If you have read Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, this book (I believe it is the first of 3 or 4) of cartoons and backstory on The Escapist comics is a fun and entertaining companion. I liked how they used lots of different styles (classic 60's comix, manga, contemporary graphic novel, watercolour, crumpish pastiche) in writing it and of course LOVE Luna Moth. A fun comic but read Chabon's book first!

Awesome literary nostalgia!

The character 'The Escapist' is actually a serious imitation of a fake historical comic character. So. This book - 'Michael Chabon Presents....The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist Volume 1: v. 1' - is a bogus collection of supposedly previously published Escapist issues. Each included issue in this collection has been drawn meticulously in the genuine style of whatever comic Art representation actually dominated the comic publishing industry of every decade since the 1940's.

This fake collection is a brilliant parody of an anniversary book issue of a beloved comic character. If The Escapist had been a genuine comic character first developed in the 1940's, and if the character had survived for decades through the changing art styles and artists and publishers that comics have undergone in real life up to the present, this particular graphic novel collection would serve as a genuine commemorative publication. Fans would have stormed their local bookstore to buy a copy and run home in a rush to encapsulate the book in a protective plastic jacket, hoping to sell it in 20 years for thousands of dollars. However, despite that it is a falsified historical collection about a fake historical super hero, the issues are drawn in the genuine style and the hero, 'The Escapist' is played straight like a real fictional comic Hero reminiscent of the genuine made-up heroes in the fantasy comic fiction we actually grew up reading.

My head is hurting, gentle reader.


The 'Best of The Escapist' comics which have been included are:

The Passing of the Key - origin story
Escapism 101 - written history of how the comic began

Followed by what I am sure would have been favorite top sellers representing the various epochs of 'The Escapist':

Are You Now or Have You Ever Been
Sequestered
Prison Break
Three Hundred Fathoms Down
Divine Wind
The Escapegoat
Luna Moth
Reckonings
Old Flame
The Lady or the Tiger

I think people who enjoy literary jokes will like this fake collection best. It is well done, picture perfect actually, but, you know, fake.

found at TCPL while looking for other books by Michael Chabon

the beautiful artwork in The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist: Volume 1

For a moment there, I felt a bitter pang of disillusionment because I thought that The Escapist, Luna Moth and many other pillars on which The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is built existed long before the book hit the shelves and they're not ingenious figments of Chabon's imagination as I initially thought they were. I let out a breath of relief when I realized that the history of the Escapist and its creators is indeed fictitious, the bits of news and articles included here are false, and the Introduction written by Michael Chabon - who convincingly starts with: "I still remember the first Escapist comic I ever came across (in capital letters!) - is fabricated. It's all just a big, fat, heartless, brilliant lie designed to make Kavalier & Clay part of the comics history.

Moving past this awful scare, the book is surprisingly good. The Escapist is amusing, Luna Moth is amazing and the short stories contained allow for a varied display of artwork.

3.5

I felt almost obligated to read this after reading and loving The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. When I found out there was an actual comic book of The Escapist, I jumped at the chance to read it. The first story was very good, a 5-star entry but the subsequent stories were less than what I had hoped for.

Yuh, not bad I guess

The idea is better than the execution. The essays were enjoyable and more in line with Chabon's original novel than the actual comics, most of which didn't quite look or feel like the eras they were mimicking. Chris Ware's cover is the best part of the book.

Interesting to read, especially if you've read "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay."

Very charming. It was cool to be able to read the Escapist comics after reading about them in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.

The stories were pretty good, with nods to different styles of writing and artwork. I really enjoyed some of the guest work, especially the artwork by Gene Colan (Dracula, Dr. Strange, Daredevil and many others of the 70s). Good read.

So fun! Chabon and Co. have really given tremendous depth and breadth to their fantastic hero here...

Solid and fun riffs on Chabon's fictional super hero by some great comic book writers and artists. There's something about the layer of fictional remove that keeps the commitments here often quite short and shallow - maybe the cost of the short story comic book approach.