoulder; there is a scent and a taste to Asian women easily as intoxicating and as addictive as opium. It Cannot be washed off; it cannot be concealed, and even now, the scent of an Asian woman will set my heart pounding, and my lungs hyper-ventillating. The story of the Necronomicon Monks is truth, but it is absurd truth, so I will take this one step further, for this also is true: if an Asian girl, particularly a pretty Asian girl (which would include about eight out of ten of them), enters my space, I will know where she is, what hallways she has walked down, what rooms she has entered, by scent alone.

 

But this was the story of the Necronomicon Monks. Daddy's stories for Street & Smith's 1940s pulp magazine Love Story were one of the few things that he ever did that I liked. It was also one of the few things he ever did that he didn't somehow figure out a way of using against me. I'd seen Letters to Daddy from Love Story editor, Daisy Bacon; I think she published only two of his stories, under the authorship, Bill Brennan. But he was there, in the pulps, like Cthulu, Conan, and L. Ron Hubbard, like Lovecraft's hypothetical book of sorcery, the Necronomicon. And in 1973, I was developing a strange, lethal obsession with black magic, that went far beyond the fictional devices we all used for the stories in the Warren magazines, Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella.

 

The Necronomicon has always been a subject for debate among the followers of Lovecraft and the pulps. Some say Lovecraft created the Necronomicon, like L. Ron Hubbard's former literary agent, Forry Ackerman, created Vampirella. Others say it was an actual book of ancient sorcery, that Lovecraft had discovered and decided to use in his stories in another 1940s pulp, Weird Tales. In this latter category is found this legend: The Necronomicon was discovered by the Holy Office of the Inquisition, and sealed behind stone in a monastery in Tibet...even they, who could slaughter thousands of their own kind, still feared its dark power.

 

No: I bear the Dulles Stigmata: protracted delusions of a religious or occult nature, which are the trademark symptom of those who were subjected to the CIA's illegal mind-control experiments of the 1950s, directly overseen by CIA Director, and later Warren Commission member, Allen Dulles.

 

But this is Toronto in 1973. This is Cosmicon II. Dallas is a decade in the past, and the basement room where I would remember, and write Conjurella, is more than two decades in the future. In that fateful world-to-be of the nineties, I would make contact with others who plausibly and recognizably (to me, who had lived it) claimed to have been adbucted and abused by MK-ULTRA. Yet, the stories would wane into occultism: terrifying tales of unmistakable CIA abductions are peppered with the absurd. Abductees, after presenting what would otherwise be valuable testimony, go on to relate accounts of neighbors with mind-reading rays, NASA officials with time machines, and visions of Rose Kennedy as an ally of the assassins. Nor was I less guilt in this also. Relating now, in the nineties, my memories of Dr. E, and the real-life Project, I am constantly reminded that in the seventies, I wrote essays for a variety of occult publications, claiming to be the reincarnation of noted occult figure, Aleister Crowley. This was as intended by the CIA. I also carry the Dulles Stigmata. If we are all reincarnations of Aleister Crowleys, time travelling through hell with NASA and Rose Kennedy, then our testimony is far less plausible, except to a very few.

 

But in Toronto in 1973, I am innocent: not still the assassin of Dallas that no one saw, not yet the assassin of Conjurella that no one believed.

 

Sometime after I fell in love with Asian A, and before Cosmicon II, I met, and fell in love, with American A. American A was pretty, but not really quite as pretty as Asian A, who was indescribably gorgeous. Yet, American A was not without power over me, and her power was words of love...promises and whispers, her fine, slender strands of blonde hair brushing across my face, so different from the thick, long, sleek black hair of Asian A.

 

In the days before Cosmicon II, American A spoke in promises and whispers, swore she would love me forever, and begged me not to go to Ontario, where she knew Asian A awaited me.

 

But within, there with the memory of Dallas, somehow concealed and omnipresent, like Poe's Tell-Tale Heart, was he memory of Linda. Like John Kennedy's blood, Linda's tears poured over me; like the mythical Necronomicon of Tibet, Linda's memory was sealed up in stone, sealed within.

 

Uncle Johnny was the bad uncle. Quite unlike Uncle Charley, also of Columbus, Ohio, who had one wife, and one set of kids, Uncle Johnny married and divorced and remarried frequently, throughout his unlamented life. Some time in the early 1950s, he married Aunt Bonnie, whom I immortalized with the fictional appelation "Conjurella", in my story of the same name. Her daughter was Linda, who was the same age as me; for a while, she came to live with us in Avoca, Michigan. She was a perfect, exquisite little girl, long blonde hair, a high I.Q., and an air of placcid quality, even at the age of five. When she left us with Aunt Bonnie, in 1953, shortly before I started school, she wore white muffs with sugar cubes in them; that will always be my archtypical memory of her, Linda and Aunt Bonnie leaving. It would not be, it could not be, that fleeting glimpse of Linda, that day in Dallas, that hallway on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building, that fleeting glimpse, so cruel, as the MK-ULTRA operatives hustled her past so quickly.

 

But this was Toronto in 1973: Linda was only a whisper here, from two decades past. Here my heart was filled with Asian A and American A, as I drank heavily, autographing copies of Creepy and Eerie, wandering through the maze of Winters College, attempting to cope with my chaotic love affairs, my alcoholism, and my new-found fame. Yet deep within, the memory of Linda lurked, deep within, I knew: she, like me, had been of the chosen ones. She, like me, had been born to kill, born to serve The Project, born to kill John Kennedy for MK-ULTRA, born to serve the hellish renegades of the Office of Strategic Services who had chosen us to end the power of the Kennedy dynasty forever.

 

Perhaps, sometimes when American A's blonde hair brushed against my face, there was that whisper of a memory of Linda. This was Toronto in 1973, this was an alternate world. I feared the intense cold of Toronto in the parallell world of Cosmicon II, 1973, and Winters College was a vast, unchartable labyrinth. Sometimes, in my wanders through it, I would come upon a door leading to the cold, white world outside. For a moment, I would stare transfixed at the wind blowing little whisps of snow through the bitter cold. Beyond those doors was the cold world from which I had come, and the cold world to which I would return. Beyond those doors was a cold past in which I had lost Linda and shot President Kennedy, a cold future in which I would remember, and transcribe, those things in the legend of Conjurella.

 

But within those doors was Cosmicon II, a world of Asian A and American A playing tug-o-war with my heart, a world of adulation for the poetic, panelled prose that had suddenly been evoked from me, a world of comic book stars and comic book fans, a world with no John Kennedy writhing in blood from my single, only shot, a world where The Project was only a brief, emotion-packed scene from Vampirella. Within the doors of Cosmicon II, this was truth; the other world, the alternate world, where The Project was a hell that MK-ULTRA had created for children, was far behind and far before.

 

Yet, paradoxicly, obscenely, unfairly, in that alternate world of Toronto 1973, Dr. E had stalked me, and now Jim Warren was his target. Here ate Cosmicon II, I had found my Shangri-La, a world of comic book and trivialities, a world of American A and Asian A battling inside my head for my heart, a world with no blood of JFK that I had spilled, no sinister designs of Dr. E and The Project.

 

But somehow, beyond the lies, in the labyrinth of Winters College, Dr. E lurked, stalking Jim Warren; somehow, beyond the comic books, beyond the scent of Asian A and the whispers of American A, the memory of The Project lurked.

 

"You're part of the New Frontier, Casey," Dr. E had told me earnestly, in the presence of two associates, after the Kennedy election victory of 1960.

 

To those who knew, but had been lied to,The Project was the CIA's ultimate weapon against Castro's Cuba: a secret invasion force which would combine the traditional warfare of the past with the super-science of the future.

 

Lee believed. Major General Edwin Walker did not. Walker had been a prominent activist for the right-wing John Birch Society, which, in that era, had still been enamored of America's Military, and America's espionage apparatus. MK-ULTRA had sought a protective cover of rightists and paramilitarists, standing ready with their own troops, to aid in the supposed "invasion of Cuba". Those who did believe had included American Nazi Party leader, George Lincoln Rockwell, the scholarly but sinister Dr. Fred G. Schwartz of the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade (which shared offices with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New Orleans), and martial arts expert Bruce Lee, hell-bent on liberating his people from the murderous brand of communism which had overtaken China.

 

But Walker had refused altogether, and Lee, under orders from David Ferrie, his commanding officer in the Civial Air Patrol, had fired on Walker and missed, deliberately, as a warning. Lee believed, but Walker did not. George Lincoln Rockwell, chess player, essayist, Nazi leader, friend: he believed also. ("Get Lincoln out of that Nazi suit, and talk to him man-to-man, and he's all right," someone had told me then.)

 

"Call George and tell him the invasion is off," David Ferrie said, light-heartedly, after the assassination. Someyears later, Rockwell would write, sympatheticly, "Casey thinks he's a Jew but he's not."

 

But Rockwell, like Edwin Walker, like Bruce Lee, like Lee himself, would perish. The sicties would claim the lives of George Lincoln Rockwell and Bruce Lee; Walker would die later, and horribly.

 

Rockwell would be shot outside a laundromat, by one of his own men, in a virtual coup-de-tat by the CIA, which would place the American Nazi Party squarely in the camp of the Kennedy assassins, directed no longer by their own eccentricities, but by the very government which they had purported to oppose. Major General Edwin Walker would be stalked and homosexually raped at a freeway rest stop,, by men who would later identify him as a willing participant; he died shortly thereafter, the pain and humiliation were too great.

 

And Bruce Lee: the cut-outs of memories, the fleeting glimpses of a past somehow lost, like that fleeting glimpse of Linda...

 

That fleeting memory; no before, no after, just the memory. We are in a hotel room, somewhere. It is before the JFK assassination, sometime.

 

Lee is there, like Bruce. They have both seen the children, Dr. E's children, sitting limply in chairs with needles in their necks, headsets on their ears, screens before their vacant faces. Dr. E says: it is necessary: child assassins formed with the super-science of the future, child assassins, a proud tradition of both sides of the now concluded great warr, child assassins necessaruy for the invasion of Cuba. It has already grated on Lee; later, he will seek a friend and confidant in Dallas police officer, J.D. Tippitt, whom he will tell.

 

But for Bruce, it is intolerable now.

 

"Get rid of the kids," Bruce says, "We don't need them."

 

Lee sits, staring downward, his hand on his forehead, wearing that sly, secret smile, only ever-so-slightly visible.

 

"I can't," Lee says softly, and matter-of-factly.

 

Bruce side-steps into position and gestures toward me.

 

"Get rid of the kid," Bruce says, "Get him out of here. Take him home. Lose him. Anything."

 

"I can't," Lee repeats, like deja vu.

 

Bruce begins a series of blocks, cries, and kicks.

 

I look at Lee questioningly with drugged vision: Dr. E or David Ferrie must have injected me again, recently.

 

Lee says, chuckling, "Well, Bruce goes a little crazy like that sometimes. There's nothing we can do. It will pass."

 

Under the hypnotic drug, I take these words literally, not as a joke, a game. I wait, horrified, for Bruce's supposed attack to pass. After, Lee says to Bruce, in earnest: "That was great. That was magnificent."

 

But this is Toronto in 1973: this is Cosmicon II. I never knew them here. The air-tight doors of Winters College seal out the cold, the wind, the drifting snow, seal out the tormented past of Dallas, seal out the bleak future of Conjurella. Within these doors, there are no memories of the aborted invasion, no memories of the single shot which my hand fired, no memories of Christian Anti-Communism or Fair Play for Cuba...only comic books, and fans of my Warren stories, only the spectral phantasms of American A and Asian A, not present, but there in spirit, battling for the heart of T. Casey Brennan, not the child assassin, but the poet, not the pawn of Dr. E and MK-ULTRA, but the pawn of pretty girls, touching, whispering, promising, their hair in my face, their scent in my nostrils.

 

Here, in this sealed off world of Winters College in 1973, T. Casey Brennan was not the secret assassin; he was Archie, torn between Betty and Veronica; he was not the drugged, helpless pawn of Dr. E, he was Dobie Gillis, lost in philosophy and love affairs...

 

Yet, Dr. E lurked, even here. Inexplicably, Jim Warren had been strip searched by customs officials, upon entering Canada, en route from New York. What did they know, what did they suspect? What motives did they attribute, what foul plans did they suspect?

 

Initially, it had seemed impossible to make it to Cosmicon II, where I had received an invitation to appear, complete with complimentary room at Winters College; Winters College, where the doors could block not only cold, but memories...

 

And American A, who still loved me then, had begged me not to go. But go I did, riding into Port Huron with a friend that morning. I call a Canadian taxi from Port Huron, ride across the Blue Water Bridge, and soon, I am at the Canadian National Railway station in Sarnia. Or maybe I went to Asian A's apartment before the train station; I don't know anymore, I'm not a witness, I can't remember.

 

The Sarnia-based taxi is called "A Stan-Lee Taxi". The driver gives me his card, and later, I show it at the convention, as a take-off on the name of the Marvel Comics publisher known as Stan Lee.

 

The driver lays a rap that could be entitled: "Great Tips I Have Been Given". He tells me of a rider employed by a tire manufacturer, who ships him a full set of tires, later, as a tip.

 

He wants comic books. But soon I will have no comic books. Soon, the bleak future of Conjurella will propel me into a network of hippie communes, homeless shelters and free meals. Soon, the insulating doors of Winters College willinsulate me no more. I sent him no comic books, though I may have promised.

 

I board the train for Toronto in Sarnia. I watch, sad and melancholy, as the Canadian countryside and the memories flicker past me.

 

I am alone now. Not the sleek black torrents of hair of Asian A on my shoulder now, not the promises and whispers of American A, only sadness, when there should have been hope.

 

Within are the memories, forgotten, but not gone, like a word on the tip of one's tongue, but somehow out of consciousness, somehow out of reach.

 

In the last days of David Ferrie's life, in mid-1966, and early 1967, David Ferrie met with us on several occassions. I was always drugged and hypnotized during those meetings, so the words would just barely filter through, in little bits and fragments. I was no credible witness, then or now. But I knew Dr. E and David Ferrie were creating a disease to attack Africa. It must have been 1966 when David Ferrie told me they had successfully infected someone.

 

"It's going to fly!" David Ferrie said of the AIDS virus, grinning proudly. Daddy smiled a sheepish smile, and nodded. He was afraid then. So am I. Even now.

 

But within the insulating doors of Winters College awaited the Absinthe Cafe. The memories are non-sequential now, blurred visions of comic books, Jim Warren, fellow celebrity guests, and probably the most outstanding performance ever given by noted rock musician and hippie deerslayer, Ted Nugent.

 

Nugent did not socialize with us, but future Tonight Show guest host P.J. O'Rourke drank that night at the same table with Jim Warren, me, and a second-rate comic book writer named Denny O'Neil. The subject of a controversial underground newspaper called Screw comes up, then managed by Jim Buckley and Al Goldstein.

 

Someone, I think Denny O'Neil, says: "Jim Buckley, he's the real intellectual behind that operation." At some point, Al Goldstein will be arrested in Cuba and charged by Fidel Castro with being a fellow CIA agent.

 

And then someone says, "The Mafia does a pretty good job of distributing it."

 

P.J. O'Rourke frowns, sips his drink, and says, "Yeah, until they take it over."

 

But my mind is on American A, on the promises and whispers. She wants me to leave Asian A, wants me to marry her, wants me to believe in witchcraft, as she does...

 

And within, the Dulles Stigmata lurks, like the scars of Dr. E's needles in my neck. In the Hebrew bible, the serpent who tempts Eve is NChSh, and the Messiah yet to come, is MShYCh. In Hebrew, every letter is a number also, hence, the Qabbaliastic science of Gematria, the study of the letters and the numbers. Hebrew is called, by its proponents, a mathematically correct language: words with the same numeration, are words with the same meaning, in spite of any apparent differences, which must be resolved by meditation.

 

The Dulles Stigmata lurks. NChSh is Nun (50), Cheth (8), Shin (300), 358. MShYCh is Mem (40), Shin (300), Yod (10), Cheth (8), 358. Brennan, transliterated into Hebrew, is Beth (2), Resh (200), He (5), Nun (50), Nun (50), Aleph (1), Nun (50), 358.

 

The Dulles Stigmata lurks. Amwerican A wants me to believe in magic, and I do. And in timeless time, beyond Dallas, beyond Toronto, beyond the 60s, or the 70s, or the 90s, the words form: I am the Last Witness. I speak great things and blasphemies. I am the first to shoot, and the last to testify. I wash clean the blood. They must have given me clues as to how they made it; somehow, somehow, I know, AIDS was begun in Dachau...the torture was only incidental, a means to an end. Somehow, it was necessary to break down the resistance of human flesh through torture, so that such a condition, flesh without natural defenses, flesh without immunity, could be duplicated in a laboratory. And Dr. E was an Osteopath; was Osteopathy only a cover, or was it a component in the creation of the virus that the World Health Organization would later spread, in vaccines, throughout Africa? Later, in the 1980s, the World Health Organization would write about me in their Geneva-based journal, World Health, in their October 1983 (page 30) and January-February 1986 (page 9) issues.

 

The Dulles Stigmata lurks, and soon, I will be attempting to duplicate the exact style of roaring twenties occultist, Aleister Crowley, in a variety of occult journals, both great and small.

 

This The Dulles Stigmata lurks, but for now, in the Absinthe Cafe, there is no memory of the blood of John Kennedy, only the memory of American A's kisses, and I want to call her, to tell her again that I love her. Somehow, I find my way through the labyrinth that is Winters College, to a wall with two (or is it three) secluded pay phones. I call American A in Michigan, and breathe the most oft-repeated phrase of my youth.

 

"I love you."

 

She is sad. She wanted to bolt from Michigan and follow me to Toronto.. "Don't be surprised if I show up there, after you," she says before I leave for Cosmicon II. She asks me to swear that I will love her always, and that I will always be true to her. And I do swear. It is only half a lie. I can love her always, but I cannot be true.

 

I return to the Absinthe, and this is mystery.

 

Jim Warren says he has called for a prostitute to be sent to his room.

 

"To a man like me, time is money," Warren says, "I don't have time for the kind of courtship that you do."

 

All of the guests, including myself, were provided with complimentary rooms at Winters College, and to anyone who remembers Cosmicon II from the guests of honor's perspective, any prostitute who could find the damned rooms on her own, would have to be considered a possible CIA agent from the gitgo.

 

Warren leaves, and returns shortly. He remarks to me are Suddenly inexplicable, out of rational context.

 

"Well," Jim Warren says, "I want to keep using your stories, but she says I can't. She says I have to get rid of you."

 

This is the way home:

 

It would be a matter of split-second timing. I would take the train from Toronto to Sarnia, where Asian A would meet me. I would stay overnight with her, then, in the morning, she would take me across the Blue Water Bridge to Port Huron, to the bus station, where I would take the bus down M-21 as far as Emmett, to the cemetary at Bricker Road. There, Americvan A would meet me, and drive me the rest of the way home.

 

In the morning, at Asian A's, I hear Crocodile Rock on the radio, a song they played so frequently on the radio whilke American A and I would be parked in front of my parents' house, making out. I am sad, and full of longing: will I lose American A? Will I let her love, her promises and whispers, slip away, for the sake of holding Asian A?

 

I go down on Asian A in the morning; I hardly have time to pull my tongue out of her [!@#%^&^] before she speeds me to the Port Huron bus station. We just make it, and I get on the bus to Emmett just before it leaves. There is no time to wash my face, rinse my mouth, no time for anything at all.

 

The bus lets me off at the cemetary at Bricker Road and M-21, where both my parents will someday be buried. American A arrives, a few minutes late. She leaps from the car, and embraces mwe, beaming. I resist her, only so slightly.

 

"Don't you want to kiss me?" she exclaims.

 

Then her tongue is raping my mouth, and her blonde hair is in my face, which I have just pulled from Asian A's [!@#%^&^].

 

There was so little time.

 

This is the way of conjecture:

 

To those who believe, anything proven by the Qabballah is true absolutely. There is simply no question.

 

Hypothetical Jim Warren enters the room at the end of the labyrinth, the prostitute on his arm. With mock impulsiveness, she embraces him, giggling, and her ringed finger finds his neck. It is only a pin-[!@#%^&^] at first that he feels there, a jagged fingernail, perhaps, a harmless scar of love. But suddenly, there is the weakness; he wants to pull away, wants to question, wants to wonder at this, but he cannot.

 

There is so little time.

 

The girl counts the seconds as hypothetical Jim Warren, all but overcome now, succumbs to the tiny hypo concealed in her ring. A decade later, he will be a virtual invalid, as the deadly MK-ULTA poison accomplishes the long-term job for which it was intended.

 

At last, hypothetical Jim Warren slumps to the floor. It does not matter; he will not remember.

 

Dr. E enters with two henchmen, nods to the prostitute matter-of-factly, and says:

 

"So this is the great Jim Warren."

 

But as hypothetical Jim Warren falls, I rise up, the Dulles Stigmata gnawing at my soul, as the ring poison has on his. I am the cold, dark one. I am the Last Witness. I wash clean the blood.

 

The End

[T. Casey Brennan-migration]

Some know me by my JFK work, some from the 1970s comic books I wrote. I was hit by a car; I need an attorney.

 

Page about my JFK allegations from University of Rhode Island JFK researcher, Professor Kenneth Rahn:

 

http://karws.gso.uri.edu/JFK/Conspiracy_theories/Brennan--Conjurella/Brennan.html

 

This is my newest book (I receive no royalties):

 

http://store.vampirella.com/vamcrimchron1.html

 

I was hit by a car on February 1, 2003 in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Though seriously injured, and diagnosed with bleeding liver and post concussion syndrome, I was put out of the hospital the following morning, because I am homeless.

 

Celebrity Homeless List w/my name...

 

http://www.angelfire.com/stars4/lists/homeless.html

 

(1) I just received this from my latest attorney, who is dropping my case...I MUST have a new attorney immediately. I have no home, no income, and my hospital bills are not even paid:

 

From: "Peter John Collins"

 

Dear Mr. Brennan, April 3rd, 2005

I have again reviwed your file. You were

hospitalized fro a few hours.

The injuries you suffered do not, to my mind, met

the No-Fault automobile

injuries that would allow you to bring suit against

the driver who hit you as you were walking.

 

Should you find another lawyer you MUST file suit

before the third anniversary

of the auto accident.

 

I wish this could have been more favorable for you.

 

I recall at our meeeting at the coffee house we

reviewed the facts of this

case together,

 

Regards,

Peter John

 

(2) This was my PREVIOUS attorney, Ray Kohlman, who worked on the Martin Luther King assassination; the contact was arranged by ex-CIA agent, Leutrell Osborne. Kohlman called me, emailed me, then dropped all contact:

 

: "Ray Kohlman" Add to Address Book

To: Leu@WashingtonDCmetro.net, tcaseybrennan2002@yahoo.com

Subject: Re: Help me to connect- Leutrell Osborne

Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 19:25:13 -0500

 

 

Mr. Brennan,

 

My e-mail address is above. I can be reached by telephone at (646)

785-0869.

My address is 575 Madison Ave., Suite 1006, NY,NY 10022

 

I would be pleased to discuss the situation with you. Ray

 

 

>From: Mr.Leutrell Osborne

>Reply-To: Leu@WashingtonDCmetro.net

>To: "T. Casey Brennan"

>,Leu@WashingtonDCmetro.net, "RAY

KOHLMAN"

>

>Subject: Re: Help me to connect- Leutrell Osborne

>Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 16:43:01 -0800 (PST)

>

>

>Dear Ray and TCB:

>Ray this is an electronic handshake and request that you follow

through

>this intro with Mr. T.C. Brennan and determine whether your legal

skills

>may assist him. You may send him your contact info so that he can

follow

>through per our telephone conversation today. Suggest you visit the

webs

>first so you have an idea of his background. I asked that he send info

to

>you so you can have an idea of his injury and case. Leutrell

 

(3) This is from the Ypsilanti, Michigan police woman who handled the investigation:

 

Subject: RE: 03-1874

Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 07:22:10 -0500

From: "Connie Koski" Add to Address Book

To: "T. Casey Brennan"

 

Mr. Brennan,

 

Thanks a bunch for the email. I have not yet had a chance to review

the websites you included, but it was fascinating to meet you and am glad

to hear that you are up and about. I have no comment on your legal

pursuits, but best wishes for a complete recovery. I look forward to

checking your work out at the sites you forwarded to me. Have a great day.

 

Sincerely,

 

Officer Connie Koski

Ypsilanti Police Department

 

 

(4) I receive no assistance from any relief agency because my family was tortured and killed. Social workers at the Ann Arbor homeless shelter issued that directive, however inexplicable it may be to anyone else. This is from the Port Huron, Michigam TIMES HERALD:

 

Father, son tortured, robbed

 

From the Times Herald, 12/4/75

 

By John F. Brown

 

An Avoca man and his son, who were beaten and robbed

of more that $1,400 then bound and

gagged and set on fire, were left to die in a

flame-filled bathroom of their old farmhouse about

midnight Wednesday.

William J. Brennan, 72, of 4238 Bricker Road, and his

son, Terrance Casey Brennan, 27,

bound together with a pair of police handcuffs,

electrical cord and tape, managed to free

themselves to telephone a Michigan Bell operator for

help.

Sheriff Norman D. Meharg said Brennan and his son were

admitted to Yale Hospital for

treatment of second- and third-degree burns of their

hands and arms and head and facial injuries.

Young Brennan had been stabbed in the head several

times by his attackers.

 

Both men were reported in fair condition today at the

hospital.

Meharg said there have been no arrests made and so far

there are no suspects. He has assigned

Detectives Robert V. Quain and Donald E. Tuthill to

the case.

Meharg said the torture bandit were both white, armed

with hand guns and had dark ski masks

over their faces when they forced their way into the

Brennan home about 9 p.m.

 

"One of the thieves knocked on the door and when Mr.

Brennan answered he told Brennan he

had ran out of gasoline, then pulled the ski hat over

his face, pointed a gun at Brennan and

pushed his way into the house," Meharg said.

 

"The Bandits used a pair of handcuffs to lock the men

together. They set paper on fire and held it

under the hands of the two men. Their hands were

baked," Meharg said.

 

Deputy Sheriffs James VanConant and Orrin Burgett

arrived at the scene less than six minutes

after the operator called the Sheriff's Department.

"You could smell burning flesh when you entered the

house," VanConant said.

Brennan and his son told the officers their attackers

pushed them into the bathroom of the

six-room farmhouse after they had taken the money.

 

They said sheets and bedding were put around them on

the floor and the men poured them on the

floor and the men poured some type of flammable liquid

over them.

One of the men tossed a lighted match into the sheets,

closed the bathroom door and ran from the

home.

 

Brennan said he and his son managed to get the rope

and cord off their feet and stamped out the

fire with their feet and hands, which were free of the

handcuffs. They forced open the door and

stumbled to the telephone.

 

"My dad thought it was a joke at first. He even tried

to brush the gun aside from the man at the

door, but I told him not to," Casey said.

Every room in the house, except the kitchen, was

ransacked as the robbers searched the house

for money.

 

Neighbors of the Brennan's heard nothing, deputies

said.

 

However, VanConant and Burgett said there were

footsteps leading from the Brennan home

through freshly fallen snow for about a block to an

area where a car had been parked.

 

The Brennan's were described by their neighbors as

quiet people who "bothered no one."

Neighbors said the Brennans had few visitors

Brennan's wife, Mrs. Alice Brennan, was killed in a

car accident two years ago in Ohio.

 

(5) This is from Lee Harvey Oswald's ex-girlfriend, Judyth Vary Baker, who was the subject of a History Channel documentary, advising me to leave the country:

 

From: "Judyth Vary Baker"

To: "T. Casey Brennan"

Subject: RE: Are you okay?

Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2004 23:10:36 +0200

 

 

Dear Casey,

 

I have produced so much proof of that now that nobody argues it

anymore.

They are now at the stage of saying so what if we had an affair, that

does not mean he told me anything, or if he told me anythig, that it

would be the truth. So they are having to back off. McAdams and his

groupo are looking silly now.

 

I believe everyuthing you're saying as I had an FBI employee compolain

and lost my teaching job. I was hit twice and had two brain

concussions.

I'm lucky to be alive.

 

GET OUT OF THE COUNTRY. Get a passport and get out and start over.

It's

over unless you do.

 

===J==

 

"Either the world can be an influence on you, or you can be an

influence

on the world."

Lee Harvey Oswald, explaining his choice

to go into military service for his country,

rather than to become a Mafia soldier.

 

(6) These are two emails from New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello's grandson, Steve Marcello, echoing word for word the threats made on me by social workers, regarding my statements alleging my own and my late parents unwilling involvement in the JFK assassination:

 

This is the first email; I did not solicit him; he solicited me:

 

From: omerta64@...

Date: Wed Feb 7, 2001 3:32 pm

Subject: Please Reply

To: tcaseybrennan@... omerta64@...

Send Email

 

Reply to omerta17@... I want to know what you have to say

about JFK's death. Carlos, Steve, & Tricia Marcello

 

This is the second email from Marcello:

 

From: Tricia or Steve Marcello

Date: Wed Feb 7, 2001 6:06 pm

Subject: Re: Please Reply

To: "T. Casey Brennan" omerta17@...

Send Email

 

You are insane, the only thing I'm setting you up with is a visit from the feds,

You need to be in a locked psychiactric ward. My grandfather is none of your

business. I

suggest you stop being a "wanna be" before you hurt yourself. Go take some

[#@$%!!!] Thorazine, you [#@$%!!!] psycho.

 

(7) Other JFK pages about ME;

 

http://www.darkelfdesigns.homestead.com/conjurella.html

 

http://www.popimage.com/industrial/conjurella092204.html

 

http://www.angelfire.com/me/carcano

 

http://www.mindcontrolforums.com/tc/tcasey.html

 

http://pw1.netcom.com/~mthorn/0brennan.htm

 

Now, will someone please help me find an attorney?

 

-- T. Casey Brennan

[Dr_Neff]

[joe_collector]

Zonker, here is a more comprehensive list of award winners, and while it does have blanks and n/a's, combining it with yours would probably yield all the winners:

 

http://mgrcentral.com/a/Top/Recreation/Humor/299605/Academy+of+Comic+Book+Arts.html

[Zonker]

Thanks for the link! I've googled "ACBA" regularly over the last couple of years but never came across that page.

 

I'm still curious to some day discover what were the other best-story nominations for the various years. Kind of interesting to see what the pros (not necessarily the readers) thought was significant back then. I'm sure politics played a huge role in the selections, since the Warren stuff is under-represented.