Title	Author	Rating	Times Read
Heaven's War	Harris, Micah & Gaydos, Michael	7	1
Shortly after I finished my review for Heaven's War, Micah Harris contacted my to thank me for the review, which I had also posted over at Amazon.com. I asked if he would be interested in doing an interview with Gotthammer and he was gracious enough to do one via email. GOTTHAMMER: What was the inspiration for Heaven's War, and why choose the Inklings as the protagonists?  MICAH HARRIS: The roots of "Heaven's War" go back to a prose novel I wrote, which was a conspiracy thing, and towards the end of it, one character made reference to the Inklings as being one "front" for this secret society which was combating the demonic forces of the kingdom of the air. That was a seed for a follow-up prose novel, which I actually began, but I mentioned the idea to my friend Nathan Massengill. He encouraged me to develop it into comics form, because he thought he could sell that idea to Caliber (an independent publisher from the '80s and '90s) where he had some contacts. (Nathan has written for Caliber himself, but he has mostly done a lot of inking, most notably for Marvel's Deadpool and Harris's Vengeance of Vampirella).     So I went back and started turning the story into a comics script (only a fragment had been written in prose). Nathan would edit it, and he also got me in touch with Michael Gaydos to draw it (this is all back in the mid 90s, by the way). It took years for it to finally come to fruition, and in the interim, Caliber went out of business!     We jumpstarted the project with a presentation booklet that consisted primarily of the first chapter drawn and lettered. Michael, by this time, was working on "Alias" for Marvel. He took the booklet around to publishers at the San Diego Con and soon I had an e-mail from Jim Valentino of Image saying they liked Heaven's War and would like to publish it. Needless to say, Image's response was VERY appreciated by everyone on the creative team.     I chose Charles Williams as the protagonist instead of Lewis and Tolkien because Williams had a more "colorful" background that connected him (though very slightly) with the occult society in England around the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries. I personally enjoy Lewis and Tolkien as writers more than Williams, but he was the more interesting guy, whose backstory -- as well as his theories of the nature of time -- loaned themselves more to the kind of story I wanted to tell. GOTTHAMMER: Do you share the Christian worldview of Williams, Tolkien and Lewis? MICAH: Yes, I hold to many of the Christian beliefs of my story's real-life protagonists. Lewis in particular has been an influence on my way of thinking, probably more influential on me in my personal life than any other writer. (Although I hold Tolkien to be the superior fantasist of the group). "Heaven's War" is a very personal statement. GOTTHAMMER: Has there been any response to "Heaven's War" from the Christian community? MICHAH: As far as Christian response to "Heaven's War" goes, what I'm aware of so far has been very good. The book was a first for one Christian fiction review web site that had covered only prose before. The critic gave us an "A." Also, a couple guys at "Cornerstone" and "Jesus People" up in Chicago tell me they enjoyed it a lot. In fact, they've invited me this year to their annual international convention to do a couple seminars, one of which will be on "Heaven's War." GOTTHAMMER: Is this your first foray into comics, and what other projects are you working on now? MICAH: This was my first graphic novel, but I've been wanting to break into comics for something like 20 years now, starting back in the mid-80s. I've worked on several projects that unfortunately never were accepted by a publisher.      I'm very excited about my next comics project, a mini-series that I JUST the other day finished the rough draft of the final issue. I'm working with Loston Wallace, who is drawing and co-plotting the story with me. Loston has done merchandising art for DC comics featuring their animated style Superman and Batman. He's also done a fill-in for the Flash Gordon Sunday comic strip and some sequential comics for a couple independent publishers as well. He's a wonderful artist, very versatile (our project will be more along the artistic lines of the work of Steve Rude, Dave Stevens, and Mark Schultz than the animation style he employed for the animated merchandizing). For both of us, this is a dream collaboration and we're having a lot of fun.      Loston has done character designs and we'll soon be ready to begin developing our "pitch" package. The book is called "Strange Passages," and it's a 1930s style pulp adventure, a genre Loston and I both love. It's a lot more action oriented than "Heaven's War," though I think you'll find the same philosophical, metaphysical type underpinnings as those of my and Michael's graphic novel. GOTTHAMMER: Have you gotten any feedback from the readers? MICAH: Reader feedback, I'm happy to say, has been mostly positive on "Heaven's War," judging by the internet postings. It CAN be a challenging read and I can understand if some folks lose patience with it. A couple of reviewers have found it "dry" or just boring or too talky in places. But the conflict here is between scholarly intellectuals, not Thor and the Hulk. I think the scene where Lewis and Tolkien tackle Crowley is a pretty funny one because the physical heroics are obviously NOT really their thing. Those who've stuck out "Heaven's War" tend to find it well worth the effort. Of course, I always intended "Heaven's War" to require some pondering, as I tend to enjoy that kind of entertainment myself, things like "2001: A Space Odyssey," the last episode of "The Prisoner" and the films of David Lynch, or the short fiction of Jorge Luis Borges. And, of course, none of those examples are to everyone's tastes, either. GOTTHAMMER: I had said that the endnotes were a first in comics, but you had mentioned this was not the case. MICAH: Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's "From Hell" was my model there, as indeed that graphic novel influenced the approach to certain themes in my own about the nature of time. Such philosophical musings about Time were in the air at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century and Charles Williams' called his particular version "Under the Arch of Eternity." GOTTHAMMER: Were you happy with the finished product? MICAH: I have to say that I wanted a particular "Vertigo comics" feel and atmosphere, and Michael Gaydos delivered the goods. He was a perfect choice for this project, especially with the repeating panels and such which the script called for; that turned out to be his regular modus operandi, so, again, he was very well suited for the project, and I feel very blessed to have had him as a collaborator. GOTTHAMMER: How does your mom like the book? MICAH: How does my mom like the book? My mom has been my biggest supporter over the last 20 years it's taken me to actually become a professional writer of fiction. She has never really "got" the mechanics of comics, though, and she wants me to go over "Heaven's War" with her. READ PART II OF THE INTERVIEW     Buy Heaven's War at Amazon!

Book Reviews - Heaven's War:

An interview with Michah Harris

 

Legend
10	This is on either my fiction or non-fiction "top 10 books" list.
9	Will definitely read again and recommend to everyone! Probably kept me up all night.
8	An excellent book that either changed my thinking or was difficult to put down.
7	A page turner or thought provoker.
6	Worth reading.
5	Better than average within it's genre.
4	Typical of it's genre: no surprises.
3	Creative writing assignment that somehow got published.
2	Will rot your brain.
1	Kept reading because I was locked in a cage with it.
0	Piece of crap.
UF	unfinished