THE MYTHMAKERS

Interweaving prose and graphic art, Hendrix explores the lives, faith, intellectual world, and long, complex friendship of two titans of modern fantasy.

As in The Faithful Spy (2018), Hendrix’s hybrid-format biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, this volume charges hard into deep and difficult territory—tracking, for instance, C.S. “Jack” Lewis’ progression from naïve believer to staunch atheist to profoundly religious thinker and probing reasons for the friction that grew between him and his close friend J.R.R. “Tollers” Tolkien in the 1950s. Tracing the shaping of their novels while contrasting the styles and personalities of the pair as they egged one another on, Hendrix also fills in the intellectual background with discursions into the differences between fairy tales and myths, largely delivered in extended graphic segments by an affectionately caricatured wizard and lion as they squire readers through a metaphorical series of significantly labeled doors. Though the author sets off direct quotes with asterisks and carefully sources them, he invents some dialogue; for a happily-ever-after ending, he’s also invented a loving reconciliation scene. Hendrix’s claim (although rooted in Eurocentric bias) that “these two tweedy middle-aged academics just so happened to re-enchant the world” carries plenty of heft. The monochrome art is charming and cues a younger audience than the text, which is complex conceptually as well as in its vocabulary and cultural and historical references.

Challenging but replete with stimulating insights.