Is there any background or history to the convention of superheroes having capes? I understand I’m talking about fiction and the suspension of disbelief but I find it hard that a hero would go through so much training physically and mentally then wear something which would easily trip them up in a dangerous situation.
There was a post about this several months back, but I’m too lazy to look it up. Anyway, a lot of it, I believe, just comes from show. Cpt. Marvel’s cape, for example, isn’t really long enough to get in the way, but it helps make him seem more “regal” when it’s flapping in the wind.
Another big aspect to some capes for certain heros is the whole “illusion” thing. With the likes of Batman, it can make him seem a lot bigger and more menacing when he jumps down on a group of thugs with a fourty foot wingspan. Also, like a lot of loose clothing in fighting, it can help conceal your attacks, as well as conceal your body from an attack. Matadors do the same…you waive the little red blanket out in front of the bull, they charge it aiming for you, but instead get thin air. Then you stab them with a sword. See, it’s got it’s uses.
So basically, if you know what you’re doing with it, it’s not that much of a hinderance. It’s like a lot of heros who wear trench coats for no real reason. They’re big, they’re bulky, and they get in the way…but they look cool, and on occassion you can wrap them around your opponents head, so they’ve got their positives.
Also, the cape allows the artist to better convey a sense of motion; this is especially useful for flying characters.
Also, Batman’s cape is bulletproof.
I think the cape is mostly for style, appearance, the fluid way it moves. Lately, in modern movies (about heroes other than “super”), unbuttoned trench coats are used (see The Matrix, and almost anything Nicolas Cage has done in the last five years.
It seems Spawn put his cape to good use in his movie by making himself appear as a cornerstone of a building.
The first superhero costumes were based on trapeze artists, who usually wore a cape on their way up to the platform but ditched it (to spectacular effect) before grabbing the trapeze bar.
I always wondered how Superman kept his attached; as drawn by Curt Swan, it was just sort of tucked in to his collar.
In the 80s, there was a brief fad of giving new superhero characters long, flapping overcoats instead of capes, but it didn’t last, for the most part.
Most of Marvel’s well known heroes don’t have capes – Spiderman, Wolverine (actually most of the X-men), Daredevil, The Hulk, etc etc.
When I was a kid that really turned me off Marvel – I liked capes on my superheroes, dammit!
Nowadays I prefer without. Aside from Batman most of the time capes seem a bit frivolous.
All the postings about the capes being used for visual effect, to show motion clearly and to look mysterious, are right.
In addition to circus acrobats, I would think the cloaks were also inspired by earlier heroes from silent movies…Zorro and the Three Musketeers were immensely popular and probably contributed to the idea.
If youve ever watched 1943s SPY SMASHER, you can see how much a cape can get in the way. If some of the best stuntment in films (Tom Steele, Dave OBrien) found Spy Smashers thin little cape a nuisance, then Batman`s floor length mantle must be incredibly awkward to wear when doing acrobatics and kung fu fighting.
I would suggest the use of the cape in the early comics (circa 1930s and 1940s) for such characters as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel etc. as opposed to the more modern creations (circa 1960s and beyond) like Spiderman, Daredevil was more intellectual than practical.
I feel that those early comic book creators wanted to establish a link between their creations (totally new at the time) and the Romantic (not love romantic but literary Romantic - completely different) heros of history and literature of the past like the Three Musketeers, Ivanhoe, Lancelot, Sir Walter Religh, Sir Francis Drake, etc (For that matter old paintings of such romantic heros as Columbus on the deck of his ship and George Washington crossing the Delaware River dipict these heroic men in capes).
One of the links the cartoon creators tried to establish was moral. Most of the early comic book heroes had a morality that was something of a throw back to a bygone age, another tended to be a stilted more old fashioned language and finally there was the costume. I believe the cape was an intellectual link to that imagined past by the comic book creators.
To be sure, later the writers came up with purposes for the anacronistic capes, but initially I just think it was a reminder to the reader of the early comics who tended to associate capes with literary and historical daring-do.
TV
I liked the Cape on Wonder Woman - Lynda Carter, on the show.
I know it didn’t have any protective or defensive/offensive value, it just dressed her up, on those rare occasions when WW needed to wear formal attire.
The hazard issue was addressed in Alan Moore’s ‘Watchmen’. One of the heroes - Dollar Bill, I believe - gets his cape caught in a revolving door. He gets stuck and criminals shoot him.
Bob Kane drew on several sources while creating Batman - including the Zorro serials that were still fairly recent at the time. It’s one of the reasons that the movie Bruce Wayne and his parents were walking home from when they were killed is always a Zorro movie, no matter what decade the retelling is set in. Like Zorro, Batman uses his cape to make himself a harder target - it’s harder to tell where his body is behind all the material - and to make himself seem bigger and less human - Batman’s cape is often used to create the illusion of wings and to make him look scarier. He’s also been known to use it to slow a fall almost like a parachute.
As for Superman and the rest, the circus story Krokodil related and the homage to swashbuckling heroes of the past pretty well explains it. Dashing heroes almost always wore capes, therefore, superheroes would, too. Except the Flash. And Hawkman, but he’s got wings…oh, and Captain America, Spiderman…heck, most of Marvel’s heroes…
Spawn’s cape is a tool that he can control to move around and choke people with and other lame stuff.
And many of the caped characters were redesigned at one point or another to be cape-less (Batman during Knight’s Quest, Superman during the Rise of the Supermen and again in Superman Blue, Thor during the Onslaught period of time, as well as in his Thunderstrike incarnation), but they never, ahem, flew, and reverted to the cape wearing styles we know and love.
Alan Moore mentioned this in Watchmen as well.
The Shadow wore both a trenchcoat and a cape. As he often was only seen from a distance (often while firing a pistol in each hand), the clothing didn’t get in his way often, and it made it more difficult to tell where his body was under all the fabric.
Batman-Yes, it strains believability somewhat. However, the cape is part of Batman’s dark creature of the night appearance. In Frank Miller’s Batman Year One, Bat’s goes after a group of corrupt cops. The readers see what actually happened-Bats jumps from above, and one cop shoots through his cape. The cops remember a shadowy creature with huge wings. One cop swears that he shot the monster, but that the bullet had no effect.
The Cape-A superhero from the Tick universe, The Cape wore a cape covered in armor plating. It was an effective defence but led to severe back problems.
In a recent book on Zorro it was claimed that, although Zorro didn’t use a cape in the original stories, Douglas Fairbanks used it in his silent movie version (the first Zorro movie) to such impressive effect that it came to be widely copied. I suspect this is the true link between real life and the use of capes by superheroes.
Other possible sources were The Shadow (from the pulp magazines, lomg before radio), and the stage depiction of Dracula. Dracula on stage had to have a cape for a scene where he turns into a Bat – the self-standing cape actually covers the disappearance of the actor playing Dracula throufgh a trapdoor onstage.
Years later Batman drew inspiration from many sources – Zorro and the cloaked Shadow among them, and ended up with a dark cape. Since it also helped him look batlike and mysterious, I suspect, it became essential.
Finally, Superman began the tradition of superheros in brightly-colored capes for a downright commercial reason. As Jim Steranko pointed out in The Steranko History of Comics, comic books in which the brightly-colored Superman appeared on the cover (bright blue and red suit, bright red cape) sold a lot better. The publisher aqctually researched this and concluded it m,ade economic sense to put that flamboyant, eye-catching suit on the covers. So Superman (and later imitators) have bright, pointless capes because it made the comics more visible, and sold better.
C’mon… they’re wearing, at best, spandex tights.
The capes are to keep them warm!
When listing early cape-wearing influences, there are a couple of biggies we shouldn’t leave out:
The Scarlet Pimpernel. Zorro, and later Batman, borrowed heavily (OK, stole) from this character. Wealthy aristocrat who is secretly a night-riding, cape-wearing, masked avenger. Sound familiar? The Pimpernel was featured in movies beginning in the 1910’s, and carrying on through the 30’s. Don’t remember the movies? Surely you remember the Daffy Duck parody, The Scarlet Pumpernickel.
Sherlock Holmes. Influenced the look of The Shadow, which influenced Batman. The original caped detective.
In addition to the reasons presented in the other posts here, I think many artists just find capes fun to draw. Artists have always amused themselves with drapery studies (look at Da Vinci’s sketchbooks), and comic artists can do lots of that kind of thing if the hero wears a dozen yards of fabric dangling from his neck. Clearly, Todd McFarlane took this to extremes in Spawn.
I have heard that capes fell out of fashion well and truly by the 1930s or 1950s(?), because Italian facists wore them and anyone wearing a cape in Italy during this time was beaten up. Anyone know if this is true?