England’s finest Magician? Scoundrel? Occultist? Mischief-maker? Explorer of realms? Or simply, as he’s often remembered ‘the wickedest man in the world’? Hayes and Stewart tell a very human story of an extraordinary man, and leave the final decision to the reader. Master magician or deluded manipulator? Read on….
Do you believe in magic? Do you reckon Crowley was the real deal? or just a deluded fool? Whatever you think, there’s no denying that there was little that was simple about the man, or his life, and this fool may well have been a genius. Believe in magic or not, the life of Crowley the man is far too interesting to be cast to history a simple cartoon character, the evil magician. Crowley’s ambition seems to have been to transcend his life, to have his mortality wiped away by journeying to other realms and live on after other men have long gone… in so many ways he has.
One thing this graphic novel does leave you with, no matter what you believe, no matter what you think of Crowley the legend… he lived a life that can only be described as rich and full, epic even. Healthy, sensible, good… perhaps not, but certainly epic. He travelled, he shocked, mastered chess, an accomplished mountaineeer, travelled the globe, influenced so many, rubbing shoulders with the greats of his time. Epic indeed.
And it’s dutifully and entertainingly detailed by writer Martin Hayes and artist RH Stewart in this graphic novel that concerns itself primarily with Crowley the man, at the end of his days, 72 years old, terminally infirm, living in a guest house, the man in room 13, more concerned with consulting his tortoiseshell sticks than consulting a doctor.
Immediately Hayes and Stewart strip away some of the mystique, after all it’s hard to truly hate the dying, and we begin to look at Crowley the idea, the legend through the story of Crowley the man, as we venture right back to the beginning, Crowley detailing his life to a visiting writer, intent on chronicling the life of the famous occultist.
Looking back over his life, we see the boy born into the Plymouth Brethren, religious zealots more concerned with preparing for the imminent reappearance of Jesus than looking after a child. His nickname of Beast came not from newspapers or enemies, but from his own mother, faced with evidence of the boy finding pleasures of the flesh too inviting as adulthood approached.
With such an upbringing, it’s small wonder that the boy grew to become a man with unusual ideas, indoctrination failed, religious ideals overthrown, a conviction to embrace his name as Beast, after all … if Mother believed him truly to be the Anti-Christ incarnate, is it any wonder he played up to it?
That’s one way to look at it certainly, but alternatively, he was just bad. Very bad. Evil? We may never know. But at least Hayes and Stewart’s tale is always clever enough to leave both options open. As we read of mother’s obvious religious madness in casting her son as the devil for having sex a few times, the final lines on the page immediately reveal an alternative viewpoint….
“Oh, and then there was the incident with the cat.”
“The cat?”
“Well, I had been told that a cat has 9 lives…”
So as we travel through Crowley’s life there’s a sense of getting a measured view, granted it’s from the viewpoint of Crowley himself, but there’s opportunity aplenty for Hayes to have Crowley present all manner of ideas, to present the man as a flawed thing, capable of great acts, and just as capable of the worst human traits. Proud, strong, intense, passionate, driven, ambitious, selfish, spiteful, jealous, kind, generous…. all aspects of Crowley come through across the years. And above all, the idea that Crowley, no matter what, genuinely believed in his magic, as he ascended the ranks of the magical elite, even as he acknowledged that many of their number, indeed most of their number, could be classed as mere “charlatans and non-entities“.
The problem here is that Hayes’ words work a lot better than Stewart’s artwork, which feels out of time, something akin to early McKean, feeling just that little dated and a case of seen it done better many years back, this mix of scratchy figurative work, cut and paste collage and digital effects here and there. It’s by no means terrible, and at its best it succeeds in creating the required atmosphere of the magician’s life.
Where the early parts of the book are all concerned with a strict biographical narrative, this structure breaks down as the adult Crowley immerses himself in his own magical world, events come thick and fast, and there’s an unfortunate (although somewhat necessary) reliance on simply throwing a list of events at one of Stewart’s collage like pages at times. It means we’re jettisoned from the narrative at this point, and that’s a real shame, as the wotrk done early on to immerse us in Crowley’s life was really well done.
However, just as this approach is getting too tiresome, the finale, detailing the final hours of the great magician’s life, break free from this structure and veer into the realms of speculative fiction once more, with Hayes composing a possible end involving something as magical as the practices Crowley convinced himself were oh so real.
The ending really is something quite interesting and special, Hayes and Stewart finding a really involving, and yes, a magical way to end their tale, to end Crowley’s life. But the thing the graphic novel leaves us with, as it should, is that Crowley’s desire to transcend death, and to live in the imagination and the memory of the world, was accomplished. Death took the man, but his legacy lives on.
Wandering The Waste succeeds in putting this legacy into context, and although there’s a fair few faults here, there’s nothing that really spoils the story, nothing that stops the message from coming through, and does it damn enjoyably to boot.
Download:
https://yadi.sk/d/PoPhb5eYtZoF8
