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CBG SATELLITES
The ADD Blog by Alan David Doane
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If nothing else, writer Micah Harris certainly deserves an "A" for
"ambition" for his writing in Heaven's War. It's a complex,
demanding tale, one that sent me scurrying to Google on multiple
occasions to find out who is who and what is actually going on. On its
most basic level, it's a good old-fashioned battle between good and
evil. On the one side stands Aleister Crowley, the self-proclaimed
"wickedest man alive," known to his own mother as "The Beast," and the
cause of more than one descent into insanity (and even the death of John
Bonham, according to some). Across the abyss, fighting for all that is
Good, are the "Inklings" - Oxford-based Christian fantasists and
apologists C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and most prominently in this
story, Charles Williams. In the middle stands the man who brings the two
sides together, Arthur Waite, an acquaintance of both Crowley and
Williams, who straddled the fence between Christianity and the occult.
Crowley and Williams are locked in a battle over the gates to heaven,
with two medieval paintings and a French Cathedral acting as the keys.
The Cathars (a medieval gnostic Roman Catholic sect), the Knights
Templar, the holy grail, Solomon's Temple, and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely
Hearts Club Band also come into play; add journeys through time and
multiple dimensions to the mix, and it's enough to make a reader glad
that fourteen pages of annotations and a complete bibliography are
conveniently within reach at the back of the book. While I've come back
to Heaven's War a number of times over a period of several
months, I still can't claim to fully grasp what exactly has gone
on here.
The story centers on Charles Williams, the most unorthodox and obscure
of the "Inklings," both in a literary sense as well as with respect to
his position in history, where he is most often mentioned almost as an
afterthought along with Lewis and Tolkien, but seldom examined on his
own merits. Elements of the plot and metaphysical viewpoint of
Heaven's War have been taken from Williams' own work, which
includes the novels War in Heaven and Descent into Hell.
Interestingly, many of Williams' contemporaries found his work confusing
and difficult to understand, though challenging and ultimately
rewarding, so Heaven's War follows bravely in the footsteps of
the man who inspired it. The aspect of Williams' metaphysical thought
that plays the most prominent role in Heaven's War is his "Web of
Exchange" Theory, in which, Williams believed, individuals are called
upon to bear the burdens of others in the past and present, physically,
spiritually, and emotionally. The distinction between time and eternity,
another of Williams' favorite themes, is also broken down in the story,
and the character of Williams journeys from just prior to the outbreak
of World War Two (which is ostensibly the time in which this book is
set), to the First World War, to December 1st, 1947, where he witnesses
Crowley's death.
Heaven's War is meticulously researched, and the background
details that Harris includes must be the result of a great deal of
painstaking work by Harris. As a graphic novel, it tends toward
wordiness, and the climax is not as well-worked out as it could have
been. There is an element of action in the story, but this is, after
all, the story of a group of middle-aged English writers, not a
strapping crew of musclebound adventurers, so it does lack in pace and
therefore ends up being somewhat static. Michael Gaydos's cover painting
is superb, and his brushwork thoughout the book has its moments, but his
depiction of the lead characters is lacking in depth. Crowley is painted
with a permanently evil smirk, C.S. Lewis bears a constant look of
bemused detachment, and Williams is drawn with glasses that obscure his
eyes in many of the panels in which he appears. However, the depiction
of movement from panel to panel, the use of repetition and empty black
panels, and Gaydos's rendering of the more supernatural elements of the
story do work to develop an eery, other-worldly atmosphere which
contribute to the somewhat disconcerting tone and feel of the book as a
whole.
This is a book that has some real shortcomings, but at the same time, it
is an ambitious, far-reaching graphic novel that goes beyond the level
of many works that deal with similar spiritual, religious, and
metaphysical themes. As such, it is a work that provides genuine
satisfaction and enjoyment, despite its weaknesses. Harris has perhaps
extended his reach slightly farther than he could realistically grasp;
but in doing so, he has succeeded in making it to a level that very few
new writers have been able to achieve.
-- Jim Witt
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Heaven's War