User:Doompuppet/Escapeman Adventures

Escapeman Adventures is a webcomic started in November 1998 by C. H. Wolf, which originated as a photocopied comic in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Summary
Escapeman Adventures follows the weird, wacky, and sometimes interesting exploits of a super-powered electrical escape artist named Escapeman and his ecclectic group of friends. Of course, some folks want to kill Escapeman for mysterious and/or vague reasons.

History
Escapeman Adventures originated in 1998 as a print comic locally distributed at comicbook shops in Wilmington, North Carolina. Written and illustrated by C. H. Wolf, the comic focused on an out-of-work superhero who was trying to make it in the business. The main character, Escapeman, resembles a lightning bolt with large, orb-like eyes and the letters "ESC" boldly written across what could be considered his chest.

The inspiration for Escapeman came when C. H. Wolf was brainstorming in an attempt to come up with a two page comic strip for a local Zine called "Nocturne". Drawing some inspiration from Rob Schrab's comicbook "Scud: The Disposable Assassin", C. H. Wolf created what would later transform into an early version of Escapeman.

After the initial release of the two page strip in the Nocturne Zine, there was local interest in seeing more of the character. From this, a xerox printed comicbook simply titled "Escapeman" was produced. This lasted for 10 installments, after which the project was terminated due to what seemed to be the death of the local comicbook scene. Once accompanied by such local work as "The Future Phatness", "Captain Fear", "Nuclear Garden", and various other works, Escapeman eventually became the last of its breed and a change was needed.

In the year 2000, all issues of Escapeman were moved to a website on Doompuppet.com. The title was then converted to a weekly ongoing webcomic under the new title "Escapeman's Weekly Grind". Strips were more or less one-shot jokes.

After some success with the webcomic version of Escapeman, C. H. Wolf moved to the popular webcomic hosting service Keenspace, and changed the title once again to "Escapeman Adventures" for reasons unknown.

During this time, "Escapeman Adventures" crossed-over with "Road Waffles", a webcomic created by Eight, a long-time aquaintence of C. H. Wolf. During this cross-over, readership of "Escapeman Adventures" grew, supplimented by Eight's fanbase.

At this point, the webcomic became serialized. A storyline called "Escapeman vs. Nimborr" saw Escapeman reuniting with old classmates as a vicious cloud monster named "Nimborr" ran amok in his home city, New Capital.

This storyline proved popular, perhaps because of the giant monster's involvement. "Escapeman Adventures" experienced a surge in readership, and was soon at the top of several webcomic ranking sites like Buzzcomix.net.

C. H. Wolf followed the Nimborr storyline with "Culture Shock", a storyline involving medieval characters from his online game, DragonSpires. Though DragonSpires itself had its own fanbase, this storyline didn't strike a positive chord with readers, and the hits unfortunately plummetted.

Soon after this downward spiral, C. H. Wolf moved the webcomic yet again, this time to it's own domain at Escman.com. At this time, C. H. Wolf had become a bit disenchanted with the process of creating webcomics, and expressed this by killing off the main character, Escapeman.

Escapeman had long represented the creator himself and in many ways the stories mimiced his life, though of course converted to a fantasy world of super-heroes and robots. This meant a rebirth of C. H. Wolf himself as well as the webcomic.

The title continues to this day.

External link

 * Escman.com

Category:1990s webcomics Category:2000s webcomics Category:Webcomics