Narrative Transformations
109
In the meantime, we have this unusual comic book. The conceit o f
the series, like the novel, is that The Escapist really has been
published since the ’40s, and that Kavalier and Clay were real people.
A s Chabon writes in a Dark Horse press release: “When I first began
my research into the careers o f Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay, their
classic creations— the Escapist, Luna Moth and the rest— had lapsed
into near-total obscurity. I‘m delighted and veiy grateful that Dark
Horse has decided to breathe new life into these grand old
characters.’' I’m willing to pretend that The Escapist has existed for
60 years, if you are. And I’m looking forward to this series, after
which The Escapist really will have existed in comics. If “Adventures
o f The Escapist” is a hit, in a few years it won’t matter that his first
60 years o f stories are only imaginary. In a sense, aren’t they all?—
December
7,
2003.
(http://www.captaincomics.us/colunms/
wc 12072003.htm)
8 1 do not want to imply that Graphic novels do not have a literary quality— they do. Here
is what Wikipedia says about the art form: The term “graphic novel” was popularized by
Will Eisner after it appeared on the cover o f the trade paperback edition (though not on
the hardcover edition) o f A Contract with God, and Other Tenement Stories in 1978. This
collection o f short stories was a mature, complex work focusing on the lives o f ordinary
people in the real world, and the term “graphic novel” was intended to distinguish it from
traditional comic books with which it shared a storytelling medium. This established both
a new book-publishing term and a category distinct from paperback (from http://en
.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphic_novel).
9
For more on this idea o f representation using words or graphics as abstract ideas, see
Scott McCloud’s “The Vocabulary o f Comics” in Understanding Comics: The Invisible
Art. 24-37.
Unlike, perhaps, DC Comics, which at times had treated their flagship comics—
Superman and Batman—as formulaic and as routine as the next; and. indeed, at this time
these comics could feature stories and “villains” that were downright goofy. Christopher
Sorrentino argues that:
Marvel transformed the medium in the sixties, starting with the
elemental visual impact o f Jack Kirby’s drawing, which challenged
the primacy o f the paunchy heroes DC presented in their series o f
tiny, static tableaux (Jules Feiffer o