Two Jewish cousins in 1940s New York create a comic book superhero, the Escapist, and the novel traces the relationship between escapism, art, and survival. Chabon published it in 2000 and won the Pulitzer. It treats comic books with the same seriousness that literary fiction usually reserves for itself. The Houdini-inspired escape sequences are some of the best set pieces in recent American fiction.

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.