Michael Chabon Presents. . .The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist, Volume 1 (Paperback)

~ (Author), Glen David Gold (Author), Kevin McCarthy (Author), Howard Chaykin (Author), Bill Sienkiewicz (Author), Steve Lieber (Author), Gene Colan (Author), (Author) "I STILL REMEMBER THE FIRST ESCAPIST COMIC I EVER CAME ACROSS..." (more)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Bursting onto the scene after what must be the greatest—and most literary—publicity campaign ever mounted for a superhero, Chabon's Escapist is ready to do battle with the forces of evil and free all innocents held in the clutches of the Iron Chain's evil operatives. The Escapist, of course, is the hero first brought to life in Chabon's Pulitzer-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Now a clutch of comic veterans have brought the Master of Elusion and his entourage to life and, thankfully for the legions of K&C fans, this work doesn't disappoint. Regardless of origins, the Escapist is a classic do-gooder. We first meet our hero when he's humble Tom Mayflower, ward of a Houdini-esque uncle; events conspire to make Tom an unlikely hero, and we're off on adventures that roam through the comics landscape of the 20th century. It's all great fun as we watch our hero do his good-guy thing, battle the frustration of getting called for jury duty and even match wits with an evil genie. A bonus story features Luna Moth, a startlingly voluptuous heroine who takes on Death himself and comes out on top. Meanwhile, a few interstitial essays work to establish our hero's bona fides as a genuine lost character from the golden age of comics; Chabon's introduction attests that the estates of Kavalier and Clay and the archivists at Dark Horse have been very generous in helping to assemble the history of this forgotten superhero.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From Booklist

Fans of Chabon's Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000) who long to read the actual comic-book adventures of the Escapist, the superhero created by the novel's young protagonists, have recently had the chance, thanks to the comic book of which this is the first collection. It purports to repackage the "original" Escapist stories, dating from the 1940s. Scripting the Escapist's origin story himself, Chabon has enlisted contributions from leading comics artists and writers, including Howard Chaykin, Kyle Baker, and Chris Ware. The results seem rather inauthentic; attempting to copy the crude art and simplistic scripts of vintage comics would have been more audacious and perhaps more entertaining. There's no escaping the fact that these stories are just above-average mainstream superhero exploits that probably appeal more to comics aficionados than readers of the novel. Not nearly as impressive as the groundbreaking Kavalier-Clay collaborations Chabon's fiction suggested. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Reading level: Young Adult
  
• Paperback: 152 pages
• Publisher: Dark Horse (May 19, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159307171X
• ISBN-13: 978-1593071714
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #263,140 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Amusing "Comic" Romp, June 12, 2004

By	Leonard Fleisig "Len" (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I haven't read a comic book in close to 35 years. I picked Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adentures of the Escapist on a whim because I had read and enjoyed Chabon's novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Chabon's novel detailed the story of two young men (Kavalier, a refugee who fled from Nazi-occupied Prague after an amazing escape and Klay, his New York cousin)who have a long stormy career after creating a sensational comic book hero - The Escapist. The Escapist, as his name suggests, has the extradorinary Houdini-like ability to escape even the toughest bonds and fights the forces of evil, specifically the Iron League whose ultimate goal is to enslave the world.

The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist is the comic book spin off of the novel. Chabon, together with a team of well known graphic artists (including Kyle Baker, Gene Colan, and Jae Lee) and writers (including Glen David Gold, author of Carter Beats the Devil)has created a series of comics that trace the history of The Escapist. The comics begin with the 'premiere' episode in the late 1930s and move chronologically through the late 1970s. As with real comics, some stories are better than others. I particularly enjoyed the opening story, The Passing of the Key, which serves as the premiere epdisode that explains the origin of the Escapist. Prison Break, and Divine Wind (a Japanese version of the Escapist authorized by Kavalier & Clay) were also particularly good. Although I liked Are You Now or Have You Ever Been (Chabon's comic book look at the McCarthy era) I am not at all certain that any comic published in the 1950s would advance the views contained in it but I enjoyed it nevertheless.

Each section is introduced by brief overviews written by Chabon and his collaborators. The overviews put the comics in their proper 'historic' context. They are amusing and well written.

I very much liked the Amazing Adventures of the Escapist. As noted, I have not read a comic in quite some time so I claim no particular expertise in this idiom. The era of the modern comic has passed me by. Perhaps now I might look into it further. However, this lay reader enjoyed both the story lines and the art work. Reading these stories took me back to my younger days reading Batman, Superman, Sgt. Fury (and yes - even Mad Magazine). In short, this is a fun read. I particularly enjoyed the fact that Chabon and the creators played this work out with a straight face even if one can see that they all clearly had fun working on this project. The cover art on the back page which harks back to comic book advertisements of days gone by is a case in point.

I think the fact that I had read Chabon's Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay enhanced my enjoyment of this work and I would suggest this may be so for any reader for whom reading comics may be more an exercise in nostalgia than a current avocation. However, the book does stand up on its own, particularly because each story is advanced by explanatory overviews.

Again, this book was a lot of fun. I entered it with some trepidation at the thought that I was reading a comic - but as I got into it those feelings were replaced by the enjoyment of sitting down for some excellent 'escapist' reading.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Get This Now., July 7, 2004

By	"zhalbrecht2" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This is an excellent choice for post-reading when you have finished Kavalier and Clay. The art is outstanding, and to see the Escapist in so many different forms brought me nothing but joy. The writing/stories range from campy to fantastic, never giving you too much of one incarnation of the Escapist to induce boredom. The mythos of the Escapist throughout the years has been dutifully captured with some surprising tales featuring an aged Tom Mayflower and several (some of my favorites) of Luna Moth. The two bad things are this: 1) that is that there is not more in this volume. and 2) I don't think readers will fully appreciate this without reading Kavalier and Clay first. But if you have, go get this now. I read thorugh it way too fast the first time, but this book will have me re-reading it for years.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Live the story through the comics, January 6, 2005

By	Taylor Stevens "Reader" (NJ, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

After reading Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay," I was disheartened to realize that comic described in the book might never be actualized, and that the descriptions and accounts of the comics in general were fantasized. However, when I learned that Dark Horse Comics was planning on releasing "The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist, Volume 1" I jumped at the opportunity to 'live' like the kids in the novel. Darkhorse has combined the first two of "The Escapist" quarterly comics in paper-back form, along with a good deal of comic book historical fiction similar to that found in Chabon's "Kavalier and Clay." The drawings are fantastic, showing different artists renditions of the Escapist and Luna Moth, and the story lines are great too. A wonderful addition to the world of Kavalier and Clay, and a great read for the train or for some downtime.