The Escapists

When I read Micheal Chabon's "The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" some years ago I really enjoyed it. The book followed two young men in the early days of comics who invent a comic book character, The Escapist,and their various creative struggles around him. Thebook spawned a series of comic book spinoffs, where various comic book writers and artists created their own Escapist comics, often pastiches of various eras in comic books. Accompanying those were Chabon's notes of how these stories fit into the greater history of comics. Now comes "The Escapists," a comic set in the world of "Kavalier and Clay" and those historical notes which deals with a modern-day revival.

The introduction to "The Escapists" is in fact a short story by Chabon about an encounter between Sam Clay (one of the creators of the Escapists) and a young Brian K. vaughn (the writer for "The Escapists"), and how this inspired Brian to go into comics. It's actually well done, and doesn't feel hokey at all, instead tying once again "the Escapist" to the real world.

The main character is Maxwell Roth, a young Clevelander who inherits a huge collection of Escapist memorobilia when his father dies. This causes him to grow up with a lifelong obsession with the Escapist, and when his mother dies years later he uses his inheritance money to buy the rights to the character in order to realize his dream of reviving the character.

Max decides to be the writer for the comic, and recruits his friend Denny as letterer and a he meets named Case for the artist. The three have great chemistry together, and all three are delightfully nerdy and very identifiable. There's a romance between Max and Case which is fine, and does lead to some cute moments, but it's somewhat artificially extended by Max not wanting to pursue it or something like that. Also, we're told a few times that Case is some sort of extreme sports nut, but nothing is really done with it.

The rest of the story consists of our three heroes coming up with their take on the Escapist (which is illustrated using a very different art style), their efforts to publicize it, and the various attempts by the media corporation that used to own the rights to the Escapist trying to get the rights back. It's a solidly told story, and I liked how the story of the comic our heroes are creating resonates with the overall story in interesting and somewhat unexpected ways. My only gripe is with an irritating plot twist near the end just before the main conflict is resolved that makes that resolution much more complicated and bittersweet. Although it's realistic and fits with what we know of the characters involved, it still seems like adding in unecessary angst and drama just for the sake of it.

The art is good. I liked the soft and rounded style of the main comic especially, although the sharp and spiky style of the comic within a comic also worked well. there's only one panel I hated, a picture of Case drawn in the spiky style that makes her look like deranged bag lady.

All in all, "The Escapists" is a good comic, especially for lovers of comics. It's not quite as good as "The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay," but it's still worth a read.