BARNEY

STORMING HEAVEN

by Gordon Rennie and Frazer Irving

"To fathom hell or soar angelic, take a pinch of psychedelic."
- Letter from Dr Humphrey Osmond to Aldous Huxley.

In the 1960s, Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, declared that superhero comic-books were the true literature of the future, since they would prepare mankind for its imminent transformation into consciousness-expanded super-beings. Far out, you might think - but just ask yourself one question:

What if what he said had come true?

Harvard, 1962: maverick psychology professor Adam Laar enthusiastically expounds the gospel of LSD. When Laar's deliberate self-induced acid overdose sends his psyche smashing through the Doors of Perception, he is reborn as Doctor Trips - self-proclaimed Prophet of the Fifth Freedom and the world's first psychedelic-enhanced superbeing! As the Love Generation of 60s America flock to his credo of "turn on, tune in, transform", Trips declares Haight-Ashbury to be the First Altered State of America.

But out in the darkness of the Californian desert, the sinister figure of Thomas Caliban holds court over his cult of followers. A Bad Trip in human form, Caliban was cast out of paradise - but now he will have his revenge. Now he will unleash all the madness and unhinged chaos of the psychedeliverse upon his weak and unprepared love-child enemies.

Now is the time for storming heaven ...

Storming Heaving debuts in 2000 AD Prog 2002