Named Michael Chabon Presents the Amazing Adventures of the Escapist, the comic chronicled the supposed decades-long publishing history of the character.

The stories and text pieces were written with the concept that Kavalier and Clay were real people and that the Escapist had actually been a character from the Golden Age of Comics.

In addition to the Escapist himself, the comic featured stories of other characters supposedly created by Kavalier and Clay, such as the heroine Luna Moth and villains such as the gun-wielding Mr. Machine Gun or The Saboteur.

Using his inheritance money to buy the rights to the character, Max teams with artist Case Weaver and letterer Denny Jones, the latter of whom dresses as the Escapist and stops a crime in an attempt to stir up publicity for their comic.

[7] Like The Shadow, the Escapist is assisted in his quest by specially gifted agents, his sidekicks, who include the former circus strongman Big Al, exotic Asian beauty Miss Plum Blossom, and Omar, an East Indian mystic who possesses the power of hypnosis.

During World War II, the League makes the Escapist an emergency Champion of Freedom and grants him full access to the powers of the Golden Key.

This temporarily grants the Escapist superhuman strength and agility, allowing him to openly combat the Axis forces (coinciding in the novel with Joe Kavalier's feeling of helplessness as the war continues to rage on, while he is unable to rescue his family from Nazi-occupied Europe).

In a story meant to embody and comment on the darker "grim and gritty" trend of modern comics, the original Escapist is said to have been killed in action, leaving a young locksmith as his successor.

This coincides in the "real world" with Max Roth losing the rights to the Escapist to a corporation that prefers to revert the series to its classic style.