Creator: Thom Zahler
Ship: Mark Spencer / The Crusader and Abby Tennyson
(Loosely based on Superman and Lois Lane)
Love and Capes is printed and sold as a comic book, although older issues are eventually put up on the
official site as a web-comic. It chronicles the relationship of Abby and Mark.
Abby Tennyson is an ordinary young woman who owns a bookstore. She thought that her boyfriend, Mark Spencer, was just a mild-mannered accountant, but he turned out to be a little more than meets the eye.
That's right: he's the famous superhero The Crusader, which means that Abby now has to learn how to deal with issues like Amazonian ex-girlfriends, evil doppelgangers, and time-travel. Plus, there is the greatest challenge of all to overcome: his mother.
Zahler states on his website that he was inspired by the television series
Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, and this comic has that same blend of action-romantic-comedy. The actual heroics take a back-seat to their effects on Mark and Abby's relationship, but there's still plenty of weirdness to give the feel of living in a comic book. A giant meteor is threatening the Earth? It must be Wednesday.
Most of the characters are very obvious expies of DC and Marvel personalities, although each is given their own unique twist. There are also many subtle (and not-so-subtle) allusions to the various superhero mythologies and the comic book industry. Half of the fun is in guessing who is based on who, as well as spotting the various references -- not to mention, the terrible puns that are occasionally slipped in.
Love and Capes is a beautiful combination of the fantastic and the mundane, the natural and the super-natural. It has a goodly amount of emotional tension and character development, but at the same time, it doesn't beat you down with too much drama. The tone is light and fun, reveling in all the bizarre things that frequently happen in a typical comic book, without being overly silly or serious. In a way, it's like a love letter to the superhero genre, and an excellent example of how a "
They Do" superhero story can work.
