This six-issue miniseries, originally published in 2006 as simply “The Escapists,” is inspired by Michael Chabon’s best-selling novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which itself was inspired by the real-life story of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, two young Jewish men who together created the comic-book character Superman in the 1930s. In the novel, two young Jewish men named Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay created a comic-book character called The Escapist in the 1930s and the book tells the story of their lives. In this comic, the story of Kavalier and Clay is true, they created The Escapist who was a popular comic-book character, also exploited in other media, that was popular throughout the 1940s, but by the time this series begins in then-present, is long out of print, with the rights being held “some crappy greeting-card company in New Jersey,” and mostly forgotten by the general public.

Written by Brian K. Vaughan and illustrated by penciler Philp Bond and inker Eduardo Barreto, the issue opens in Cleveland (not coincidentally the hometown of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster) and introduces our lead character, Maxwell Roth, a young Jewish man. When Max was a young boy, his father died, and Max inherited his father’s large collection of The Escapist memorabilia, including all of the original comic books, action figures, posters, and other items. Max had never heard of the character as, for some reason, his father never discussed it with him while he was alive, but he quickly became fascinated by him. After finishing all the comics, he started writing fan fiction about The Escapist to continue his adventures.

In high school, Max meets a fellow student named Denny Jones, who looks like a stereotypical jock and defends him from some antisemitic bullies, leading to the two becoming best friends. When Max graduates, he decides to pursue his dream of becoming a professional comic book writer, but he has no luck. He takes a job as an elevator repairman to make ends meet while continuing to pursue his dream. One day he met a young woman named Case Weaver, who was stuck in an elevator. Turns out that she’s an aspiring artist, who had a meeting with an ad agency in that building. But when he returned home, he discovered that his mother had died.

At the funeral, Max informs Denny that his mother had left him a $150,000 life insurance policy and that he used the money to buy the rights to The Escapist and plans to launch a self-published new series about him, which he will write. He hires Denny to be the letterer of the series and tracks down Case and convinces her to be the artist.  He also reveals that he has a plan for a special publicity stunt to promote the series.

This is a great first issue. Vaughan has Max narrating much of the story to us, and we often see his words filtered through images of The Escapist in action in comic book panels, which is an inventive way to keep it from coming off like a boring “talking heads” comic. And the artwork is nice and fits the tone of the story. I remember that one of the main reasons I’d bought this first issue, despite never having read the Michael Chabon novel, was that it was on sale for only $1 (when most mainstream comics at the time were $2.99), so it was kind of an impulse buy. But the story and cliffhanger definitely had me wanting to see what happened next.

Chacebook rating: FIVE STARS

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