The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Joe and Sam are off to the Kramler Building, where Sam’s boss, Sheldon “Shelly” Anapol, has his offices. Anapol’s business is selling novelty items; his business is called Empire Novelty Company, Inc., and is located on the fourth floor. Anapol’s brother-in-law, Jack Ashkenazy, owns a business in the same building called Racy Publications, Inc.

Sam greets Anapol, who is only wearing socks and garters; Anapol is a gruff, balding man who is estranged from his wife and practically lives at the office. He listens to Sam pitch his idea for a comic book. Sam opens his pitch with a question: “What are they charging you over at National for the back cover of Action Comics this month?” (81). Sam is directly addressing Anapol’s business sense. Anapol doesn’t take the bait and wants to know who Sam has brought with him. Joe is out in the hall, hastily putting together a portfolio and visible through the frosted glass partition of Anapol’s office. Joe is behind because he wasted some time earlier fiddling with a box of Amazing Midget radios (Josef was interested in radios before magic and the art of escape).

Sam tells Anapol about Josef and then quickly directs Anapol back to his question. Anapol calls his advertising manager, Murray Edelman, and discovers that the people at Action Comics are charging him seven times the going rate. Murray tells Anapol that there is only one reason for them charging so much, and that’s because of Superman. Sam uses this to segue to his idea of publishing his own comic book. Anapol doesn’t think for long before he tells Sam he needs his brother-in-law in on this. Anapol has his secretary call upstairs for Jack. It just so happens that Jack has been looking for his own Superman. Sam jumps at the opportunity, promising that he can have a Superman by Monday. At this point, Anapol wants to meet Joe. Joe comes in. Sam wants him to show Anapol what he’s drawn. Joe is reluctant, saying he needs a little more time with it. Anapol frowns at the drawing. He says, “My new Superman is the Golem” (86). Sam also has Joe tell Anapol about how Joe studied art at the Academy of Fine Art, in Prague, knowing that his boss will find Joe’s education credentials impressive. Anapol wants Jack to have a look at the drawing.

Jack comes in and is instantly impressed with Joe’s artistic talent; however, he, too, doesn’t like the golem as the subject of the drawing. Sam argues that Joe has only ever seen one comic book, but that’s okay, because he, Sam, has read all of them, and knows all about them. Jack wants to bring his editor, George Deasey, in on it, to which Sam vehemently refuses: He is worried about Deasey taking over or disliking the idea. Eventually, Sam convinces Anapol and Jack to give them the weekend to come up with something really great.

As Joe and Sam are ready to leave the office, Joe bargains with Anapol about fixing a shipment of radios for a penny each. Jack gives Joe a piece of advice about comic books: that “half-bad is maybe better than beauteeful” (89).

Joe and Sam are outside the Kramler Building, having their first official confab about their partnership. Sam attempts to convince Joe that this is a good opportunity: “Yes, this is good […] I just hope to God we can do it” (90). Joe tells Sam that he trusts him. Sam discusses how they are going to need help, and that he knows a few guys who can possibly aid them. While they are walking, Joe wonders at the novelty of exile. Sam and Joe begin brainstorming a character. Sam is adamant that their character cannot fly, wanting to stay as far away from Superman as possible. They come up with ideas such as Hawkman, the Fox, the Shark, Lionman, Tigerman, Catman, Wolfman, the Owl, the Panther, the Black Bear, the Monkey, Gorillaman, the Gibbon, the Ape, and the Mandrill. They consider heroes who can move at the speed of light, turn into ice, or control electricity or acid. Sam puts a stop to the brainstorming. He states that the character’s power isn’t the important part. What is truly important is the why: why the hero does whatever it is he does. He uses Batman as an example. While thinking and walking, they run into a friend of Sam’s named Julie Glovsky.

Julie’s brother creates comic books and has had some small success already. Sam asks Julie what he’s been doing. Julie is off to see his brother, which suits Sam’s plans as he wants to see the brother, too. Sam tells Julie a little about his plan, exaggerating the truth to make it sound like more of a done deal than it really is. He adds that they’re going to need a place to work. Julie recommends they go to the Rathole.

The narrative shifts back to 1935 and we learn a bit more about Sam’s history. His father, Professor Alphonse von Clay, aka the Mighty Molecule “(born Alter Klayman in Drakop, a village in the countryside of Minsk), had abandoned his wife and son soon after Sammy’s birth” (99). Sam’s father is called the Mighty Molecule because he is only 5’2” tall but well-built and very strong. He works in the circus and sends Sam postcards and news clippings about the circus and his show from time to time. Sam’s mother met his father when she was 30 in the summer of 1919. The Molecule is very health-minded, eating only legumes, raw vegetables, and seafood.

Sam’s father is visiting, during one of those rare times he actually comes around, and takes Sam for a walk after he and Ethel have a fight. While they are walking, Sam broaches the subject of going with his dad: “You can’t leave me with her. It isn’t healthy for a boy my age to be with a woman like that” (101). The Molecule is taken aback. He tells Sam that nothing makes him happier than the walks together, and then calls it an absurd idea.

That afternoon, the Molecule brought home several freshly picked squash. Sam was in the kitchen when he brought them in. The Molecule rinsed one off, snapped it in two, and took a large bite from it, telling Sam that the squash is good for his legs. Sam’s mother always scorned the Molecule’s dietary regimen, and so she boiled his squash until it was completely cooked into a mash. That was the subject of Sam’s parents’ fight earlier and why his dad rushed out of the house late at night, taking Sam with him.

Sam brings the subject back up, saying he could work at the circus too. The Molecule amuses him but points out that Sam’s legs are too weak. “Well, jeez, I mean, I had polio, Pop, what do you want?” (103), Sam says. They go to a hammam, a Turkish bath. The Molecule is upset because he was there when Sam had polio; Sam doesn’t remember this, and Sam’s mother never told Sam the truth. The Molecule tells Sam he was there to help Sam walk: “I made you walk. Until you cried. First holding on to me, then on to the crutches, then not with crutches. All by yourself” (106). It is a revelation for Sam that his father did so much. Sam wants to know if the Molecule will take him along then.

Ethel and the Molecule never really got along. At the age of 45, she still looks like she did when she was 30. She still finds the Molecule physically attractive. When he visits, they fight, but at night she invites him to her bed and they make love.

The Molecule promises he will take Sam with him when he leaves. But when Sam wakes up, his father has already fled. The Molecule left a note saying he found an engagement on the old Carlos circuit in the Southwest.

The Molecule continues to send Sam postcards and things but never returns “within a thousand miles of New York City” (108). The night before Joe’s arrival, the Klaymans received a telegram informing them that the Molecule was crushed under the wheels of a Deere tractor he was trying to upend and was killed.

The Rathole is a once-elegant apartment that is now a bachelor pad. The official residents are Julie’s older brother, Jerry Glovsky, as well as Marty Gold and Davy O’Dowd, who, like Jerry, are living a bohemian lifestyle and trying to make money as artists.

Sam, Julie, and Joe knock and are greeted by the cranky Mrs. Waczukowski, who won’t let them in. Joe mentions how he could get them in if he had his set of picks. His abilities as an escape artist are brought up. Joe gets another idea. With some acrobatic deftness, Joe leaps from the newel of the baluster of the building’s front steps and swings himself high enough so he can leap to the next platform (since the ladder is stuck and won’t retract). He then climbs to the top and lets himself into the apartment through the window. Below, Sam and Julie hear a woman scream.

A girl brushes by Sam and Julie as they enter the apartment and disappears down the stairwell. Joe is standing in the middle of the room, looking sheepish. The girl forgot her purse. Julie doesn’t think it looks like a purse. Sam rummages through it in spite of Joe’s disapproval. It does seem to be a purse, and Sam finds several calling cards with the name Rosa Luxemburg Saks written on them. Sam comments that he thinks the girl wasn’t wearing any panties when she ran out the door. Joe confirms she wasn’t, and it comes out that Joe saw the girl naked, lying on a bed, as he came through the window from the fire escape. Julie wants Joe to draw what he saw. Joe won’t do it. Julie says he’ll pay him a dollar to do it. Joe needs the money, so he acquiesces, though he gets Julie to agree to reluctantly pay $3. Joe finds an envelope lying on a table and sits down to draw. Joe draws a very artistic and careful stencil of the girl lying on her stomach on the bed. Julie complains that Joe didn’t draw her breasts but pays Joe anyhow.

The narrator explains how many years later, after Julie’s death, the drawing would be found and eventually put on exhibit in the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco as one of Julie Glovsky’s earlier works.