Volume 1 has an introduction by Chabon, and opens with the Escapist’s origin, illustrated by Eric Wight, best known now for his comics work for the television show The O.C. It has an eye-catching cover and clever back-cover parody by award-winning cartoonist Chris Ware. I loved the Luna Moth story written and illustrated by Jim Starlin. My favorite piece, though, was the closing story “The Lady or the Tiger, illustrated by Gene Colan and written and with a preface by Glen David Gold (author of the Kavalier and Clay-esque Carter Beats the Devil). ( )

good for AoK&C fans, but not comics in general

Created as a visual addendum to the fantastic Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Escapist exists on the premise that the book was in fact a biographical documentation of its very history. This concept is re-enforced by textual insertions, period relative advertisements, and sections with the appearance of archival reprinting. I was thoroughly excited to read the Escapist but felt let down in the end because it could never truly live up to Chabon's detailed and artful descriptions in K & C. While I enjoyed the concept of actualizing an imaginary comic, I don't think I could really appreciate without perhaps having lived through those post-war early comic years, or perhaps if I were a fanatic collector. There is still quite a bit of talented art included in these anthologies, but I for one will be saving my money for collections with more depth. ( )

If you're thinking about buying this book, please disregard everything written by "davidabrams" in his review. Despite his buzzwords ("fic-lit-hipsters" ... whatever THAT means), his allusions to other comic book works (although he seems to think Spider-Man works in Metropolis), and his complimentary-yet-condescending attitude towards comic books and their readers (although he's eager to drool like a fanboy over Luna Moth when it suits him) in order to make himself seem like a literary authority, it is still glaringly obvious that he does not seem to have read the book, or at the very least perhaps skimmed through it.

The first problem is his characterization of the entire book as a pastiche of the Golden Age (well, sometimes ... he seems to be confused). That encompasses perhaps the first story, but not the rest. "Sequestered" is a send-up of the genre. "The Escape Goat" is a humorous little children's story, similar to the "Peter Porker, the Spider-Ham" humor stories produced by Marvel. And "300 Fathoms Down" tells a story of The Escapist in his old age, which is more characteristic of 80s storylines like "The Dark Knight Returns" or "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" (not that it's comparable to those stories, but it's more characteristic of that era than the Golden Age). In fact, if anything, the stories seem to owe more to the Silver, Bronze and Modern Ages of deconstruction than the Golden Age.

(davidabrams does seem to acknowledge this in part, particularly the manga story. However, he's soon crowing about "Golden Age pastiche" in the next few sentences, so I'm just confused. By the way, "Divine Wind" is less a re-tread of manga tropes than a good parody of how American superheroes have been mangled so much to be unrecognizable when they reach Japan. See for an example Japan's "Spider-Man", which turned a bookish-nerd-turned-neurotic-superhero into a leather-jacket-wearing-motorcyclist-with-a-giant-space-mecha)

The book also does not have a black-and-white morality of "Awesome Capitalist Americans good! Evil Nazi-Commie Europeans bad!." "Are You Now, or Have You Ever Been ..." features a Senator McCarthy-esque villain. In "Prison Break", the Escapist finds help in an unexpected source. And in "The Mechanist", Luna Moth finds a downside to doing good.

Also, despite his assertion that the book paints all foreigners as bad, the "foreign-ness" of the Iron Chain is never emphasized. (And why would it be, anyway, given that Joe Kavalier is a just-off-the-boat immigrant in Chabon's novel?) And while the Escapist's foreign assistants are portrayed stereotypically in the first tale, their broken English fades and their personalities become more three dimensional as the tales continue.

Also, Luna Moth is NOT the Escapist's romantic foil in this book. In fact, they never interact. The woman in the "crossover" davidabrams refers to is an entirely different costumed adventurer. In fact, said adventurer's identity is the MAIN POINT of the story, so I can't imagine how he missed it. Also, in her second (of her three, not four) stories, Luna Moth does not "bust" crime. Maybe if he'd stop staring at the ladies' breasts and actually read the words he could have realized this ... I wonder if he thought Miss Plum Blossom was also the Luna Moth.

Yes, this book is a pastiche, and a good one at that. While none of the stories are classics, they could easily be found in any of one's favorite superheroes' tales throughout the comic book eras -- and they would be considered good ones, too. So, I say if you are a fan of both superhero comics and Michael Chabon's book, this is a must for your collection. Just remember to buy the book for what it is, and not what it isn't. Oh, and as for Luna Moth: Her word balloons are the circular things in white. That's where you find the story. Just a tip. ( )

I checked this book out of the library because I loved The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. It turns out that the reason I loved Kavalier & Clay had nothing to do with the fact that it was about comic books. I probably could have told you that before I started, and saved myself the time and energy of reading this and being disappointed by it, but I was curious, and the time and energy spent was pretty minimal. I don't know enough about comics/graphic novels to evaluate it on those types of scales (artwork, story, whatever), but on the level I read it, it was not what I wanted it to be. ( )

The Escapist cannot leap tall buildings in a single bound or outrun speeding bullets. He doesn't turn green when angry. He doesn't fly an invisible plane or swoop across Metropolis on strands of spun silk.

He wriggles. That's about the extent of his superpowers. He wriggles out of chains, handcuffs and straitjackets. Imagine Houdini with a cleft chin and a Charles Atlas chest and you'll come close to Michael Chabon's superhero first introduced in his Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. That book was, among other things, a love letter to the Golden Age of Comics when great artists like Will Eisner, Bob Kane, Lou Fine, and Jack Kirby inked imaginations of young minds everywhere and pulp pages teemed with heroes like the Green Arrow, the Whip, Aquaman, the Spectre and Blue Bolt. In the pages of Chabon's novel, Sammy Clay and Joe Kavalier dream up the concept of a comic book hero "coming to the rescue of those who toil in the chains of tyranny and injustice. Houdini, but mixed with Robin Hood and a little bit of Albert Schweitzer."

Since the novel's publication in 2000, the Escapist has taken on a life of his own, fueled by fans of literary fiction and Golden Age comic books—guys who tremble with sexual ecstasy at the mere sight of a wind-rippled cape and whose first thoughts when you mention the letters "DC" are not of the nation's capitol. Mr. Chabon gave permission for those lit-nerds to come out of the closet. Comics have always been cool, but with Kavalier and Clay it was suddenly okay to talk about superheroes out in the open at previously snooty literary gatherings. Comic book fanatics could be seen rubbing elbows with tweedy Joycean scholars.

Okay, maybe that's going a little too far.

I don't want to exaggerate my case, but I do believe Chabon's book and its attendant popularity helped create a mini-renaissance in muscular men in tights, at least among fic-lit-hipsters. With increased interest in Chabon's creation came a demand for more adventures of the Escapist. And now, thanks to Dark Horse Books, the fabricated comic books have become the real thing. Open up Dark Horse's The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist and you'll get an eye-popping tour of a world that originated inside Chabon's head.

The volume, which collects previously published Escapist adventure comics into one book, depicts the origins of the Escapist in the episode "The Passing of the Key," where young Tom Mayflower inherits bond-slipping powers from his uncle Max, also known as Misterioso. When Uncle M is shot during a performance, it's up to Tom to don the black tights (with the large emblem of a key on his chest) and become a "master of self-liberation." As a member of the secret society of the League of the Golden Key, the Escapist goes about freeing captives, slaves and victims of oppression. His nemesis is a sinister organization known as the Iron Chain (a thinly-disguised Nazi Germany) which has infected every level of society. It's up to the Escapist to "work for the liberation of all who toil in chains, whether of iron or ideas." This is the thinking man's caped crusader—long on existentialism, short on lightning bolts and X-ray vision.

The stories and dialogue in The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist are hokey to the point of pastiche. It's hard to read the words in the balloons with a straight face, unless you're seeing them for what they are: a fond tribute to the black-and-white morality of the 1940s and 50s. The Cold War made everything so much easier to understand. Our superheroes had villains who were easy to define—they were the ones with European accents or who favored the color red.

In one episode, the Escapist must rescue a nuclear submarine trapped on the ocean floor with only ten hours of oxygen remaining; in others, he exposes a corrupt member of a jury, infiltrates a prison gang and, with the help of Luna Moth, rescues some kidnapped children buried alive.

Ah yes, Luna Moth—every young boy's wet dream of a superheroine. Comely bookseller Judy Dark by day; busty, leggy Luna Moth by night. In this volume, the Escapist's partner in justice (and romantic foil) gets four episodes in which she literally and figuratively busts crime.

The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist is an anthology of Escapist tales, each written and drawn by a different artist. In addition to the first story, written by Chabon, other talent on these pages includes writers/artists Howard Chaykin, Kevin McCarthy, Jim Starlin, Gene Colan and novelist Glen David Gold whose Carter Beats the Devil was also a literary love letter to the early 20th century published around the same time as Chabon's book.

While the writers independently manage to come up with a history of the Escapist using a variety of styles which present a timeline of comic book art from the 1940s through modern-day manga, the stories themselves are weak, like they were truncated in order to squeeze more into the volume. On the one hand, I appreciated their loving parody of "golden era" comics; on the other hand, some of the episodes are akin to badly edited film with important frames missing. I wanted to take my time with the Escapist, rather than rushing through the plot like it was written on a telegram.

That said, the artwork on these pages is beyond fantastic. The lines and colors are so vibrant as to take on a ripply, bulging life of their own. At one point, while reading about the adventures of Luna Moth, I had to hold the book away from me for fear that her torpedo breasts would fly off the page into my face (on second thought, maybe that's not something I should have been afraid of). As a special bonus, there's a gallery of images at the back of the book which I'd pay good money to have framed on my wall.

The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist might not break the chains of bland storytelling, but it explodes with all the colors and textures that made great Golden Age comic books leap imaginations in a single bound. ( )