Escapo - Hardcover

Pope, Paul

3.58

559 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1940878004 ISBN 13: 9781940878003

Publisher: Z2 Comics, 2014

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“Well worth picking up!” - Publishers Weekly

“A quick must-read title from a talented graphic novelist.” - Library Journal

“a brilliantly tinted hardcover edition” - The Washington Post

“This lavish new edition presents Pope's audacious strokes in their best light.” - The Miami Herald

From the mind of three-time Eisner Award-Winner Paul Pope comes Escapo! Like a feverish mash-up of Fellini films, Heavy Metal magazine, and classic Jack Kirby comics, Escapo tells the tale of a circus escape artist extraordinaire, who can escape from any situation — even from Death himself! However, there is one force even more powerful than the Reaper which Escapo must face. A meditation on life, love, and mortality, Escapo is not to be missed!

Originally published in 1999 and long out of print, the new Z2 edition of Escapo is fully colored and redesigned in the French BD format, featuring 50+ pages of bonus content. Included here is the rare two-page alternate ending, only seen in the French edition, as well as a new ten-page story and added pin-ups and sketchbook content by Paul.

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Review:

Artist Paul Pope continues to amaze readers with his bold, confident, fluid style. In this, his most concise and singular narrative since 1997's One-Trick Rip Off, he presents the life of the world's greatest escape artist, Escapo. Pope plays the mythic quality of the character to full effect, showing two distinct moments in the character's life: his struggle with death and his struggle with unrequited love. As written stories, these fables may seem simple. But the artwork holds such subtle expression that Escapo's small victories and minor losses will stay with you for some time. Not so subtle is his pop-star rhetoric that fills the first several pages of essays and articles. You'll find that this attitude--part Warhol, part Dali--infuses the whole work with a flavor of great confidence. It's no wonder The Village Voice said, "Pope's idiosyncratic style and methodology make him a unique figure, even among his most talented peers." --Jim Pascoe

From Publishers Weekly:

A new graphic novel by a talented and original young American comics artist, this is an archetypal story about love, fear and the looming inevitability of death. The central character is a Houdini-like circus escape artist who enters and gets out of an ominous array of huge, deadly, beautifully imagined devices. Pope (The One Trick Rip-off) includes two variations on the story of the escape artist. In one, Escapo finds himself face to face with death in the form of a cackling, grimly persistent skeleton. In the other, the protagonist, overcome by his love for a beautiful woman utterly uninterested in him, considers submitting to his deadly props and being done with it all. Pope's combination of spare, allusively poignant prose; a hair-raising, dramatically gestural black-and-white drawing style (influenced by Pope's love of cartoonists Milton Caniff and Hugo Pratt, and of Japanese manga); and a thoroughly tongue-in-cheek view of Escapo's brand of inadvertent heroism allows him to unpretentiously juggle his grand themes. Pope has created an unusual kind of comic book hero here, a very reluctant fellow forced to confront both the futility of love and the possibility of his own melodramatic death. The book also includes an essay on Pope, another (short) fiction and an index to his other works.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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