“The Escapists” by Brian K. Vaughan
The Escapists by Brian K. Vaughan is one of several comics inspired by Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Like that prose novel, this graphic novel plays with the boundary of reality and fiction. In it, a young man from Cleveland, Max Roth, buys the rights to a defunct comic-book character, the Escapist. He finds two friends to help create a new version of the comic book, then tries to publicize it in the manner of the character’s creators, Sam Clay and Joe Kavalier. It tells the story in real time, with flashback and pages of the fictional comic the team creates, all with different artists to distinguish the changes in story. Like the novel it’s inspired by, The Escapists is clever with sympathetic characters, a layered narrative, and a story both tragic and hopeful. A fitting, post-modern complement to Chabon’s excellent novel.