Rebecca Traister of The New York Observer (scroll down past Kate) reports on a really bad idea:
November will see the debut of a new comic book from G.I. Joe publishers Image Comics. "Heaven’s War" focuses on the Inklings, the scholarly cabal that was centered around … C.S. Lewis … J.R.R. Tolkien and … Charles Williams. …
According to an advertisement in the Previews catalog published by Diamond Comic Distributors Inc., the book will be set in 1938, with the world hovering on the brink of World War II when "a secret angelic battle is waged in the heavenly realms to determine mankind’s fate."
The Inklings are pitted against the infamous occultist author Aleister Crowley, who "plans to manipulate those angelic struggles and thus shape the world according to his will." In order to stop him, the Inklings "must decipher a landscape of sacred geometry to intercept Crowley at the threshold of heaven."
It's like the Justice League, only with more tweed.
It's appalling that Lewis — whose Screwtape Letters is profound and keenly observed — should be conscripted into what sounds like rewarmed Frank Peretti. Peretti's literal-minded "thrillers" about "secret angelic battles" seem to have provided the inspiration (if that's the right word) for this "Heaven's War" comic.
The folks at Image Comics would have been much better off with a graphic adaptation of, say, Charles Williams' Descent Into Hell.
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