The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Rosa, also known as Rose Saxon, has become relatively successful writing romance comics for Sam. She is taken aback when Sam calls to inform her that he will be bringing home the love of her life.

Rosa has been busy at work with the text for a new story for the June issue of Kiss Comics. The story is going to be called “The Bomb Destroyed My Marriage” (545), based on a story Rosa had read in Redbook about the wife of one of the men working on the Manhattan Project. It used to be that Rosa worked from Sam’s scripts, but she didn’t like that, didn’t like how open-ended they were with regards to how the panels should be set up. Rosa liked more direction than that.

Rosa’s career in comics had come slowly. When Tommy was in Kindergarten, she first came to grips with the “true horror of her destiny” (546). Sam had just taken over as editor at Gold Star and would come home begging her to do some artwork for him. Later Sam would tell her how her work far exceeded the best of their full-time artists. Sam told Rosa that they were considering doing comics about women for women and he wanted to know if she would be interested in working with him. Rosa accepted immediately.

It was good for Sammy, too, getting back into work in comics. Before the job at Gold Star Sam had come close to leaving her. He had gone so far as to pack a suitcase, cursing and blaming her for the rut his life had been driven into. However, the next day he returned with the job at Gold Star as editor in chief and “he allowed the world to wind him in the final set of chains, and climbed once and for all, into the cabinet of mysteries that was the life of an ordinary man” (547). The night Sammy offered Rosa the job was the night he gave her own golden key—“a key to herself, a way out of the tedium of her existence as a housewife and a mother […]” (547).

After Sammy hangs up, Rosa tries to make sense of what she just heard. She takes out fresh linens for the sofa, to transform it into the bed where Joe will sleep, but she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror and changes course. She fiddles with her hair. She changes clothes, partially. She begins to cook a macaroni and cheese casserole. She puts on a record that she doesn’t pay much attention to. She is surprised to discover the couch doesn’t have sheets on it yet. She tells herself to calm down, that Joe doesn’t know anything about suburbia. Rosa isn’t happy with the mac & cheese, but it’s one of Tommy’s favorites, and she doubts that Joe will recognize the “socioeconomic message” (550) inherent in the dish.

Rosa goes back to her table and sets to work. She hardly notices them pull up a couple of hours later. Joe carries Tommy to bed. Rosa undresses Tommy while the boy sleeps, trying not to wake him. Back downstairs, Rosa, Sam, and Joe sit around the table. Joe is hungry and enjoys the casserole. While Joe eats, Rosa finally has the opportunity to get a good look at him. Sam tells Rosa about his day. Joe tells the two of them that didn’t invent the idea to jump from a height using rubber bands: A man named Theo Harden successfully jumped from a bridge in Paris back in 1921. Sam mentions that Joe got arrested and Rosa’s dad helped get him out.

The phone rings and Sam answers it. It’s a reporter wanting information about Joe and the day’s events. Sam tries to get off the phone quickly and not divulge anything, but the reporter keeps him on the line for a while. In the meantime, Rosa tells Joe how much Sam missed him and that he had hired private detectives to find him. Joe tells Rosa he knows: Joe paid one of the detectives off after the detective found him. Joe admits to missing Sam a lot, too. He is disappointed to find that Sam is very unhappy. Rosa asks Joe what he was trying to prove with the jump; Joe says he’s unsure what he was trying to do. Joe then tells Rosa that Tommy doesn’t know about his true relationship with Joe. Rosa is surprised that Joe knows. Joe reminds Rosa about her letters to him during the war and says he pieced the truth together. Rosa is furious with Joe but doesn’t let the rage out because she notices the shame on Joe’s face. Rosa says that as far as Tommy knows, Sam is his father. Joe contradicts this, surprising Rosa.

After Sam gets off the phone and comes back to the table, the question as to what the point was of Joe’s theatricality resurfaces, because even the reporter wanted to know. Joe answers, “I guess this was the point. For me to come back. To end up sitting here with you, on Long Island, in this house, eating some noodles that Rosa made” (558). Rosa asks Joe why he didn’t just call them. Joe answers that he was afraid of how they would receive him. Sam responds, “Christ, Joe, you fucking idiot, […] We love you” (558). Rosa feels that Sam and Joe want her to tell them how everything is going to go, hoping she will provide them all with a Rose Saxon script in which everyone gets the exact lines they want. Instead, she asks them, “What do we do now?” (559). No one answers for a few moments. Finally, Joe speaks up, asking, “Is there any dessert?” (559).

Sammy and Rosa are in bed together. Sam is writing on a notepad. Rosa asks Sam an ambiguous question: “Well?” Sam answers that he likes it, responding to the new comic Rosa is working on. Sam finds it compelling and twisted that Rosa gave the Bomb a womanly figure. Sam then asks Rosa a question: “Is he out of his mind?” (561). Rosa wants to know if Sam is referring to Tommy or Joe. Sam says, “He’s been leading a secret life for the last ten years” (561). They discuss where Joe has been, who knew of Joe’s existence, and the fact that Tommy first saw Joe at Tannen’s Magic Shop. They both realize that the eye patch Tommy has been wearing was Joe’s idea, for misdirection, and that Joe was the one forging Rosa’s signature.

For so many years Rosa had come to peace with the firm belief that Joe was dead, but now Joe is back, alive, and sleeping on her sofa. Rosa says that Joe does not have a mental illness and then questions her and Sam’s own “sanity.” Sam cuts off the conversation. Rosa asks Sam what he’s working on. Sam is working on a science fiction story titled “Weird Planet,” about an explorer, Spaceman Jones, landing on a strange planet. The indigenous occupants are friendly and show Jones everything except one building that is strictly off-limits. Curiosity gets the better of Jones and one night he slips out to inspect the building. Inside the building, Jones discovers a monstrous beast; the beast roars and the city shakes. Jones flees. The next morning everyone acts as if nothing happened the night before. Jones returns to the building to get more information. The beast is 20 feet tall with large, golden wings, ragged hair, and a lengthy beard. The beast is bound with atomic chains. Rosa doesn’t understand the significance. Sam explains that Jones has discovered God; God has gone “mad.”

Rosa wants to bring the conversation back to the present. She wants to know how Sam was able to free Joe from being arrested. Sam sticks to the story about Harkoo and Rosa’s mother calling in some favors. Rosa knows that Sam is lying, and she knows that he has been lying to her for years. She knows that Sam goes off on dates with other men. The conversation turns to the upcoming Senate committee. If Harkoo could help Joe, then maybe he can help Sam, too. Rosa and Sam discuss some of the particulars that are not in Sam’s favor, like the fact that many of Sam’s comics are violent. That’s not what Sam is worried about. He tells Rosa that there is a chapter in the damning book Seduction of the Innocent that is all about him, even though he isn’t mentioned by name.

Sam asks Rosa if she thinks Joe will stay for a while. Rosa isn’t sure and asks whether or not they even want him to stay. Sam asks Rosa if she still loves Joe. Rosa returns the question and then asks Sam if he still loves her. Sam tells her she knows that he still loves her. Rosa gives Sam a sisterly kiss. Rosa tells Sam that Tommy knows that Sam adopted him and that Joe never told Tommy that Joe is his biological father. Before Rosa drifts off she asks Sam “What about you? Are you going to stay for a while?” (568). If Sam answered her, then she didn’t hear him.

Joe finds Rosa more beautiful at the age of 35 than when he first met her. He is still in love with her. In Rosa’s presence, Joe realizes how dead he has been over the past years. He notices just how much of a couple Sam and Rosa are, and he doesn’t want to interfere or mess that up. Rosa seems to avoid him, and Joe tries to deduce the reasons why.

Eventually, Joe spontaneously asks Rosa to forgive him. He apologizes for everything. Rosa explains to Joe that, while it hurt when he left for the navy, what is really difficult to forgive is that he didn’t come back. Joe says he didn’t know how to come back. Then, suddenly, Joe is surprised to find Rosa kissing him. Joe is pretty sure they’re going to go all the way. But Rosa breaks it off. Smoothing her hair and dress, she says that maybe it’s just not the time yet. Rosa asks Joe how he got off the ship. Joe explains that he was never on the ship. He paid someone to place his name on the list. Joe asks Rosa what they are going to do. Rosa doesn’t answer at first, but then she says that the first thing they should do is find out where they are going to put all of Joe’s comic books.

Sam and Joe are counting Joe’s comics. Sam counts 97, but Joe says there are 102. Sam says they’re going to need a warehouse to store all of Joe’s stuff. There is some pressure to get everything moved because Joe has been evicted from the building and has to have everything out. Sam tells Joe to just throw them all away. Unlike Sam, who has always belittled and looked down on comic books in a way, Joe sees them as being much more. In fact, “comic books had sustained him during his time on the psychiatric ward at Gitmo [Guantanamo Bay]” (575). Reading comics helped Joe break his opiate addiction.

It is nearly eight o’clock in the evening. Sam has come over to see how Joe is doing with packing. Joe recalls that when Sam had walked in, Sam seemed surprised to see him. Joe knows that that is because Sam and Rosa, and himself included, thought that Joe was going to leave them again.

Sam looks through the pages that Joe drew again and is astounded by the beauty and genius of Joe’s work. While Sam is looking through Joe’s drawings, Joe reflects on how when he came back to New York in the fall of 1949, he had two goals in mind. One was to begin work on a long story about the Golem. The second was to see Rosa again somehow. The idea for the Golem started coming to him in his dreams, and there he slowly built the story before drawing it. He hoped that this project would pull the art form out of the shadows and more into people’s consciousness. The more he worked, the farther away from his second goal he got, but Joe felt that the process of telling the story “was helping to heal him” (577). Eventually, Joe began to tell himself that his plan wasn’t two-fold; rather, it was a two-step plan, as by completing the story about the Golem, he would be better prepared to see Rosa again. By 1953, however, Joe’s powers to heal himself were spent: “He needed Rosa—her love, her body, but above all, her forgiveness—to complete the work that his pencils had begun” (578).

Sam asks Joe if there is a script. Joe answers that there is one in German. The project has come to mean so much to Joe that he is a little nervous about letting Sam look through his pages. Sam intends to look over everything and sends Joe out to get food. Before Joe leaves, Sam tells him that he and Rosa feel that Tommy should know that Joe is his father. Joe says he could talk to him. Sam says perhaps all three of them could do it. Joe thanks Sam. He says he doesn’t deserve to have a friend like Sam and that he knows what Sam has sacrificed. Sam says he wishes his intentions had been purely altruistic but he also “married her because I didn’t want to, well, to be a fairy. Which, actually, I guess I am. Maybe you never knew” (580). Joe admits that this is perhaps the reason Sam did what he did, but it doesn’t explain why Sam stayed.

As he is out ordering food, Joe thinks about what Sammy just revealed about Sam and Tracy. Joe figured that Tracy was just a rebellious, curious experiment of Sam’s, but now he realizes Sam’s nature and what that meant for Sam’s and Rosa’s marriage:

Not only had Sammy never loved Rosa; he was not capable of loving her, except with the half-mocking, companionable affection he always had felt for her, a modest structure, never intended for extended habitation, long since buried under the heavy brambles of indebtedness and choked in the ivy of frustration and blame (581).

Joe understands even more the sacrifices Sam has made for him, for Tommy, and for Rosa.

Joe thinks about all the comic books he had upstairs and about the life from which Tommy freed him. He thinks about all the materials he and Sam used to try and create their own golems. Joe is amazed at the importance of comics, of golems, and the need for escape, and he is astounded at the Senate’s investigation and the description of escapism as something pernicious: “As if there could be any more noble or necessary service in life” (582).

Joe brings food to Sam. Upstairs, Sam greets Joe with the declaration that they have to publish Joe’s story. Sam thinks it’s one of the greatest things he’s ever seen, but he does criticize that there is an awful lot of Jewish stuff in it. Joe says he has been reading up a lot on Jewish mythology and beliefs. Joe shows Sammy a book titled Myth and Legend of Ancient Israel. Sam likes the idea of a Jewish superhero and argues, tongue-in-cheek, that all superheroes are Jewish: “Superman, you don’t think he’s Jewish? Coming over from the old country, changing his name like that. Clark Kent, only a Jew would pick a name like that for himself” (585). Sam thinks that if they finish Joe’s story, it could finally be something that Sam could feel proud of.

While Joe and Sam are talking, Anapol arrives. He’s looking for Sam and Joe. Joe notices how much Anapol has changed: He is balder and with larger jowls. Anapol and Joe shake hands, and Anapol asks Joe about what all that “narishkeit” (Yiddish for foolishness) was all about the other day. They all get to talking about business. Anapol feels that comic books are dead and that the Senate committee is going to kill what little is left. Anapol informs Joe and Sam that he killed off the Escapist a while back because of the lawsuit with Superman, which surprises both Sam and Joe and even gives them a little nostalgic regret. Anapol wants to sell Empire Comics while he still has a chance. Anapol tells Sam and Joe goodbye and wishes them luck.

Sam says he wishes he could buy Empire Comics. Joe is surprised by this confession. Sam brushes the idea away. Joe and Sam get to talking about how they should never have stopped making comics. Sam asks if Joe killed any Germans like he had wanted. Joe admits he did and that it made him feel terrible. The conversation turns to money, especially the savings account that Joe has been keeping for his family. Joe has accumulated nearly a million dollars. Joe gets the idea of using the money to buy Empire Comics. Joe really wants to do something good for Sam: “With the stroke of the pen, he would be able to hand Sammy, according to the ancient mysteries of the League, a golden key, to pass along the gift of liberation that he had received and that had, until now, gone unpaid” (594). However, for sentimental reasons and because Joe cannot yet let go of the past, Joe is reluctant to use the money and tells Sam so. Sam tells Joe he understands and that he should just hold on to his money.