"Whenever my brother and I played superheroes, he always made me be the bad guy. Someone has to be."
—Eric Chase
The Cape is a comic series written by Jason Ciaramella and illustrated by Zach Howard. It is based on the short story of the same name by Joe Hill that appears in 20th Century Ghosts.
Eric is a twenty year old burnout, who has just lost his girlfriend and job. But in the old days he used to be the Red Bolt and with his homemade cape he could fly. Now he has his cape back and Eric finds his way up again…
The series began with a one-shot in 2010 that adapted the Hill story. It was followed by a miniseries in 2011 that served as a continuation.
In 2013, The Cape: 1969 was published. This was a prequel that showed the origins of the cape during Eric’s father’s tour in Vietnam. 2017 saw the release of The Cape: Fallen, an interquel that took place during a gap in the original series.
Not to be confused with the trope and the live action series of the same name.
The Cape contains examples of:
- Adaptation Expansion: Everything after the first issue is new material.
- Always Someone Better: Eric feels this way about his brother Nick, especially when him was accepted in Harvard.
- Antagonist Title: The titular Cape is the primary tool of the story’s Villain Protagonist.
- Basement-Dweller: Eric becomes this after breaking up with his girlfriend.
- Believing Their Own Lies: Eric is apparently convinced that Angie and Nick had something going on behind his back, continuing an implied old relationship. According to Nick, they have a reunion after Angie and Eric broke up, but there was nothing of the sort, and Angie went to him looking for some help on Eric's growing instability.
- Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Not comedic example. On one page we see some photos in Eric’s phone, which start with normal ones like a selfie, a photo of Angie, or a photo of Eric and Nick, but then turn into photos of Angie’s dead and bloodied body. And at the next panel we see Eric smiling at his phone, apparently mostly enjoying the latest photos…
- Cain and Abel: Eric tries to murder his brother only for his brother to kill him instead.
- Chainsaw Good: Eric uses a chainsaw on the engine of a plane, causing it to crash.
- Death Flight: Eric kills his ex-girlfriend this way. He later tries to kill his brother the same way only for the the same thing to happen to him.
- Death from Above: Eric uses this to his advantage at various points. One example involves dropping a live bear on two detectives.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Eric targets those he thinks have wronged him but the offenses are either minor or in his head. For example, he targets his mother for keeping the cape from him when she did it after he had seriously injured himself as a kid using it.
- First-Episode Twist: Eric becoming a murderous villain is something that happens at the end of the original short story and one-shot. The rest of the series revolves around this premise.
- Flight: The power that the titular object gives to it’s user, the ability to move freely in the air. Eric uses it in creative ways like dropping other people from great heights, throwing dangerous objects at his targets, traveling fast between cities or locations, or simply flying low in front of the people he wants to hit and taking advantage of the height and mobility to beat them up. At the end it is briefly shown that it is not necessary to wear the cape to fly, only holding it is enough.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Eric goes from being an aimless schlub to a mass murderer with his cape.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Eric is jealous of his older brother’s success in life and resents him for it.
- Hero Antagonist: Nick and the police. They are the forces that antagonize Eric. Nick in particular is personally involved and is the only one around who has any notion of what's really going on.
- In-Series Nickname: When they were kids, Nick called Eric Thunderbolt or Bolt, and Eric often calls him Nicky. Although in a much more bitter example, Eric often calls Nick "Harvard" in a derogatory way, because of his jealousy and resentment.
- Matricide: Eric kills his mother after believing she wronged him.
- Posthumous Character: Angie, Eric’s ex-girlfriend and a closer friend of Nick. She is dead at the start of the comic and his past actions still affects the life of both men.
- Also the dad of Eric and Nick. He died when they were children and caused their mother to raise them alone. His role expands in 1969 and it is shown that his actions were actually much more influential, being involved in the origin of the Cape.
- Serial Killer: Eric becomes one, targeting his loved ones, but not having any problem killing members of the police or any other collateral damage.
- Strong Family Resemblance: It is mentioned by his mother that Eric is very similar to his father. In 1969 and other flashbacks we can see that they actually have several similarities.
- Ungrateful Bastard: Eric. As Nick points out, he had a generally good life and his family loved him, never even asking him to measure up to his more successful brother or compared him with Nick. However, Eric was unhealthily jealous of his brother, and he ended up murdering his loved ones under the belief that they secretly hated or hurt him in some way.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Eric appears as this in flashbacks with his brother.
- Villain Protagonist: Eric becomes this when he murders his ex-girlfriend.
Tropes specific to The Cape: 1969
- Bequeathed Power: The witch passes the powers of flight to Chase before he dies.
- Doomed by Canon: The series follows Eric's father in Vietnam. We know from the main series that he never returned home.
- Framing Device: The story is framed by letters written to Eric and his family.
- Mutual Kill: Chase and Xuan end up killing each other during their final encounter.
- The Reveal: It’s Chase’s unit patch that gives Eric’s cape its abilities.
- Revenge Before Reason: Chase realizes that with his new flying abilities he can easily return back to his camp and return home but is too consumed with the idea of revenge to do so.
Tropes specific to The Cape: Fallen
- The Bad Guy Wins: Eric kills all the LARPers and returns home to terrorize his family.
- Ignored Epiphany: Eric finds himself having fun with the other LARPers and it seems like there’s a chance for him to rediscover his humanity. It doesn’t last.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Eric sticks one of his victims on top of a flag pole and lets gravity do the rest.
- Interquel: The original series mentions that Eric went missing for three days. This comic shows what he was doing.
- LARP: Eric discovers a group of friends doing this at his cabin. He even joins in for a while.
- Reformed Bully: Josh teased Eric when they were kids due to the latter’s appearance when he was recovering from his accident. As an adult he apologizes to Eric and tries to make a peace offering to him by giving him some comics.
