It’s pretty clear that the book’s fictional Escapist hero is meant to be a literary stand-in for Captain America. Historical Context and the Modern Comic Book Hero At the same time, Joe is fighting to find a way to have his younger brother brought over as well. As the situation in Europe grow more dire, the Escapists feats against Nazis and the German army grow ever more impressive but violent. On the cover of the first issue, the Escapist punches Hitler in the face.
Joe channels his frustrations into this character called the Escapist, who fights Nazis. Joe, an artist, and Clay, a writer, team up to develop a comic book series, and are tasked with creating a new superhero. He moves in with his aunt and his cousin, Sammy Clayman - or “Clay” for short, who works for a comic book publisher, but is troubled by thoughts of his family and the situation that he left behind. With the assistance of his old mentor, a stage magician, he is smuggled out of the country in a crate containing a large Jewish relic, the Golem of Prague. Due to a fluke, he is the one member of his family eligible to emigrate to the United States. Joseph Kavalier is a Jewish teenager living in German-occupied Czechoslovakia before the war. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay focuses on two cousins and their lives around the time of WWII.
At any rate, originally published in September 2000, it’s set around the time when comic book heroes began to be popularized and is centered around a microcosm of that trend. For a while, a lot of people cited it as their favorite book, but it seems to have drifted off from popularity for some time now. It’s ironic for a number of reasons - one of which is that the modern day superhero has a storied history of being a social justice symbol.Īnyway, it prompted me to finally finish The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which I’ve started and stopped a few times. There’s been chatter lately from certain outlets about how comic books are being ruined by social justice warriors (or “SJW”s for short) who are making these stories too “political”. By Jennifer Marie Lin on Feb 9th, 2018 (Last Updated Jul 14th, 2019)
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