SOLVED. Adult epic fantasy/horror about children on another planet who do battle with/are murdered by dark forces, possibly religious elements, angels and demons

[Eric]

I have not read the book I'm looking for. Months ago I came across a reference to an epic fantasy saga in the comments section of a blog about word counts (of course I can't find this article again). I Googled it and found information about the book and author. From what I remember the book is an ongoing (possibly never-finished? possibly published posthumously?) saga about children on another planet--I THINK a planet in our solar system--doing battle with and/or being murdered by dark forces that might have been demons? Also they were possibly aided by angels or are angels themselves? I remember there were strange religious overtones.

The author himself is the subject of some scrutiny. From what I read he also made visual art (I think paintings) depicting scenes from his work, which involved a troubling amount of graphic depictions of children being killed horrifically. He was apparently mentally ill, not famous or renowned as an artist when he was alive, was a shut-in, lived in squalor, survived on odd jobs, and was obsessed with a local unsolved murder of a young girl. Some even speculate he may have murdered the girl himself. His work was not discovered until after he died, IIRC, and his apartment was being cleaned out.

[Eric]

Finally Googled the right combination of words. I was thinking of Henry Darger and his In the Realms of the Unreal saga.

[Jesse]

I remember hearing about this, not sure on some video or podcast or what, but I was very interested. Was it ever published in any form?

[Eric]

From what I have come across, it has not been published in its entirety--the hand-written manuscripts run thousands of pages and are fragile enough that they can't be digitized, apparently. Sample chapters have been published in books that collect the artwork.

[Jesse]

Interesting. Thank you for the info.