The Amazing Adventures of The Escapist (2004), Volume 1

August 1, 2004
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. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)