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THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY
By Michael Chabon
(review/column for The Modern Word)

Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which has just been released in paperback, is a justified recipient of the heaps and mounds and buckets and loads of critical praise that it has received over the past year or so. Most of the criticism is from the obvious sources: newspapers, magazines, television etc.

The strange twist in the book's cultural life is how much attention it got from the thriving online comic book community. Some comic book sites went so far as to review the novel. Most talked about it at length at some point. News of Chabon's winning the Pulitzer Prize was big news. Chabon even had a one-man panel and signing at this year's San Diego Comicon, the biggest comic book convention in North America.

Many in the comic book community have been clamoring for some kind of mainstream acceptance for a long, long time because even though there have been a load of successful comic book themed films and television shows (cartoons AND prime time), even though comic books and graphic novels have made some recent critical headway in the "literary" world (Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Boy On Earth, Maus, From Hell, Ghost World, etc.), even though comic book writers routinely write well received novels, even though the majority of comic book readers are between the ages of 18-35- most of America still thinks comic books are juvenile fantasies about spandex-clad superheroes for pre-adolescent children. Most people don't know that comic books contain arguably more thematic and artistic variety than almost any other medium, they don't know that comic books are a new and different kind of literature that at its best can emotionally move and stir the imagination like the best art can and, at its most mediocre, can still gleefully entertain. Plus, those supposedly "juvenile" ones are a lot of fun. They always were.

These days, the comic book industry finds itself in a frightening predicament. Their content has arguably never been better, but after a gigantic surge in growth and popularity during the early-90s, mostly due to severe product speculation, readership has taken a disastrous downturn. Comic shops are either closing or struggling to stay alive. Supermarkets and drug stores, formerly comics' biggest markets, don't really sell comics anymore. A host of comic book professionals are out of work and when they're working, they don't make enough money. Frankly, comic books are practically an underground aspect of American culture. There are many, many reasons for this sad fact, and some in the comic book community see Chabon's Kavalier and Clay as another small step towards mainstream respect and a much-needed upturn in readership.

This wholehearted embracing of Kavalier and Clay by comic book fandom may be a bit overzealous, but it's not entirely unfounded. The most obvious facets of Chabon's novel are his loving admiration for and sweet celebration of the medium, neither of which are steeped in two things that plague most treatise on comics: treacly, predictable nostalgia and dry, needless over-analysis. Why modern fandom has embraced Kavalier and Clay is not because of the book's tangible plot, but because comic books are important to Chabon and in his rich and unforgettable novel, he shows why they should be important to everybody.

However, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay isn't solely about comic books. Saying that it is is akin to saying Heart of Darkness is about a really long boat ride. Comic books weave in and out of the lives of the novel's two main characters, Joe Kavalier and Sammy Clay, like the characters themselves weave in and out of mid-20th century popular culture. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay takes place largely in New York City during the Golden Age of comics, which began in 1938 with the first appearance of Superman in Action Comics #1 and ran to about roughly 1955, but Chabon's surprisingly epic, character-driven narrative roams all over the map.

From the streets of occupied Czechoslovakia to the top of the Empire State Building to the ruins of the New York World's Fair to a remote Antarctic World War II Allied outpost (in a stunning and absolutely unforgettable sequence that Chabon, during his San Diego panel, claimed is an homage to H.P. Lovecraft), Chabon never ceases to surprise and, most importantly, never loses sight of his characters. He intertwines the careers and lives of the dashing and talented Joe Kavalier and the lovable and infinitely imaginative Sammy Clay with some of the most important creative minds of the time, including Salvador Dali and Orson Welles, showing that he considers those early comic book creators to be as culturally significant as those frequently heralded artists.

In a minor device that was much heralded in online fandom, Chabon also skillfully weaves in real comic book history: the medium's influences (Houdini, the pulps, etc.), Frederic Wertham's mid-century Seduction Of The Innocent censorship witch-hunt, which led to the creation of the Comic Book Code and actual artists, writers and characters. Chabon supposedly based some of Kavalier and Clay's experiences on that of real life figures from that period, including the creators of Superman, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, and The Spirit's Will Eisner, a still active artistic genius who could be called the D.W. Griffith of comics and later on in his career published what most people consider to be the first graphic novel, A Contract With God. The encounters with these real life figures are briefer than much of the hype would lead one to expect, but it's these small details (and a cute use of fake footnotes) that help create the wonderful atmosphere of realism in a world of bizarre occurrences that Chabon is able to create. The recently deceased and much-loved artist Gil Kane makes an appearance, as do the infamous Stan Lee, the aforementioned Will Eisner and the man who many comic book fans consider to be the greatest comic book artist ever and perhaps one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, Jack Kirby, whose continuing popularity can best be shown by the fact that he's the only artist who, even years after his death, still has a magazine devoted to collecting his artwork.

It's funny, though. I was asked to write this review because of my background in comic books, but the aspects of Chabon's book I enjoyed the most have nothing to do with them. His themes of growing older, identity, family, and culture are well worn, but it's Chabon's entirely unpredictable, well-paced plotting and his expertly drawn and immeasurably fascinating characters that makes Kavalier and Clay so compelling and so difficult to shake. The book moves from gritty, youthful nostalgia to a harsh, mature reality as Kavalier's obsession with his dead family seems to overtake his sanity and, in some of the novel's most touching and intense scenes, Clay battles his homosexuality.

I found that the novel lost some narrative steam towards the end, but its final impact was still remarkable. It's very true that Chabon has veneration and respect for and an understanding of comic books that you don't find or see very often. He understands their value as escapism and as art and the superhero's role as modern myth. He has fun reading comic books, but obviously takes them seriously.

As a comic book fan and journalist, I think the greatest compliment I can pay to this novel is that I want Kavalier and Clay to be real. I want their work to be real. I want to read about the characters that they created: The Escapist, The Luna Moth and all the others. I also want more people to read comics and to seem them for what they are. Hopefully, some people who read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay will get curious and do just that.