Satanic Reds Interview with T. Casey Brennan

SR: T, you have quite some fame in the fanzine and comic book industry. Can you list the magazines you were featured in and name some of the more famous stories?

T. Casey Brennan: My BEST work was for the Warren magazine titles CREEPY and EERIE, but I don't think that matters any more, since only my VAMPIRELLA work has been reprinted. Check the list of the contents of the old VAMPIRELLA magazines at:

http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Towers/4356/texts/vampmega.htm

...and you'll see that my work was in VAMPIRELLA #5, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 (4 page intro only; credited in original magaine but not in the reprint by Harris, or on this list), 100, and 109.

SR: What started you on your road to fame in writing?

T. Casey Brennan: My late mother was paperback author Alice Brennan, and she published numerous gothic novels, one of which, CASTLE MIRAGE, was recently reprinted in the U.K., in Leicester, by a company called Ulverscroft or F.A. Thorpe. My late father, who wrote under the name Bill Brennan, was not as widely published, but did appear in the classic 1940s Street & Smith pulp, LOVE STORY magazine. I had a blueprint for making contacts in the magazine industry, and the process for submitting a professional looking manuscript through them.

SR: Can you tell us something about yourself, where are you from? What got you started writing such creative stories?

T. Casey Brennan: I was born August 11, 1948, in St. Clair County, in Port Huron, Michigan. In addition to being authors, my late parents were both local school board officials; my dad, using his full name of William James Brennan, served on the St. Clair County Board of Education, and my late mother served as CEO of the Swamp School District, Kenockee Township School District No. 4...this, in the 50s and 60s. When I got in as a Warren comics scripter, I began with the standard E.C. comics motif, which the Warren magazines were intended to imitate, but I soon branched off into work that was more expirimental.

SR: What brought you to the Satanic Reds organization?

T. Casey Brennan: In the 1980s, using a wide variety of political contacts, I had carried out a publicity stunt campaign to ban smoking in comic books. I went in CONGRESSIONAL RECORD - SENATE, Vol. 128, No. 131, Sept. 28, 1982, page S12435 and WORLD HEALTH magazine, from W.H.O. in Geneva, October 1983 (page 30) and January-February 1986 (page 9) issues. That prompted the International Organization of Journalists, a Soviet led group of international journalists headquartered in Prague, Communist Czechoslovakia, to write me up in their magazine THE DEMOCRATIC JOURNALIST, July-August 1987 issue, pages 36-37. In the same time period, The Motta O.T.O., of the Crowleyan cult, published one of my stories in THE EQUINOX Vol. 5, No. III, circa 1979. So I had the basis for both Communist and Satanist support. But I actually joined because of Tani, since I like all cute girls.

SR: There is a rumor that you had some bad experience involving former president J. F. Kennedy. Can you explain this?

T. Casey Brennan: You have to read the CONJURELLA series. The allegation is that, at the age of 15, I was forced by CIA MK-ULTRA to participate unwillingly in the JFK assassination. People in power in the Crowleyan movement like to treat my allegations as if this were the first time a sinister CIA connection to the names in Crowley publications has ever come up.

SR: We see from some excerpts that you wrote up the JFKennedy experience in the form of fiction, where can this fiction be read now?

T. Casey Brennan: You have to go on the Net; there are numerous fan pages about me - including one by the Satanic Reds, and they all post one of more of the JFK stories. Although the Winter 1998-1999 issue of the Austin, Texas based rock and roll magazine SALT FOR SLUGS, the so-called "Jones Issue" carried one of the stories in print. The magazine was carried by Tower Records world-wide, and the title of my story: "Conjurella Fever: Transcending Time & MK-ULTRA" was a take-off on the title of my book, VAMPIRELLA: TRANSCENDING TIME & SPACE, a mid-90s trade paperback fro Harris comics, by T. Casey Brennan and Steve Englehart, actually a compilation of old Vampirella stories by Steve and myself.

SR: Do you plan on writing more fiction like Vampirella, especially with Vampire stories being so popular now?

T. Casey Brennan: I've written a new comic called VAMPIRE GIRL, coming soon from Blue Moon Comics. It's pencilled by a local Ann Arbor artist, Scott Newell, and we've been anxiously awaiting the completion of the inks, and its proposed appearance in BLUE MOON SUPERHEROES #4.

SR: What, if any, was your past experience with Satanic groups? Did you have any?

T. Casey Brennan: It depends on how you define Satanic. I stayed with a cool witch in a Fort Lauderdale surburb on and off in the '70s, met with some Kenneth Grant Crowleyans in Buffalo during the same period, and in the 80s, stayed with one of the most flamboyant, gun-toting, trigger-happy gurus ever thrown out by the Hare Krishnas, Srila Hansadutta. I was also published by the United Lodge of Theosopists in Bombay, in 1973 issues of their magazine, THE ARYAN PATH (the INDIAN meaning of that word), then edited by Sofia Wadia, widow of the late Sri B.P. Wadia. Are all of these people Satanists, in a sense, and Communists, in a sense? Yes, but only in a sense, but, then again, so am I. Thanks, Tani Jantsang, and the Satanic Reds, for a lovely interview.

(T. Casey Brennan can be reached by email at: tcaseybrennan2002@yahoo.com)

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