An Interview With ‘The Mythmakers’ Creator John Hendrix On C.S. Lewis And J.R.R. Tolkien

If you’re a fantasy fan, few names are more revered than J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. What may not be universally known is that Tolkien and Lewis were friends — close friends for decades after meeting at Oxford. JohnHendrix‘s new graphic novel, The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien, explores that bond and how it influenced their writing. For more on the project, here’s what Hendrix had to say about the book:

Rachel Bellwoar: While the admiration you hold for both of these authors couldn’t be more apparent, was there one whose work you gravitated towards more or discovered first as a kid?

John Hendrix: I vividly remember carrying around my copy of The Hobbit even after I had finished the book like it was a Bible. While I really loved Narnia when I was younger, I became a Lewis guy much later in my life, whereas Tolkien and the illustrations in his books were my first portal to the land of fantasy. Today if you asked me which is more important to me, I would probably say C. S. Lewis, because of how much his theological works came to shape my view of faith. Plus, The Screwtape Letters was profoundly impactful and influenced how I thought about what a work of art can do.

Bellwoar: The Mythmakers isn’t necessarily your conventional graphic novel. Did you always want to experiment with the format, in terms of including large sections of text?

Hendrix: When I am asked about my books I often say that they are 100% words and 100% images. Yes, the blended format is a visualized way of how my brain functions. I like learning things with a highly visual format that rewards close-looking in a lot of variety (comics, maps, illustrations, charts). Yes, there is certainly not a perfect category for it but “graphic novel” is probably the closest.

Bellwoar: If Aslan was the character who helped cement The Chronicles of Narnia for Lewis, it was the Ringwraiths who achieved that function for Tolkien and his Lord of the Rings, yet while Aslan is Lewis’ avatar in The Mythmakers, Gandalf (or “the wizard”) is Tolkien’s. What made you choose those two characters to represent their authors?

Hendrix: I love the idea that this book could have been narrated by a lion and a wraith! Part of the idea with the avatars for Lewis and Tolkien being a lion and wizard were not that those characters represented some part of each man’s personality. Each character was a kind of archetype inside of their own stories. So I’m not saying that Gandalf is a self-portrait of the author. That character could have also been a “king” or an “elf” but eventually, I landed on wizard as the best solution.

Bellwoar: At times throughout The Mythmakers “the lion” also acts as an audience substitute, asking questions and making the wizard take time to explain. Given that Lewis and Tolkien were both academics, did that create challenges when trying to ensure this book would be accessible to readers?

Hendrix: The lion and the wizard helped to activate some of the pages and make them more accessible and interesting to readers. One of the challenges of making a graphic novel about two professors is that most of the time they were just sitting around talking to one another! Visually that doesn’t work very well in a graphic novel after more than a few pages. Lion and wizard give the readers a chance to experience some adventures (they do a dungeon crawl and fly a dragon) and also they can translate some of the more complex ideas

Bellwoar: One way this book helps define terms like “myth” and “fairy tale” is by creating side portals for readers to go down or not. Where did this idea for a “choose your own adventure” approach come from?

Hendrix: I loved the “choose your own adventure” books when I was a kid. I was obsessed with the Dungeon & Dragons brand specifically. It was fun to bring a little bit of that feeling I had when reading into this book. But I must credit my editor with suggesting that maybe those ‘illustrated footnote” sections did not need to be inside the main body of the story … and he was right! It is helpful if you can skip them if you’re not interested. But the portals themselves fed into the overall theme of doors and thresholds.

Bellwoar: Before they became friends, Tolkien and Lewis were very close to their brothers. How important was that sibling relationship to them?

Hendrix: I don’t talk much about Tolkien’s brother Hillary in the book after he meets C.S. Lewis, but they were very close. Clearly, CS Lewis was connected to his brother, he lived with him for the majority of his life. Tolkien was also a great father, very close to his family, including his sons and daughter.

Bellwoar: As many parallels as there are between Tolkien and Lewis’ lives, their approaches to writing couldn’t be more different. Did they ever collaborate on a story beyond providing feedback to each other?

Hendrix: Not that I’m aware of. I simply can’t imagine Tolkien ever collaborating with anyone on anything. He was so particular and a crazy perfectionist. Lewis was more keen on collaboration. There is an essay that Lewis mentions wanting to collaborate with Charles Williams, one of the other Inklings, on a story about animals in the Bible. But to my knowledge, Jack and Tollers never worked on anything together.

Bellwoar: While The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia understandably get a lot of attention in The Mythmakers, I especially enjoyed learning about their earlier books. Do you think their other works get unfairly overlooked sometimes?

Hendrix: Yes, there are so many works that I didn’t really cover that are worthy of a read. I never mentioned Till We Have Faces (which he [Lewis] wrote with Joy, his wife) and [that] was his favorite of his own works! I tried to call out a few books that readers may not have known. Tolkien’s short stories are quite good, “Leaf by Niggle” and “Farmer Giles of Ham” (illustrated by Pauline Baynes) are so good. Don’t miss Tolkien’s “On Fairy Stories” essay as well. If you haven’t read The Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis, many people feel like those books hold up better than Narnia!

Bellwoar: Thanks for agreeing to this interview, John!

The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien is available now from Abrams Fanfare.