The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Michael Chabon about The Golden Age of Comic Books, focusing on two Jewish cousins, American writer Sam Clay (born Klayman) and Czech artist Josef Kavalier, who together create a popular superhero comic called the Escapist, inspired in equal measure by Harry Houdini and Superman.

Many events in the novel are based on the lives of actual comic-book creators, and the book as a whole is generally an homage to the comics of the Golden Age.

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This book contains examples of:

• Ambiguously Gay: Discussed Trope. The Senate committee grills Sam about the fact that he constantly creates young male sidekicks for his characters, and all but calls Batman gay.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: The "Razis", led by evil dictator "Atilla Haxoff". No one is fooled.
• All Germans Are Nazis: Deconstructed. Joe ends up venting his hatred of the Nazis on anyone who looks even vaguely German, regardless of whether they support Hitler. Near the end when he's stationed in Antarctica with the Navy, he's so desperate to kill some Nazis that he goes out of his way to track down and kill an innocent German geologist. He immediately feels terrible about it.
  • Ironically, in one scene he actually saves the life of the Spaniard Salvador Dali, apparently unaware that he's a prominent Fascist.
• Author Filibuster: The narrator occasionally stops the action in the middle of conversations to go on, at length, about just how awesome 40's comics were.
• Author Vocabulary Calendar
• Badass Grandpa: Bernard Kornblum.
• Big Applesauce: Not surprising, New York hosted many Jewish immigrants during this time.
• Bittersweet Ending: Although, considering the gloomy circumstances, perhaps as happy as you could hope. Joe ends up back with Rosa and his son, but Sam is outed as a homosexual and runs away from it all to LA. However, the first page of the book seems to indicate that he did relatively well for himself in the years to follow and there are implications that he and Joe continued to work as Kavalier & Clay, so it's not all sad.
• The Cameo: Salvador Dali appears in one scene. Near the end, there's a brief scene in a New York cafe where Stan Lee and Gil Kane (among others) show up to get a cup of coffee.
• Closet Key: Tracy Bacon for Sam Clay. Sam's mother knows before he does.
• Commie Nazis: Once World War II ends, the people who own The Ecapist have no problem switching his villains from the Nazis to The Soviets.
• Cutting the Knot: According to Kornblum, Harry Houdini had his wife sneak him a key in a glass of water when he couldn't escape a lock. This is used as An Aesop about The Power of Love.
• Dead Guy, Junior: Tommy
• Dead Little Sister: Joe's entire family
• "Dear John" Letter: Inverted
• Defictionalization Chabon and other writers wrote a series of actual Escapist comics, which were published as a tie-in to the novel by Dark Horse Comics.
• Disappeared Dad: Sam's father was always on the road. Just as well, as his relationship with Sam's mother was rather dysfunctional.
  • Also, Joe becomes one to his own son after he joins the Navy and refuses to come home.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Tracy Bacon gets this towards the end. A few years after Sam abandons him, we briefly learn that he was killed in the war.
• Easily Forgiven: Rosa easily takes back Joe after he ran off for thirteen years, then came back and initiated a Zany Scheme to, essentially, bungee jump off the Empire State Building.
• Escapism: The story deals with the theme of literal and metaphorical escapism, especially the way in which various characters use comics to escape the troubles of their lives. Kavalier wants to escape the memory of the Nazis and guilt over his little brother. Clay wishes to escape his closeted gay life and his disability. Together they create the Escapist, a literal escape artist, who gains popularity when the public uses him to escape from the war.
• Escapist Character: The Escapist, for people in-universe.
• Expy: Kavalier is possibly influenced by real-life comic book artist Jim Steranko, who was also an escape artist and magician before becoming a comic book artist. Steranko was also the inspiration for the Jack Kirby character Mister Miracle. Given how the author's note at the end of the novel ends with an acknowledgment of Kirby, it's possible that Mister Miracle was also an influence.
• Gayngst: Sam Clay is a gay man in the 1940's...so it comes up in force, complete with the addition of Fredric Wertham and the congressional investigations into comicbooks in the 1950's. Ironically, he seems to be the only one ashamed of his sexuality, and ends up abandoning Tracy because of it.
• Golem: There is a lengthy subplot that manages to involve the Golem of Prague, World War II, and Harry Houdini.
• The Beard: Sam to Rosa to cover up having Joe's baby out of wedlock. Rosa to Sam to cover up his Homosexuality, although she's not meant to know about it
• Hair of Gold: Tracy and Rosa. Both very wholesome love interests.
• Heroes Love Dogs: Justified they are sled dogs after all
• Historical Domain Character:
  • Real comic book writers and artists from that era appear frequently.
  • Joe saves Salvador Dali from suffocating inside a diving helmet.
• Hollywood Nerd: Sam and the artists he hires to make his first comics.
• Irony: Joe tries to take out his anger at the Nazis by picking fights with every German-looking person he runs across. He ends up in fights with lots of innocent German-Americans who want nothing to do with Hitler. But when he runs into Salvador Dali (who actually is a fascist), he ends up saving his life.
• Jewish and Nerdy: Played straight and subverted to varying degrees.
• Meaningful Name: Sam Clay's real last name is Klayman, or "Clay Man." The book heavily references the story of the Golem, another Clay Man. Kavalier is a play on the French "cavale", meaning escape. Joe's escape artist stage name is The Amazing Cavalieri, putting the emphasis closer to the French.
• Most Writers Are Writers
• Naked on Arrival: How Joe first meets Rosa. He and Sam are trying to get into the apartment building where the local cartoonists work, but the front door's locked, so he scales the fire escape and goes in through the window...only to find Rosa lying on the couch completely naked. As soon as his friends find out, one of them pays him to draw her naked from memory.
• Name's the Same: The Escapist fights crime in a generic New York-esque metropolis called "Empire City". Sounds familiar...
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Joe's trek across Antarctica is almost entirely skipped over. First, his pilot dies shortly into the trip and he is forced to continue flying it alone with no experience. After killing the German, he treks on foot across the Tundra and barely survives by finding an old pre-war German base camp and holing up.
• One-Scene Wonder: Salvador Dali in the party scene. Not surprising since he's, well...Salvador Dali.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: Literally. Joe joins the navy in hopes of fighting the Nazis, but he is instead assigned to a remote naval outpost in Antarctica, miles away from any actual battles. This is particularly hard on him, as he only enlisted so he could avenge his little brother, who was killed in a German torpedo attack.
• Secret Secret Keeper: It's implied Sam's Mother has figured out the attraction between him and Tracy. Possibly Rosa as well.
• Scarpia Ultimatum: A particularly cruel one. Sam says yes.
• Shiksa Goddess: Tracy is the Spear Counterpart of this trope.
• Shout-Out: Clay's father is called the Mighty Molecule - it's a reference to the Golden Age Atom.
• Shown Their Work
• Shoot the Dog: Literally. Poor Oyster
• Straight Gay: All of the gay men in the novel are rather inconspicuous.
• Super Dickery: The trope is outlined in full, with the Escapist participating in a classic example, when the book chronicles the 50's.
• Time Skip: A few years during World War II and a whopping decade after.
• Twofer Token Minority: Sam is Jewish and Nerdy, Straight Gay, and walks on crutches due to a childhood bout with Polio. Arguably, Joe as well, being both Jewish and a German-speaking immigrant.
• War Is Hell: Reconstructed in a (mostly) non-combat situation. Joe is eager to fight the Nazis and pay them back for murdering his family, but, because he's a native German speaker, he ends up far away from the fighting intercepting radio transmissions, at an outpost in Mysterious Antarctica, where the only thing to fight is the harsh conditions. He sees all his comrades die, pointlessly, from a carbon monoxide leak. He does shoot one German-- who turns out to be a nice guy and not at all a Nazi.
• What Do You Mean It's for Kids?: In-universe example. Joe channels a great deal of his hatred of The Nazis into some very detailed, but graphically violent fight comics.
• You Can't Go Home Again: Joe, in respect to both New York and Prague.
• You Have to Have Jews: Explains the preponderance of references explicit and implicit to Jewish culture in comics.