Out of Alcatraz
Out of AlcatrazWriter: Christopher Cantwell
Artist: Tyler Crook
Publisher: Oni Press
Collects: Out of Alcatraz #1-5
Publication Date: October 2025
Jean-Paul Sartre once wrote that we are condemned to be free. Neither a celebratory declaration nor a death sentence, it reveals a frustrating tension in the human condition. We’re tossed into a world that’s fully formed prior to us and yet we are expected, demanded, to make choices out of the options we’re given. We’re never totally independent of our circumstances but we claw at the walls trying to do what we want, afraid of the consequences of our choices, and in anguish over the never ending cycle to be accountable for who we are. It’s rough being a person. We’re never just allowed to pick a path, we’re forced to pick our paths constantly and each time we play out this tension between our freedom and our damnation.
Out of Alcatraz – by Christopher Cantwell and Tyler Crook – takes this uniquely human curse of freedom and examines it in the style of a 60s thriller, balancing constantly escalating and absurd stakes with several characters that are emotionally and physically imprisoned. Everyone has to play the cards they’re dealt, but sadly no one gets the cards they want. The result is a well paced, exciting comic that becomes surprisingly haunting by the time you arrive at the inevitable, tragic conclusion.
In the opening pages, we see a gorgeous vision of Alcatraz by Crook, contrasting the wild tides of the San Francisco Bay with the muted, gray, rigid prison at the center of the island. The watercolored sky and shine of the blue waves convey immediately that the elements are against us, bringing out the full fear of drowning in this god forsaken place and surrounded by nothing except the dark waters.
It’s an extremely effective opening and leads to another gorgeous image of two men: Frank Morris and Clarence Anglin, safe on dry land after their harrowing journey. Exhausted, beaten, terrified but maybe… free? Frank’s contemplation of their state is short lived as their escape is forever tarnished by the far reaching light emanating from Alcatraz, a reminder that prison walls are always there, all that changes is how far away you think you are.
And that’s just the first 4 pages!
From here, Frank and Clarence hightail it to a safe house, with Clarence mourning the loss of his brother out in the Bay. The two are wildly different people, Frank too jaded to deal with Clarence’s naiveté. Once at the safe house, they’re greeted by an unnamed woman who informs them that the deal of their escape was conditioned on four men breaking out, not two. As she tries to navigate that wrinkle in the plan, the FBI’s Agent Cy Michedoros and US Marshal Bob Canton investigate the escape, even though the official government position is that all the escapees drowned in the Bay. What follows is a cat-and-mouse game of sorts. Michedoros and Canton follow leads to the location of Frank and Clarence, but at the same time our former convicts and the women they’ve been entrusted to (later named Miriam) find themselves in more and more difficult situations, from picking bar fights to being caught up in someone else’s abusive relationship.
The string of escalating violence and colorful characters we meet shouldn’t take away from the fact that Cantwell and Crook are drawing from a real story. Criminals named Frank Morris, Clarence Anglin and his brother John Anglin did indeed use fake papier-mâché heads left in their bunks and a raft made out of life preservers to escape Alcatraz island in 1962. While they were never found, their raft was located on land, along with a report of a stolen car that the federal government didn’t disclose at the time. Crook’s art of the stolen car also matches the description of the real incident, as does Cantwell’s opening lines of the series that details the method of the escape.
Out of Alcatraz imagines the events that follow but the historical roots of the piece give it a compelling hook, one that feels like a “newspaper noir” in the model of Fritz Lang’s Blue Gardenia. And while we’re further removed from the Alcatraz escape than Lang was from the Black Dahlia murder, the result is still a sense of real urgency, one that makes the stakes of the story feel more exciting but also complicates the themes of freedom that Cantwell and Crooks want to explore. In fiction, everything is controlled, everything is predetermined. By the time the book arrives in your hand, it can only and will only end one way. Positioning the story as an alternate history, as an imaging of the life that might have been is itself a microcosm of the horrors of choice we make every day, the angst that we wrestle with. We’re always making choices at forks in the road, but we never get to decide what the fork is and we’re always compelled to wonder “man… what if I took that other road?”
Frank, Clarence, and Miriam are all in a tight spot with the police on them, mug shots posted everywhere and even in “freedom” from Alcatraz they’re condemned to an obligation they made in exchange for their escape. Early on, you accept this for what it is: actions and consequences. What Frank and Clarence did exactly is never quite as important as the overarching notion that they were in prison for a reason and any attempt to break with that punishment will naturally have to be corrected one way or another. In the eyes of that karmic justice coming their way, Frank’s recalcitrance is ultimately just a facade. Like Clarence, he’s terrified of ever having to go back to Alcatraz and is equally terrified by the choices he will be forced into making to stay on the outside. There’s really no winning for him.
Yet, that water becomes muddied very quickly. Clarence did not choose to let his brother drown, but it haunts him for the entirety of the book, Miriam didn’t choose to have her dreams crushed by a racist society, but it haunts her all the same. Cy and Canton, our two investigators, also didn’t choose to live in a homophobic society and yet here we are. The dynamic between Cy and Canton is by far my favorite of the book, in part because their romance has a real yearning to it that’s compounded by their cliche image as manly men of the law. They feel to me like Farley Granger and Cathy O’Donnell in They Live by Night if they were the police rather than the criminals. But again, that seems like the point: regardless of what side of the fence you’re on, everyone is trapped by something, imprisoned by something. And depending on how many walls are put up in front of you, your choices are both vital to your own sense of self and inconsequential to the world that keeps building walls around you.
Once again, Crook is great here, using the swirl of watercolors to create a sense of nostalgia for the American landscape, a picturesque dream of a life that’s complicated by the profession and sexuality of its characters. The desire is palpable but it’s foreclosed in a way it shouldn’t be, and that makes the drama all the more exciting.
Crook’s interiors are matched by an equally gorgeous presentation in this hardcover collection. Oftentimes I’ve noticed a disconnect between the exterior designs of a reprint and the contents of the story. Very few publishers and creators take the time to make the collected edition a piece of art in its own right but Out of Alcatraz is the exception. Winston Gambro’s design work is extraordinary, giving the book an art deco flair with chapter titles and logos that are reminiscent of Saul Bass’s work. The predominantly red hardcover stands out well on the shelf and captures the same 60s thriller energy that the book opens with.
Out of Alcatraz is a stellar read. A fun prison escape thriller that turns out to have a lot more on its mind that you may expect. Basic survival and a cat-and-mouse game of the law on the tail of criminals gives way to a rich look at the most vital and yet most frustrating elements of the human condition. It’s well worth picking and around the holidays makes a great gift for comic fans, or cinephiles who may want to try something new.
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