The Escapist (a director’s cut scene for Vinnie De Soth and the Sorority Poltergeist)

“So, if you’re the supernatural expert, why is he walking ahead of us?” Tandi inquired.

“Because when you have someone who’s literally incapable of staying dead, that’s the best person to have walking point in a haunted house,” Vinnie De Soth reasoned.

“And the reason we’re not splitting up to search the house faster …?” Tandi persisted.

“Is because some of us have seen enough horror films that we’d rather avoid strategies that will lead to painful deaths for all of us, however temporary they might be for some of us,” Dreamcatcher Kokopelli Foxglove shot over his shoulder, not even bothering to look behind him as he continued to pace forward and tap the walls of the hallway with “shave and a haircut” knocks, pausing just long enough each time to allow for a “two bits” response that, as of yet, hadn’t come.

Tandi narrowed her eyes at Dream. “You know, I’ve been trying to figure you out –”

“I wouldn’t,” Vinnie warned.

“Oh, really?” Dream finally turned to face Tandi, his own squinting eyes making his smile inscrutable to her. “And what have you figured out so far?”

“You’re an … archetypical superhero,” Tandi tested out the syllables of the recently learned word on her tongue, checking Dream’s reaction to see if she’d used it correctly, “but you don’t fit any … superhero archetype.”

“And how do you figure that?” Dream followed up, his smirk as enigmatic as ever.

“One, you’re not Superman,” Tandi counted off on her fingers, “because you’re not a big blue Boy Scout. That’s your friend Jay. Two, you’re not Batman, because you’re not a broody, driven Dark Knight. That’s that … Mr. Epitome guy.” She seemed not to notice the slight tightening of Dream’s jaw muscles at the mention of that last name. “Three, you’re not Wolverine, because you’re not a hated-and-feared freedom-fighter. That’s … mmmm, Josh,” she practically purred at the thought of her original liberator, De Brown Streak. “And four, in spite of what everyone says, you’re not Spider-Man, because even though you also have a sense of humor, it’s not because you’re a sympathetically put-upon everyman, who faces his uphill struggles with a brave but sad smile. That’s … well, no offense, but that’s you, Vinnie.”

“We could still be working while we’re having this conversation,” Vinnie shut his eyes tight, as he pinched the bridge of his nose, “or better yet, we could not have it at all.”

Dream raised his hands and spun on his heels to resume his forward movement, but he couldn’t resist voicing further comment for long. “Somebody’s been doing some homework,” he assessed in between knocks.

“I’ve been apprenticing in the adult entertainment industry under your mom,” Tandi beamed proudly. “She showed me some of the comic books she read, to learn how to understand you when you were growing up.”

That remark halted Dream in his tracks for a few seconds, before he started walking again. “Don’t suppose she had any trade paperbacks of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World stuff, though,” he guessed, without a backwards glance.

“Oh, God,” Vinnie rolled his eyes. “I actually had to read some of those comics. One of my clients was convinced that his original artwork was possessed by the spirit of Jack Kirby.”

“So, what, it was a hoax?” Dream’s curiosity got the better of him, and he rounded on Vinnie to meet his gaze.

“No, the artwork was genuinely possessed,” Vinnie shook his head, “but by the spirit of Vince Colletta.”

“HA!” Dream barked, his braying laugh startling Vinnie and Tandi both, and echoing throughout the empty house. “Goddamn … those felt-tip inks of his …”

“It wouldn’t have been as bad,” Vinnie muttered under his breath, “except they weren’t even good comics …”

“They were … uneven comics,” Dream equivocated wincingly, before chuckling ruefully. “As a writer, Kirby was a great artist. I mean, yeah, some of his dialogue reads like an Ed Wood script, but when he was on …” here, he chewed his lower lip in brief contemplation, before shrugging his shoulders and returning to his knocking.

“No, what?” Tandi approached Dream. “You were about to say something.”

Dream rubbed the back of his neck. “Kirby was a World War II vet,” he sighed, his back still turned to Tandi and Vinnie, “like my grandpa. And like my grandpa, he spent a lot of time trying to … make contact with the younger generation … with the children of his generation. I mean, both him and Stan Lee did, back in Marvel’s early days, but Stan was slicker … he always came at it from more of a market-savvy approach. Jack, though … I mean, this was a guy who’d grown up during the Great Depression and fought Nazis in Europe, and here he was, trying to make this … spiritual contact with the kids who had come after him, the hippies and the flower children. You can see it in Fourth World titles like New Gods, with the arcs of characters like Highfather and Orion … it was all about building bridges between weary old warriors and hopeful young pacifists.” He craned his neck up, to regard the house above and around them. “In a way, we’re just doing the same thing here, aren’t we? Except in reverse … we’re trying to make spiritual contact with something that’s already come and gone.”

“Is that how you see yourself, then?” Vinnie cocked his head to one side, his professional interest now piqued. “As a … generational medium?”

Dream blinked. “Never thought of it that way before,” he inhaled sharply. “But no, I don’t really see myself as Highfather, nor as his adopted kid, neither. If anyone, I’m the kid he gave away to Darkseid … the one he traded for Orion. Because if I am a ‘superhero archetype,’” here, he made hand-quotes in the air, “then I figure … I’m Scott Free.”

“What, Mister Miracle?” Vinnie snorted skeptically. “The … escape artist?”

“Yeah, the escape artist,” Dream countered challengingly. “The one who was once a card-carrying member of the world’s greatest team of superheroes. Oh, and who also happened to be married to a dominant, big-bodied powerhouse. Gee, I wonder why I might identify with a character like that. And while we’re at it? I prefer the term ‘escapist.’ It has broader connotations.”

“So … what are you trying to escape from?” Tandi peered inquisitively at Dream.

Dream simply stared at Tandi, with what appeared to be a stunned expression. “What does any escapist try to escape from?” he answered her question at last, with a rhetorical one of his own, as if he could barely believe that she even needed to ask. “Reality, of course.”

“Reality,” Vinnie repeated dubiously, diplomatically restraining his reaction to arching his eyebrows and clearing his throat. “That’s … a bit of a tough one to escape from, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, but I’m an Agent of Chaos,” Dream reminded Vinnie. “I’m literally made out of impossibility,” he slapped his chest with his open right hand, “and imagination,” the flat of his palm applied a follow-up smack to the bicep of his left arm, creating a muted metallic thumping noise. “So, do I think I can escape from reality? You bet … because technically? I don’t, can’t and shouldn’t even be able to exist in reality in the first place. That’s how most escape artists’ tricks work … the audience watches, and wonders, how the hell is that guy ever gonna get out of that trap, but what they don’t know – or, even if they do know, what they don’t see – is how he’s at least halfway free from the trap to begin with.” Dream suddenly flashed a manic grin that Vinnie found disquieting. “You’re saying I can’t get out? I’m saying I’ve already got one foot out the door.”

Who's Vince Colletta?

He was a much in-demand inker from back in the old days of Marvel, who frequently inked over Kirby's pencils.

The point of controversy comes from the fact that Colletta was so in demand as an inker precisely because he worked fast, and he worked fast by ... well, the polite way of putting it would be "glossing over" the pencils of Kirby and other artists.

Many of Colletta's critics simply say instead that he "ruined" Kirby's pencils, and indeed, if you compare Kirby's pencils to the inks that Colletta applied to them, there's an incredible loss of artistic detail.

One critic actually accused Colletta of not even bothering to ink over Kirby's pencils with a brush, and instead, using a felt-tip pen to ink them.

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I'm surprised that Vinnie of all people would think that reality is hard to escape from... Things from beyond reality seem right up his alley. And knowing his neighborhood, I think there are probably a few people escaping from reality through chemical means in just down the alley as well.

As always, an interesting bit of self-examination from Dream!