Rex Morgan Clippings from 1966

From the archives of Michael Horowitz.

Michael sez:

“1966 was the year LSD was banned, Millbrook was raided, and Tim was sentenced to 30 years for the Laredo border bust. Here is evidence that even the comics were on his case.

These two strips are all I have of the story that went on at least a couple of weeks. If anyone can unearth the rest of the strips from approximately the first two weeks of Dec., 1966 please get in touch so we can post the entire story and find out whether Rex Morgan busts Arrodine, if Jack grows to enjoy his flashbacks, and whether he and Veronica drop out of college and go to San Francisco.”

Mr. Arrodine is the Leary-like villain in this very popular mid-1960s comic strip that was syndicated all across the country. “Rex Morgan, M.D.” is still in syndication after 60 years.

Interestingly, it was a psychiatrist who came up with the character of Dr. Rex Morgan, a fictional doctor who solves cases of foul play involving medical issues, including drug abuse.

Sporting a Mephistophelean goatee and cravat (a look more that of Alan Watts than Tim Leary), Arrodine is presented as a brilliant and cultured man who has gone downhill from too many LSD trips. He claims that without psychedelics we are living in the Dark Ages and speculates that even our greatest phllosophers could have benefited from using LSD. Does that sound like someone we knew?

In the first strip below, two college students have come to seek advice from Arrodine, a noted authority on LSD. Veronica’s boyfriend Jack is undergoing flashbacks from a bad acid trip. Arrodine doesn’t see this as a problem: “I so wish it would happen to me!” (Note: the words “All I do is shave and comb my hair!” are not part of the original strip.)

Click on the picture to see a larger version of this comic strip.

In this next strip, they are in Arrodine’s study, with books lining the wall and an adjoining hothouse, suggestive of a future growroom. The comic strip writer might have had the Millbrook Estate in mind when he chose the setting.

Arrodine is holding an orchid which he describes in Learyean language, and is also reminiscent of Aldous Huxley’s description of flowers experienced under the effects of mescaline in The Doors of Perception.

Arrodine’s statement about the “limited wisdom of the ages” is exactly the kind of verbal grenade Tim would casually toss to shake up his listeners and show them how to think for themselves.

Click on the picture to see a larger version of this comic strip.

From the archives of Michael Horowitz.

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