The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist
by Michael Chabon
Dark Horse Comics

Avid fans of Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" have been combing the back rooms of comic book shops for close to three years in search of the elusive masked liberator/conjurer "The Escapist."

Scornful comics aficionados have been sneering at their attempts for just as long.

In fact, "The Escapist," the flagship creation of Kavalier and Clay, did not exist. Ever. The WWII-era avenging hero of enslaved souls everywhere was not just a fiction. He was a fictional fiction.

Chabon and Dark Horse Comics have finally righted that confusing conceit. Since February, "The Escapist" is tangible fiction.

Proffered as the first of a quarterly anthology of "Escapist" strips lost to the whims of small press runs, disputed trademarks and dubious authorship, volume one of "The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist" spans the imaginary lifetime of the seal-skinned superhero and draws on the talent of more than a half-dozen well-known creators, including Steve Lieber ("Whiteout") and Jim Starlin ("The End of the Marvel Universe").

Eric Wight, an animator turned comics artist, illustrates the first strip, which tells of the origin of "The Escapist," a gimpy but otherwise strapping young man with a debt to pay. The text, by Chabon, is a nearly verbatim excerpt from "Kavalier & Clay." Terse and campy, "The Passing of the Key" retroactively affirms The Escapist's spot in the pantheon of the golden age of comics.

Scrupulous comic book devotees may be put off by the gimmick. It smacks of a McTie-in and it depends on the same laziness with which "West Wing" watchers were treated to a full-blown Frontline-style episode about a day in the life of C.J. Cregg, White House press secretary. Yes, it's a guilty pleasure for novices — easy access to a universe that is downright daunting in its overwhelmingly popular appeal.

In a recent appearance at the Virginia Festival for the Book, Chabon alluded to the perceived exclusivity of what has become a niche artform.

"I kind of became a confidante for writers who wanted to come out of the comics book closet," he said, adding that he was soliciting writers of all genres to contribute to the next edition of "The Escapist" anthology.

Most of the contributions in this first volume adhere closely to the storylines set out in "Kavalier & Clay": Miss Plum Blossom, Alois Berg "the ogre," and Omar all feature prominently, and Luna Moth gets a strip of her own in which she cheats death in a diabolical spread of aqua and poison green.

In "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been," comics guru Howard Chaykin avenges Sam Clay's humiliation before a congressional tribunal by siccing "The Escapist" on the hypocritical Senator McCraven, who turns out to have a sexual fetish involving nappies, spankings and pacifiers. After a brief moral crisis ("I won't use McCraven's tactics against him.") our hero, looking an awful lot like Robert Redford circa 1982, does just that.

Readers intent on continuing to conflate various levels of fiction might attribute this particular selection to one of the later works of Joe Kavalier, who, we are told in a clever primer by Malachi B. Cohen, "continued to publish under the Empire Comics name, with an entirely new line of 'Adult Interest' comics."

Despite its purported scope of genres and eras, the collection does not make a real effort to venture beyond conventional styles. "The Escapist" is a newborn, but his soul is firmly rooted in the pulpy soil of mid-century comic strip. It wholeheartedly rejects sophistication and woos the lover of a bygone Empire era, looking for a nostalgic fix.

The graphic artist literati deserve free reign to shout "dilettante" at the readers of "The Escapist." It is, after all, the dilettante the anthology is after ... the reader who loved Kavalier, Clay and their creations enough to venture into a vibrant and sometimes overwhelmingly foreign universe to find their nonexistent relics.

— Elizabeth Kiem (eckiem@yahoo.com)