I first got turned onto Joe Hill’s writing with Locke and Key, which made me fall in love with American comics, and then led to me devouring his novels (Heart-Shaped Box is my favourite). So when Cute Comic Book Girl told me The Cape, a one-off graphic novel based on Joe Hill’s short story, was even better than Locke and Key, I snapped it up and inhaled it within thirty minutes.
Comic books are damn pricey.
I paid Twenty-five bucks for The Cape. It’s five bucks cheaper on Amazon, but I like supporting a handful of high-street stores so I don’t mind the extra cost.
That’s basically a dollar a minute for entertainment.
People complain that the movies are expensive, but when you throw down thirty bucks at the movies you’re not paying a dollar a minute for a story (plus you get a soda and some popcorn).
Even vinyl records, another notoriously expensive hobby, is cheaper than that – plus the replay value is higher.
About The Cape:
- Writer: Jason Ciaramella
- Artists: Zach Howard and Nelson Daniel
- Published: 2007
- Publishing House: IDW
- Running length: one-shot (4 issues)
- Rating: 5/5
- Available to buy: Amazon
Do I regret spending a dollar a minute to read The Cape?
Hell to the no.
Especially considering I immediately reread it and recommended it to everyone (including you right now).
There are plenty of times I regret dropping dough on a comic book (looking at you, Ice Cream Man). But this certainly was not one of them.
So why did Joe Hill’s The Cape make me so hard?
The Cape is one of my favourite explorations of villainy in comic book novella form.
It’s also a fantastic study in jealousy – particularly brotherly jealousy.
If you liked the movie Unbreakable, you’ll love The Cape.
Story in a nutshell:
Dude gets into a tragic accident aged eight, lives a loser life, but many years later in adulthood he discovers the cape he used to pretend he was a superhero can actually make him fly. So he uses the cape for evil.
The main character, Eric, is the ultimate bad guy and we’re rooting for him to be caught and killed all the way through.
At first you do not want to sympathise with Eric and we really are just playing a waiting game for him to get his comeuppance.
I got so annoyed with him that I had to laugh.
Eric plays the bad guy to a tee and it becomes irritating to the point of absurdity – who is this much of an evil douchebag?
But just when you don’t think you’ll sympathise with him – you do!
Joe Hill and Jason Ciaramella writes villains so well.
They make you see and understand why he becomes the bad guy – and, boy, does he have his reasons.
Jason Ciaramella, who does other horror works from Joe Hill’s comic imprint along with Magic The Gathering books, has teamed up with Zach Howard and Nelson Daniel as artists for The Cape. And what a duo!
Writer and artists compliment each other so well.
They are all masters of movement and mood.
When you read The Cape, you can feel the rain.
You can see the past alongside the present.
You can feel the crash of a car and the splat of bodies hitting the ground.
The Cape is a sick family revenge fantasy.
It’s all about:
What if a man whose life went nowhere, filled with pent-up regret, resentment, rage, and jealousy, suffering from the loss of his father, got to be a super villain to avenge his childhood self?
Having read The Cape, I realise my love of the genre is more nuanced than simply loving justice. Because I loved seeing the revenge fantasy from the other side, from the anti-hero or villain’s side of things.
Sure, I wanted justice. I wanted to see that little shit get what he deserves. But a sick part of me wanted to see how far this unfair revenge warpath would play out.
You just wanna see how much destruction the main character can cause before he’s brought to a satisfying end. I won’t spoil whether he’s brought to justice, but I’ll say, as you probably expect, that he sure does wreak some havoc.
Another aspect that Ciaramella, Howard, and Daniel excel at is pacing.
I haven’t read Hill’s original short story, but I imagine the pacing in that is equally unrelenting.
Throughout the reading experience, I was constantly making this face: ?
Why should writers read The Cape?
One reason for writers is to witness an expert demonstration of rendering loss in fiction.
Joyce Maynard teaches us to show what you’ve lost, not just the condition of loss.
And the team do this superbly well, allowing us to feel a sense of sadness that mounts alongside the chaos as we peek in on the relationship the main character once had with his brother.
The mirroring between past and present is genius.
We see a past infused with love, two brothers playing superheroes outside in the prime of their boyhood. But when that same fantasy is taken to the real present-day world and infused with hatred – then shit gets real.
It’s amazing how something that pulls nostalgia and reminiscence so artfully can be so fast paced.
And while the pacing is thunderously fast, The Cape doesn’t resist deeper analysis.
I personally see the brothers representing the unconscious split in the individual between childish id and mature superego.
If you’re looking for a quick but thoroughly enjoyable comic that turns superhero conventions on their head, I highly recommend you check out The Cape.
You can read The Cape here.
