Brian K. Vaughan turns up the heat for our intrepid heroes in this issue. We’re introduced to Mr. Linklater, President of the Omingrip Corporation, a major media company that used to own the rights to The Escapist before selling them to the small greeting card company that Max bought them from in the first issue. Now that Max has launched his successful first issue, thanks to the publicity that Denny’s stunt brought, he sees new multimedia potential for the character that Omnigrip can exploit, so he calls Max and offers him $1 million to repurchase the rights from him, along with a position as a creative consultant. But not wanting to give up his artistic integrity and creative freedom, Max turns him down. But Mr. Linklater isn’t the type of person to give up so easily.

The next thing you know, Max and Case are confronted by a lawyer who informs them that she’s the new defense attorney for the crooks who tried to rob that store. The crooks claim that they were actually paid to stage the robbery so that “The Escapist” could show up and pretend to stop them. Max and Case deny any involvement in the matter, but the attorney still serves them with a subpoena to appear in court. Max and Case realize they need to make sure the lawyer doesn’t figure out that Denny was in The Escapist costume but, unfortunately for them, the police get to Denny first, and he is arrested.

This is a very dramatic issue. A few things stand out. Mr. Linklater is unnecessarily arrogant and condescending towards Max when he calls him. You’d think he’d try to be nicer to win over Max, but instead he taunts him with the fact that, even though the first couple of issues of Max’s company have been successful (the third issue has just been published), he knows that the profit margins for an indy comic are small, guessing correctly that Max is still struggling to keep going, and that once the initial hype dies down, the comic will inevitably settle down towards a smaller number of regular sales and brags that he’ll be able to buy back the rights to the character much cheaper when Denny inevitably goes bankrupt. I see this as both Vaughan’s statement on the greed of giant media corporations, as well as promoting the reality of the risks of attempting to make it in the comic book industry.

There are also more sequences presented as pages from the third issue of the comic, which also help to move the main story forward. By the way, I think I’ve finally figured out that Jason Shawn Alexander draws The Escapist sequences while Steve Rolston draws the real-life pages. Their vastly different art styles help show the distinction between fact and fiction. Both artists are good at what they do.

Chacebook rating: FIVE STARS

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