”DNA Dragon”

is loosely inspired by the romance of the BWS illustrated “Red Nails”. Valeria and Conan gaze apprehensively down on the roiling spume of baleful dragon-breath, empty fury from chasms measured by Man. Enfolded as they are by twin serpents of the unconscious who shed their skins in the eternal cycle of regeneration, they are secure in their fortress. On the velum of the twisting skins is written in letters of blood, “DNA Dragon”, the future foretold.

The proselytisers of pseudo-science - vile ego-spawn like Dawkins – inhabit the clinical Newtonian sphere of the phallus that rapes biological purity. For them there is no Eros, no fruit of the harvest, no moon and no night. Biology for them is not a sensual, swaying vista of endless delight, merely a tool for obsessively procreating vile lies born of demon-seed.

Dawkins’ vileness is manifest through insane notions of meaningless memes, as if DNA were a law unto itself. This is the law of information that denies the fortune that is implicit in the universe. The fortune of curves, of spirals, of cantilevered poise in motion. The fortune that gives rise to strength of will and psychic purity.

Those who, with their dragon’s lust of impure desecration of nature’s noble lines and sensuous curves, their relentless battering ram of insane facts, will perish by the sword of the pure knight (see Alternates 3 Spenser’s Faerie Queene, the Unicorn in Noto’s Red Sonja)

Nature’s lusts and fires are born of darkness and their denial spawns an unclean spirit, a daemon of factoids, a white light of insane gibberish, a maze of totalitarian lies. Lies that deny the psychic strength and physical totality of the classic human form, born of proportions and of the stars. They who worship DNA, who copy a copy of a copy badly, will die at the altar of self-satisfaction. Blood calls to blood and these words are written in blood.

Dawkins especially suffers from a logical confusion that calls to mind the quote from Le Mepris of Fritz Lang. It’s logical and the illogical borrows from the logical – your Corneille said it. DNA has to be logical because it’s a blueprint for development. Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean development is logical. It’s illogical but it borrows from the logical (DNA).

The mentality of a Dawkins can’t comprehend that there are two totally different things; one is sensual and dynamically pulsating with the flow of life; one is information. A world of information is the death of spirit because it is the death of reality. We become copies wondering around like something from Bladerunner.

Spirit makes us strong, psychologically ferocious and willing to fight to the death. The weak will deny the great unknown and give us banal facts. Facts that tell us we are replicates or recordings that need treatments and “cures”. Lies, lies and more lies. The sensual and strong spirit of place is a harvest to be reckoned with. Rampant wilderness will again become strong. Rampant growth is the dream of the universe. Blood calls to blood, we are strong of spirit and record our own songs.

There are two totally different universes here. One is weak and a recording of a recording. The cures are a sham, a living death. The other “borrows from the logical” and dares to dream of Man as a creature of the universe. No copy, no mere “healthy” recording, but a soul of the dark night who rises with the dawn like the

MORNING HAS BROKEN

The cowboy wakes to a strong coffee from baked-bean cans. The world of primitive physicality and the tussle of wills, emblematic of the taciturn individual. The world of Lucky Luke (see Pilote Outtake 6). What is luck? The cut of a card. What is cheating? The cut of a knife. Luck opens a world of the strong Luck is the polar opposite of tyranny. It is blood and steel. Luck therefore exists where there is not a tyranny of facts. Facts are precise recordings and luck is something almost indeterminate. It exits because the universe is not a precise recording. It has a pulsating heart and a spirit which is blood and fire. The turn of a card.

That universe is strong and free and cannot be tyrannised by facts, facts which become worn records spoken by automatons. The unknown is actually a type of truth that is radically different to the world of facts; dramatic, tense, stressful, sweaty, forceful, grim, fearful.. and that is a truth we in our bodies know, and our minds are pure and refreshed. Let the show begin.

“Put it down.” Steel flashed as Dumarest lifted his knife and slammed the point through the pasteboards into the table beneath. To a man standing at his side he said, “Pull them from the top. I want no seconds or bottoms – just deal them as they come.”.. Sonef was con fident . “Just deal them as he says. How many do you want, Earl?”

Dumarest dropped the nine, the deuce and one of the aces. “I’ll take three.” He heard the incredulous suck of breath from a man behind him..saw the sudden hardening of Sonef’s face, the accentuated pallor on Lekard’s features.

He didn’t have to look at the cards, he knew what they had to be. An ace followed by two cards of the same suit, either of which would have completed Sonef’s running flush. If he had taken one card or two, he would have held three aces against a winning hand. (page 25, 26)

That’s a quote from Dumarest of Terra #13 I quite like because EC Tubb is a genius at the exaggerated cliché. It’s the cliché of hard, dirt-soiled sweaty bodies, posing and poised, fretful and triumphant. Also the cliché of animal cunning, of keen mental agility, of iron nerve in iron-bound rooms full of strangers.

In the animal-like situation the politician is at best duplicitous, at worst a world-devouring malevolence (here the galaxy-spanning inhuman Cyclan or human-hybrid). A world which is free of political domination therefore contains the unknown. The physicality and the psyche of strong men and women living by their wits against the strength of ox and forest pine.

It’s an idyll that may never be attainable but it’s worth shooting for.

CALVARY

Cowboys and Indians; dramatic, tense standoffs; shoot first, ask questions later. The creed of the West is exaggerated romantic realism; the mind poised atop the body, eyes glinting in steely scrutiny. It is endless vistas. It is not a political world and that difference was made quite clear recently by George W Bush, saying (extremism) is a “blasphemy against the American creed”, referring to “conspiracy theories and outright fabrication.”

There is, it shouldn’t be forgotten, almost a mystical idea of the American nation and, without mentioning Trump by name, it's clear he works off the social-media, and that there is a “factoid-tyranny”. Factoids are just words that are there to rile, incite, conspire and in some way use the domination of facts for their own ends (not that of the “mystical West” of yore).

What no one seems to have grasped yet is that all facts (or factoids) occupy the domain of logical thought. They are intrinsically political (science). But, as previously stated, we can use logical facts without inhabiting a logical universe. That universe is essentially the one of exaggerated, romantic realism. It's well exemplified in the comic books and, of course, before that in Weird Tales and REH.

Modern Man has become accustomed to thinking of the universe as logical, but it's not. Nature is strong and steely-eyed, dramatic and tense. Yes, it uses logic but no, it's completely run by desire and fear. The feeble, factoid world, presaged by the likes of Zuckerberg, underlined by the single-eyed logic of a Dawkins, is a fantastic fabrication of psychic and physical weakness, ego-lust and rampant robot-sex (that last is got from Zappa).

People have to start realizing that logic can't run the illogical. It's a complete contradiction. We are sensual beings. We are dynamically-balanced. Comics and of course Howard understand this very well. There has to be a collapse of the domination of logical thought for the details of a universe and its socio-tech milieux to have the exaggerated, romantic realism that we, as human beings, desire and need as a creed. The American West, to carry on from Bush, must wrest the future from the factoid conspiracy.

And before the Cyber, sitting like a gaunt red spider in his web, could learn new facts from which to build a prediction to gain him high rewards.. (page 59)

Basically, logic as a dominant, domineering governmental ethos is the enemy of steely-eyed free-will atop iron-hard physique pulp heroes by Howard, Tubb, Hogarth who represent us in an exaggerated, romantic vein. Pulp tropes of manliness, feminine allure, dark lust are a prevailing creed of the strength of body and mind over world-devouring forces of logical tyranny. In Howard they are the sorcerous blasphemers, in EC Tubb the Cyclan.

Hogarth’s Tarzan has much the same creed of bodily-mental agility and craftiness that can’t be overrun or overruled. It’s not that logic is a law unto itself; it’s the complete opposite. Craft and guile force the issue with civilized scum and beat them into the dirt. It’s a moral creed of pulps and of the West, that bush-craft and the cunning of mind matched to trail-hardened body, have the strength of will and purpose to crush the cold logic of inhuman forces.

We have to come to the realization we can beat the inhuman forces not with words, but by taking to the trail again. Without the Hogarthian poise of alertness – even the act of riding a horse in harness – there is a weakness, easy prey to the factoid tyranny.

Make no mistake, they are weak (in Dumarest the Cyclan are festering brains in vats) and they suffer from an ego-lust that will prove their undoing, as the vileness that lurks in their unconscious is shown to be what it is. Not simply cold logic but the naked desire for a world-devouring power that suppresses instinct, the glory of the raptor and the wild open spaces.

That is weakness. To suppress the instinct for wildness in favour of a banal pseudo-reality. The weakness of this tyranny will destroy it. It is an inbuilt death-wish (see Korvac Weird 8). The West will rise again to crush the powers that be with iron-thewed strength and purpose. The universe is strong, cyclical, creative, destructive. We used to celebrate these events in harvest festivals or in the spirit of Christmas. Here in the south coast of England I listen to French radio and in October they are already spouting gibberish about les joyeux de noel. The power and the glory (forever and ever, amen) of the actual festival ceases to exist the more the factoid conspiracy of pseudo-reality takes over.


X-Men #98 splash page, Cockrum art

This is easily illustrated with the power and glory of this X-Men Christmas issue, in the days when comics were real, instead of copies of copies. What is it? It’s the happy-go-lucky spirit of creativity that is not prethought-out; it’s rambling prose (like what I do) that goes on a trail of its own accord. It’s mucic; dynamic anatomy; Cockrum, Liefeld, BWS, Byrne.. all of whom have done X-Men and all have the psychic and physical power that is fading like the morning dew.

So, why have I suddenly branched into X-Men? Just to make a point. There are two totally different futures. One is precise, linear and logical and possibly exemplified by all industries converging to a single focal point, a universal dullsville. For example, Ford’s Hackett says

“It’s a force unlike any force the industry has had in modern times,” he says. “It basically means that the amount of data a vehicle can have overwhelms every sense.” (a virtual clone of Musk)

Yes, but the real question is, where are we travelling in our lives? At the end of the day we’re going to die anyway, so why are we travelling, why are we recording information, why do we need the data (flows)? We have a choice, a destiny and we want to be lucky. What is luck, what is fate? It is something that is not predestined, it is in the lap of the gods, the clear and constant clarity of our minds.

We have a psychic connection with the universe that is clear and everlasting. “They” may not realize it (yet) but the way of information is death to instinct and clarity of thought, design. “Information” covers everything which is precise, linear and logical - like a typical Marvel Studios film, actually! The glory days of Marvel are the “precise” opposite – flair and abandon (see CH6). Strength of psyche and sensual physical allure speak of the link with Dionysus, the god of instinct. What is the sinuous grace of a human figure? The truth is it’s not a scientific question because it’s composed of opposites. Like the litheness of the snake that weaves left and right (that symbolises poison and cure).

Our human litheness is not something that is precise, linear or logical. We are a product of instinct, so where does this instinct come from? It comes from litheness, which is a product of oppistes. Grace. We live and we die and nature is a rejuvinative force. That brings it back to Howard, I guess, since the spirit of gloom or sorrowful yearning pervade his stories. We must know sorrow to know gay abandon, the lust that is born of blood. Modern Man cannot know that and so the information-bound future is a mere sham of pleasant contrivances. Blood calls to blood and we rejuvenate with the wild or we are nothing.

I mentioned before “Blood From the Shoulder of Pallas”, the Alan Moore essay from Watchmen. Litheness and grace cease to exist where there is precise measurement (see Howard quote “We count not time” Weird 13). Those like Dawkins say we are genetic “copies”, but there are two ways to copy things; precisely or with flair and abandon, warmth and charm. For too long has Man been precise in his progression until we are nothing but copies of copies, closer to the machine that “they” will use to govern our very wills with proxy-sex and other demoniac devices of the ego-lust mind.

For too long has imprecision been invalidated as a “pseudo-science” when it is actually subtly interpreting nature. We are not machines; we are imprecise, instinctive emblematic forces of nature. Only thus can we be fortunate vessels of litheness and grace.

PRIDE OF MAN