The most recent Comics Journal (#248) has a sharp column by R.C. Harvey on Michael Chabon's Pulitzer-winning novel about the early years of the comic book industry, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (Picador USA). In it, comics scholar Harvey basically fact-checks Chabon's book - which focuses on the fortunes of two young superhero creators in the era referred to as comics' Golden Age - and only finds two comics-related items to refute.
First is the existence of a plainly fictional building that Chabon asserts once housed Al Capp before the cartoonist struck it big w./ "Li'l Abner." Second is a description by Chabon of the 1954 testimony by cartoonists Walt Kelly & Milton Caniff before Estes Kefauver's infamous Senate committee hearing investigating the spurious links between comic book reading and juvenile delinquency. Chabon characterizes this testimony as a betrayal by the National Cartoonists Society of its "brothers in ink," but Harvey (who writes the intros to the current book reprints of Kelly's seminal "Pogo" comic strip) demurs somewhat, straining to put a different spin on Kelly's appearance before the committee.
That a diligent scholar like Harvey was only able to take issue with two relatively small details in Chabon's book speaks well of the writer's research as well as his evocation of setting. The novel is clearly written from the perspective of someone who has loved comic books (the acknowledgement at book's end concludes with a statement about the "deep debt" the writer owes to artist Jack Kirby). This appreciation informs every page of Chabon's work, which is unblinking in its look at the process of early comic book creation and packaging - as well as the shenanigans that permeated this low-rent industry.
Kavalier & Clay focuses on two young Jewish boys who strike it big by creating a superhero character called the Escapist. Sammy Klayman is a Brooklyn-born boy who does the scripting; Josef Kavalier is a young refugee from Prague, who has left his family in Nazi-controlled Czechoslovakia. Young Joe is gifted as a pen-and-ink artist, middling in the art of Houdini-esque escape. Together, the two develop a hero whose main metier is escaping devilish traps that've been set by Nazi-inspired comic book baddies. This proves to be both a source of commercial success and dark irony for both men: while Joe is able to cache enough money to fund his younger brother's escape from Europe, for example, he remains unable to ultimately rescue him.
Article comments