One of my favorite books of all time is Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. The book is not has suburb writing, it is also set around some of my favorite times (the early years of the US comic book industry). After the book came out (and subsequently won the Pulitzer Prize), Chabon sensibly decided to extend the reach of the book by having various authors and writiers contribute short comic stories to an anthology Michael Chabon Presents. . .The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist. This anthology showed various stories featuring the fictional comic book characters from within the book. In addition, there was a comic mini-series (written by Brian K Vaughn with art by Steve Rolston and Philip Bond (live action scenes) and son Shawn Alexander and Eduardo Barreto (comic book scenes)) that is set in the Kavalier and Clay universe. The story is set in a universe where there where Escapist comic books and introduces a new trio who find reason to bring back the Escapist comic book to interesting ends. Let’s see what happened.

Maxwell (Max) Roth has just lost his father and his mom gives him the key to the basement where he had been forbidden to go previously. It turns out his father is a closet Escapist fan and has almost all the books and a lot of the merchandise. After receiving his inheritance when his mother dies, Roth decides to purchase the rights to the Escapist characters, which are sitting around unused currently, and bring back The Escapise comic. He recruits a cute artist (Case Weaver) in an almost stalker like scene to be the artist and his friend/bully protector Denny Jones is brought on to letter the book.

After creating the first issue, they wonder how to publicize it. So they decide to go back to The Escapist beginnings and free some workers from their locked in work bondage (with Denny in an Escapist costume). This goes slightly wrong as it turns out the workplace is being robbed at the time. Denny manages to fight off the robber and (since it was videotaped) a huge mystery emerges. This leads to huge sales for the first issue. The old owner of the character (Terry Linklater) then decides he wants the characters back*. What happens next is straight from the evil corporation (with a sleazy lawyer), good creators (with characters dressing up in costume to intimidate people) and has a trite resolution.

*And it’s never explained why he would want them back. Selling 80,000 copies of a comic book is an amazing achievement for an independent team. But it’s really only about $25-$50K profit. And there’s no guarantee that the sales would continue in future issues. Hiring the lawyer to try and get the characters back and pay off everyone they were supposed to payoff would probably cost more than they could reasonably make on the characters. They could probably have offered to handle toys, movies, tie-ins, etc for the trio and not only paid less, but had a change to make a lot more money. It just seemed like a stupid idea.

There are two sets of artists in the book. Steve Rolston and Philip Bond  deal with Max, Case and Denny and the main storyline. Shawn Alexander and Eduardo Barreto were brought on to handle the art for the comic within the comic. Rolston and Bond have a nice clean art that works well for the main storyline. The Alexander/Barreto work seemed a little rough and was colored a little dark. It fit in with the amateurish undertaking that the comic within the comic was, but I can’t say I liked it.

Overall, the best part of the book is the characters. Max is a wonderfully shaded twenty something. He’s given a lot to deal with (both parents dying) and decides to honor their memory with the comic and uses it to give himself something to hold on to. Denny is a fun compatriot (although Case is a little too close to a Mary Sue, being a cute artist who decides to work with them despite the stalkerish meeting and do some semi-illegal activities because she’s falling for Max) who starts off with a nice twist and ultimately becomes a great second banana. The plot itself is a little hokey after a decent start. Everything after Terry Linklater wants the characters back is too trite and gets silly with a feel-good ending. I would recommend reading the book since I enjoyed spending time with these people. But the plot machinations harm the book considerably. Mildly recommended.