Neurocomics Timothy Leary
#1, 1979, 1st Print, Last Gasp Eco-Funnies, ID1 Underground Comic NM RARE
Only 1 left in stock - order soon
1st (only) printing. Cover and inks by Tim Kummero.
Written by George DiCaprio (based on ideas by Timothy Leary). Art by Pete Von
Sholly. 7-in. x 10-in., 36 pages, black and white. MATURE READERS. Cover price
$1.25.
In the realm of underground comics, Neurocomics is
considered by many as nothing but a blip on the radar, a $15 comic book with
the name of psychedelic drug evangelist Timothy Leary emblazoned on the cover.
For some collectors, the book seems to offer little more than a long-winded,
confusing and obscure dissertation based on pseudo-science about the human
brain. I can't entirely refute that perception, but I can contend that the
doctrine and concepts presented in Neurocomics should not be dismissed so
easily.
Of course, Timothy Leary is universally regarded as one
of the leaders of the 1960s drug culture, who coined the phrase "tune in,
turn on and drop out" and influenced millions of people to take
psychoactive drugs for the first time. But by 1979, when Neurocomics was
published, he was no longer widely proselytizing the use of psychedelics for
everyone. Instead, Leary was spreading the word about his eight-circuit model
of consciousness, which proposes that the human brain and nervous system are
comprised of eight circuits capable of producing eight distinct levels of
consciousness, four of which are essential to the long-term survival of the
human race (perhaps in another form of life).
The model is far too complex to completely explained
here, but in essence Leary believed that there are eight circuits (or systems)
of consciousness that are evenly divided between the two halves of the human
brain. The lower-level circuits (the "Larval Circuits") are located
in the left hemisphere and are commonly utilized by all adults. They are attuned
to basic human functions like subsistence, communication, emotion, sexuality,
politics, and morality. The upper-level circuits (the "Stellar
Circuits") reside in the right hemisphere and are much more cerebral,
focusing on aesthetics, euphoria, self-analysis, philosophy, spirituality, and
oneness with the universe.
Leary believed that the Stellar Circuits remained
essentially dormant in the human brain until the 20th century, when they began
to be activated by our DNA, which "contains the blueprint design for billions
of years of evolution." Leary believed that Stellar Circuits offered an
expansion of consciousness that would lead to future scientific and social
progress, including the migration of human life away from Earth and towards
extraterrestrial existence. Leary proposed that some people might activate
their Stellar Circuits through spiritual endeavors and advanced technologies,
including meditation, yoga, psychoactive drugs and other methods.
Neurocomics provides a detailed yet concise summary of
Leary's model, which was first presented in its fully developed state in his
book Exo-Psychology (1977). To this day, many advocates of this model believe
it provides a stable framework for mapping the advancement of their life
experiences. Several esteemed authors expounded on and refined the
eight-circuit model, including Robert Anton Wilson in his landmark books Cosmic
Trigger (1977), Prometheus Rising (1983), and Quantum Psychology (1990).
Together, Leary and Wilson promoted the idea of the human race living in outer
space and formed the anagram SMI²LE, which is presented (for the first time?)
in Neurocomics. SMI²LE stands for space migration (SM), intelligence increase
(I²) and life extension (LE).
Neurocomics was written by George DiCaprio based on
Timothy Leary's extensive ruminations on the topic. Pete Von Sholly contributed
the artwork, which ain't bad considering the vast majority of the book is
comprised of the written word. Von Sholly is an accomplished illustrator who
went on to produce storyboards for over 100 feature films, including Nightmare
on Elm Street (III and IV), The Mask, The Green Mile, and The Shawshank
Redemption. DiCaprio has written and produced a multitude of underground comics
and entertained many counterculture celebrities while helping raise his son,
Leonardo, in Los Angeles. Though a 32-page book
cannot possibly convey the full complexity of an elaborate concept like the
eight-circuit model of consciousness, Neurocomics provides a concise primer on
the subject. In today's internet world, anyone who reads the book will
certainly be prepared to pursue endless research on the topic of the human
brain and the fascinating world of Timothy Leary.
HISTORICAL FOOTNOTES: Last Gasp printed approximately
10,000 copies of this comic book. It has not been reprinted.
In addition to developing the eight-circuit model of
consciousness, which provides a pathway for humans to live extraterrestrial,
Leary also wrote about colonizing outer space in Terra II: A Way Out (1974).
His plan was to launch 5,000 physically fit and highly intelligent individuals
on a space ship (Starseed 1) equipped with luxurious amenities. Needless to
say, this never happened. In the 1980s, Leary began to embrace NASA scientist
Gerard O'Neill's more realistic plans to construct and launch orbiting
mini-Earths using existing technology and raw materials from the Moon. Hey,
that sounds good to me! But no, that pipedream never made it into the federal
budget, as the U.S. government needed to spend trillions on wars, weapons and
anti-missile technology.
COMIC CREATORS:
Tim Kummero - 1, 2-34 (inks, lettering), 36
Timothy Leary - 2-34 (script inspiration)
Pete Von Sholly - 2-34 (art, script collaboration)
George DiCaprio - 2-34 (script collaboration)
Disclaimer: We
may have chosen to alter and block a portion of the cover of this particular
comic, because it contains simple drawings, sketches, cartoon funnies
and caricatures, showing the features of its subjects in a humorously
exaggerated and satirical way. For
Adults Only is printed on the cover because it’s not a children’s comic book.
We have listed this issue in the Viewer Discretion Advised category to comply
to eBay’s policies and rules concerning restricted items that may be considered
for Mature Audiences only. However, it is at eBay’s discretion to prohibit
items that they deem to be inappropriate and we agree with all of eBay’s
decisions to maintain a marketplace that all of eBay members can enjoy. We will
voluntarily remove any cartoon comic book that eBay may find unacceptable now
or any time in the future.
The following summary
of Timothy Leary is provided because he was one of the most intriguing
historical figures of the 20th century and of great interest to scholars of the
counterculture in the 1960s and '70s, which includes scholars of underground
comics.
In the first 39 years
of his life, Dr. Timothy Leary had become a very successful psychologist
(earning his Ph.D. at the University of California in 1950) and a faculty
member at Harvard University. In the summer of 1960, Leary traveled to Mexico
and (after several shots of tequila) ingested psilocybin mushrooms for the
first time. Years later, Leary stated that he "learned more about
psychology in the five hours after taking these mushrooms than... in the preceding
fifteen years of studying and doing research in psychology."
Upon returning to
Harvard in the fall of 1960, Leary and his associates began a research program
known as the Harvard Psilocybin Project. The goal was to analyze the effects of
psilocybin on human subjects using a synthesized version of the drug, which was
legal at the time. The experiment began by treating alcoholism and reforming
criminals at Concord Prison, but later included giving LSD to (according to
Leary) 300 professors, graduate students, writers and philosophers. Leary
reported that 75% of the test subjects reported the experience as one of the
most educational and revealing experiences of their lives.
By 1962, Leary and
Harvard associate Richard Alpert founded the International Foundation for
Internal Freedom in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Their foundation attracted many
people who wanted to participate in the drug experiments conducted therein, but
Leary could not accomodate everyone. In order to satisfy the curiosity of those
who were turned away, a black market for psychedelic drugs developed near the
Harvard campus. Not long after that, Harvard's administration realized what was
going on and both Leary and Alpert were fired.
In 1964, Leary
co-authored The Psychedelic Experience with Ralph Metzner, in which they wrote:
"A psychedelic experience is a journey to new realms of consciousness. The
scope and content of the experience is limitless, but its characteristic
features are the transcendence of verbal concepts, of space-time dimensions,
and of the ego or identity. Most recently [such experiences] have become
available to anyone through the ingestion of psychedelic drugs such as LSD,
psilocybin, mescaline, DMT, etc. Of course, the drug does not produce the
transcendent experience. It merely acts as a chemical key - it opens the mind,
frees the nervous system of its ordinary patterns and structures."
Years later, Leary
joked about the potential side effects from using LSD: "There are three
side effects of acid: enhanced long-term memory, decreased short-term memory,
and I forget the third."
In 1966 and '67,
Leary toured college campuses around the country to present a multi-media
performance called "the Death of the Mind," which artistically
replicated the LSD experience. He also published Start Your Own Religion
(1967), which encouraged people to establish their own cults with their own
paradigms.
One of Leary's most
notable appearances occurred in January, 1967 at the Human Be-In in San
Francisco, where he advised a throng of 20,000+ hippies in Golden Gate Park to
"turn on, tune in, drop out." The phrase, which Leary had coined the
year before, became his most famous quote and one of the most recognized
catchphrases for the entire hippie generation ("make love, not war"
and "power to the people" being other ones). The Human Be-In featured
bands like Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead, reknown beat poets, free
food (courtesy of the Diggers) and free acid (thanks to Owsley Stanley). It led
to similar events being held around the country and the world.
At the age of 47,
Leary had evolved into a notorious counterculture figure, which naturally made
him a target of the U.S. government. In December of 1968, Leary was arrested
for possessing two roaches of marijuana, which he claimed were planted by the
arresting officer. In January of 1970, he was sentenced to ten years in prison
(for two roaches). When Leary arrived in prison, he was given psychological
tests that were used to assign inmates to appropriate work details. Having
designed many of the tests himself (including the "Leary Interpersonal
Behavior Test"), Leary answered them in a way that made him appear to be a
very conventional person with a great interest in forestry and gardening. As a
result, Leary was assigned to work as a gardener in a low-security prison,
California Men's Colony-West at San Luis Obispo. On a September night in 1970,
Leary climbed a tree in the exercise yard, jumped onto the roof of the
cellblock, shimmied along a telephone wire until he was over the barb-wire
fence, and dropped to the highway below.
After escaping from
prison, Leary and his wife Rosemary were smuggled out of the country and into
Algeria by the radical activist organization The Weathermen (for a fee of
$25,000). The couple briefly hooked up with Eldridge Cleaver and the Black
Panther party's embassy in Algeria, but Cleaver was so dominant that it felt
like being back in prison. So the couple fled to Switzerland in 1971, but their
situation didn't improve much, as their initial host was exiled French arms
dealer Michel Hauchard, a ruthless bastard who stole much of Leary's $250,000
advance from Bantam for his book Confessions of a Hope Fiend (1973). After
escaping Hauchard's clutches, Rosemary got fed up with all the melodrama (and
the drugs, booze and Leary's philandering) and broke up with Leary in 1972.
Back in the states,
President Nixon kept trying to bring Leary back to America to face justice, but
Switzerland's government refused to extradite him. Leary's two years of
fugitive life in Europe had many elements of glamour and excitement. He
befriended English author Brian Barritt, who was no stranger to psychedelic
drugs and legal trouble himself. Barritt flew to Switzerland on Leary's request
to help Leary eradicate a bad case of writer's block. Together, they explored
dark alleyways of mysticism and the occult and even experimented a little too
much with heroin. They kicked the drug after about a month.
The German band Ash
Ra Tempel heard about Leary being in Switzerland and wanted to collaborate with
him on a musical project. Leary and Barritt had been working together on the
Leary's model for circuits of consciousness (there were only seven at the
time), and suggested to Ash Ra Tempel that they make an album about the
different states of mind they had been experiencing. In August of 1972, with
everyone tripping on acid, they recorded the kaleidoscopic, mercurial album
Seven Up, which conveys musical interpretations of the Larval Circuits on side
one and the Stellar Circuits on side two. (There are several trippy musical
passages on the album, which you can hear via the link provided above.)
In 1972 Leary also
met French-born socialite Joanna Harcourt-Smith, who he married at a hotel two
weeks after they were introduced. In January of 1973, Leary and Joanna traveled
to Kabul, Afghanistan, where Leary thought he would be safe because Afghanistan
did not have an extradition treaty with the United States. But Nixon, about to
enter his second term, was tired of waiting for a legal opportunity to bring
Leary back home and back to prison. Federal agents were waiting for Leary and
Joanna at Kabul Airport, where they seized the couple and detained them for
four days (in atrocious conditions) before flying them back to America.
Returning to the United States after more than two years in exile, Leary was
jailed and held on five million dollars bail, the highest in U.S. history to
that point.
Leary was placed in
solitary confinement for ten days at Folsom Prison in California, next to the
cell where serial killer Charles Manson was serving out his life sentence. The
original sentence of ten years for possessing two joints in 1968 had now
erupted into the threat of a 95-year sentence for drug possession, escaping
prison, and conspiracy to distribute LSD on a global scale. The trumped-up
conspiracy charges were eventually dropped, but Leary still faced 20-25 years
in prison.
It was around this
time that many underground comic artists collaborated on El Perfecto Comics,
which donated the proceeds of sales to the Timothy Leary Defense Fund. Those
funds were sorely needed, but Leary also crafted a way to reduce his legal
expenses and his time in prison. In 1974 he feigned cooperation with the FBI's
investigation of the Weathermen and radical attorneys to reduce his sentence.
He would later claim no one was ever prosecuted based on any information he
gave to the FBI, a claim that was supported by the Weathermen in an open letter
they sent to "The Friends of Timothy Leary": "The Weather
Underground, the radical left organization responsible for his escape, was not
impacted by his testimony."
While Leary's
testimony did provide federal agencies with intelligence on radical
organizations and drug scenes, very little of it was unknown to the government.
However, Leary's stance with the feds became a controversial issue within the
counterculture. Many of his oldest friends, including Ken Kesey, Paul Krassner,
Allen Ginsberg, Jerry Rubin, and Richard Alpert (now known as Ram Dass), were
openly contemptuous of Harcourt-Smith, believing that she had "led him by
his dick" (as Krassner put it) into serving as a traitor against the left
wing. These feelings were emphasized at a rally denouncing Leary organized by
Kesey at Stanford University.
Leary's testimony
earned him a reduced sentence, but he still endured 22 federal, state prisons
and rural jails over three and a half years. He was released from prison on
April 21, 1976 by Governor Jerry Brown. With his wounding of the left wing
still burning in the flesh of old associates, Leary contemplated a return to
mainstream academia, but his applications were ignored by university
administrators. For a while after his prison release, Leary wallowed in
alcoholism and fought bitterly with Joanna. He divorced Joanna after she became
pregnant with what may or may not have been his child (she claimed she'd fucked
another man on the day of conception; Leary refused to take a paternity test).
Leary gathered his meager possessions and moved to Laurel Canyon, where he
began the final phase of his career as a lecturer and (in his words)
"stand up philosopher."
In 1978, Leary
married filmmaker Barbara Blum and helped raise her young son. In the early
'80s, Leary renewed his relationship with former foe G. Gordon Liddy. Both men
were near financial ruin, but they hatched a brilliant plan to change all that.
In 1982 they toured the lecture circuit as ex-cons debating the soul of
America. The tour generated great publicity and a lot of money for both men.
Leary's individual personal appearances, a successful documentary that
chronicled his tour and the release of his autobiography, Flashbacks, enabled
Leary to reestablish his financial security.
Leary's ambition to
make it really big in Hollywood was quashed by reticent studios and sponsors,
but his constant touring helped him maintain a comfortable lifestyle throughout
the '80s, while his colorful past also made him a desirable guest at A-list
parties. He also attractd a more intellectual crowd which included Robert Anton
Wilson, David Byrne, science fiction wunderkind William Gibson, and Norman
Spinrad.
In the mid '80s Leary
had also begun to integrate computers, the Internet, and virtual reality into
his aegis of thought. In spite of establishing one of the earliest sites on the
World Wide Web and his oft-quoted insight that the Internet was "the LSD
of the 1990s," Leary essentially remained computer illiterate and required
assistance in checking his email. In 1989 Leary's eldest daughter, Susan,
committed suicide after years of mental instability. Relations between the two
had been tenuous for years, with the younger woman often casting her father as
a negligent alcoholic and drug fiend responsible for her mother's death. Leary
had not spoken to his son Jack on a regular basis since the early 1970s.
After divorcing
Barbara Leary in 1992, Leary began to associate with a much younger, artistic,
and tech-savy crowd that included his granddaughters, stepson, author Douglas
Rushkoff, publisher Bob Guccione, Jr., and goddaughter Winona Ryder. He was
frequently spotted at raves and alternative rock concerts, including a
memorable mosh pit experience at an early Smashing Pumpkins concert. Attempting
to maintain the pace of the average twentysomething in his early seventies,
Leary began to develop poor eating habits and steadily abused cocaine and
prescription medication. This culminated in a likely overdose in late 1993 that
was misdiagnosed at the time as double pneumonia.
Aging perceptibly
after his hospitalization, he nonetheless managed to fufill his unceasing
schedule of public apperances in 1994 while continuing to frequent the LA club
scene at a slightly decelerated pace. He drank heavily and seemed prone to
bouts of senility for the first time in his life, but as one friend pointed out
in Robert Greenfield's biography of Leary, "there were always three to
four hours per day of the lucid Tim."
In early 1995, Leary
discovered that he was terminally ill with inoperable prostate cancer. He
subsequently authored an outline for a book called Design for Dying, which
attempted to show people a new perspective of death and dying. "The most
important thing you do in your life is to die" he claimed, welcoming death
with the same energetic excitement he had welcomed most other challenges in his
life. Besides Leary's extensive advice, Design for Dying includes a guide to
death and dying resources, online tools, and further reading lists.
In Leary's final
months thousands of visitors, well wishers and old friends visited him in his
California home. Until the final weeks of his illness, he gave many interviews
discussing his new philosophy of embracing death. In one of them, Leary stated
this:
"I love topics
the establishment says are taboo. When I found out I was terminally ill I was
thrilled. You've got to approach your dying the way you live your life - with
curiosity, with hope, with fascination, with courage and with the help of your
friends.... Death is life's greatest event."
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