Michael Johnson's 'Illuminatus!' skeleton key

The skeleton key zine, left, with the trade paperback of the first three issues of Tales of Illuminatus! Bobby Campbell illustration. 

Folks who purchased certain packages of items in the Kickstarter campaign got a nice bonus: Illuminatus Skeleton Key #1, by R. Michael Johnson. it's a pretty hefty publication, 44 pages along, and it explains both the ongoing adaptation by Bobby Campbell and also many of the allusions the original trilogy. Michael says he has read Iluminatus! about 20 times and he is the ideal person to tackle such a project.

I haven't received my paper copy in the mail but I have downloaded my PDF version and I have been reading it. I assume at some point it will be available as a standalone, but I haven't spotted it yet at, for example, the Weirdoverse gift shop on Etsy. 

Here is a bit in Michael's essay about how immersive the original trilogy was:

Consider: when you sit with a text - comix, films, novels, whatever - when you’re engaged with the text...you’re gone, man. For the time being you’re “in” another world - the “world” of the novel, comic, or film...and what is “reality,” then, anyway? Sure, your engagement with other worlds doesn’t negate your primary reality - you know, the one where you gotta get out of bed and brush your teeth? That one? It’s as real as it gets, no? But notice how “real” certain texts seem to you when you engage with them in all those times which are spent in non-primary “reality.” Are these Other Worlds a threat to my primary “reality”? This is something we are all faced with, all the time, though we might not annotate it this way. Or so I submit to you as something true: when we leave our primary reality for the realities contained in books and other media: our minds meld with these alternate realities. 

Certainly for many people (such as me), reading Illuminatus! was a life-changing experience. I know a guy back in Tulsa who has a very fancy edition of Lord of the Rings, and he told me he re-reads it every year. At this point, my friend must really have Frodo,  Gandalf, et al. in his head! 

Lots  more Michael discussion of Wilson and Shea at the Overweening Generalist Substack.