"Heaven's War": The Inklings Vs. Crowley

I don't remember where I learned about Heaven's War by Micah Harris and Michael Gaydos, but it was sometime in the last 6 months. I ordered it last week as a post-semester diversion. It's short, so it won't be that much of a distraction, and finishing up a semester of teaching science fiction (it's finals week), I can't rationalize reading something like the Quicksilver, the first novel in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, which has been sitting on my shelf for a few years now. I could, probably, rationalize Gene Wolfe's The Fifth Head of Cerberus or Tales of a Scottish Grandfather Vol. 1: From Bannockburn to Flodden: Wallace, Bruce and the Heroes of Medieval Scotland by Walter Scott (justified, even, as Scott engaging in the production of social memory). But, really, I just can't pass up this comic, which is described as such:

1938: As the world moves toward global war, a secret angelic battle is waged in the heavenly realms to determine mankind's fate. The infamous Aleister Crowley plans to manipulate those angelic struggles and thus shape the world according to his will.

Only "The Inklings"--20th century fantasy authors J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams--oppose his scheme. Their altercation with Crowley will take them to the very threshold of Heaven--and one of the Inklings outside time itself!

Lewis and Tolkien have long been favorite authors of mine, and I've enjoyed their scholarship as much as their fiction. And not only did I TA and then teach my own Tolkien course before the movies made it fashionable to do so, I team taught a class on the Inklings with T.A. Shippey a few years ago. Like I said, I can't pass this up.

It came much earlier than I expected, so now I've got to put it away until I've submitted grades.

And need I mention that I've got Ozzy Osbourne's "Mr. Crowley" going through my head?

Aleister Crowley | Charles Williams | comics | C.S. Lewis | graphic novel | Inklings | J.R.R. Tolkien