Why do superheroes wear capes?

Okay. But I don’t do windows or Pre-Crisis characters. (Aargh! I’m leaving out Nightwing and Flamebird! Oh, well…)

Nonfliers DC: Hourman (I), Huntress (I & II), Batgirl (I & II), Robin (I, II & III), Amazing Man, (aw, heck – and 'Mazing Man), Sandman (I), Raven… uh… Azarael, Anarky… uh… gee, this is harder than it looks…

Nonflier Marvel: Black Panther occassionally sported a cape in Priest’s run…Scarlet Witch…uh… hmf.

Someone will be along shortly to embarass me with obvious omissions.

Black Panther’s cape was, at best, a half-cape. I’m not sure why they even gave him one, for all the effect it lent.

Hey, even Krypto the Superdog had a cape!

Robin had a cape, but Nightwing didn’t.

Captain America didn’t have a cape, but Nomad did.

At least Henry Pym was consistent. Neither Ant Man, Giant-Man, Goliath, nor Yellowjacket had capes, although Yellowjacket did have those shoulder fin things.

Doctor Strange had a cape (and always looked weird when he took it off, I thought). So does the Spectre and certain other cosmic entities (Eternity, for one).

Dead Man looks like he should have a cape, but it’s just the high collar on his trapeze leotard.

The Phantom Stranger has a trenchcoat, not a cape.

The Vision and the Scarlet Witch have His & Hers cape sets.
To answer the “Who was first?” question, though, I think it was Superman. When Shuster and Siegel created the Man of Steel way back when, I believe he was the first comic superhero. And the cape was there from the beginning, so I think he’d be first.

In the 1970’s, they explained that Superman compressed his Clark Kent clothes and put them in a special pocket in his cape.

I miss stuff like that in comics…

The hell? How does he have them on under his suit then?

Aesiron, he compressed his Clark Kent clothes and put them in a pocket of his cape. I think you read it the other way around.

Der. I should’ve caught that. Thanks, jayjay.

I posted a topic in General Questions a few months ago asking why capes went out of fashion.

The best answer I got was that with the invention of automobiles, they got slammed in doors.

Heh. I’d think that would count more against scarves, vide Isadora Duncan…

Well, I didn’t really buy that. Trenchcoats get caught, too.

Ultimately, because it catches attention. Action Comic sales went up when Superman was on the cover (they actually researched this – se Steranko’s “History of Comics”), so they decided that Superman should always be on the cover. That guady, useless red cape makes the cover particularly eye-catching (especially in contrast with the blue suit). So capes became popular because they helped sell comics.

Of course, the cape was there in the first place because it’s dramatic and cool, as pointed out. I don’t think the Batman’s cape as homage to Zorro didn’t develop until much later (there sure as heck wasn’t a Batman/Zorro connection when I was a kid gfrowing up in the 1960s), but capes had long been a part of the pulp tradition the comics grew out of – look at all the Pulp covers of THe Shadow with their dramatic, swirling capes. (By contrast, the first Zorro story didn’t have a cape on the cover - I think that grew out of Dougklas Fairbanks’ movie interpretation).
So the progression is capes are dramatic, so Supes got a cape, which boosted sales, which encouraged more capes.

Most writers and comic historians that I’ve read seem to feel that it was all Superman’s fault.

Basically, Superman rewrote the rules for comics. Until he came along, the most “superhero” kind of guy you had was the Scarlet Pimpernel… or, perhaps the best example, Zorro. Most adventure comics were, at that time, based around cops, detectives, two-fisted crime reporters, cowboys, and suchlike.

…and then came the guy from Krypton, who could lift cars, beat up anyone, rip down steel doors, and leap an eighth of a mile.

At the time, comics were a highly derivative field. If something sold – or was done by a very talented artist – other companies would imitate the character, and other artists would imitate the artist.

…so super strong guys who fought crime began to appear. In order that you might not mistake them for detectives or cowboys, they wore brightly colored circus suits, and most of them wore capes.

Capes had a variety of practical purposes, too. Considering the horrible quality of the art in many comics, capes were a handy visual device. Perhaps the artist has drawn UltraMan in a running position. UltraMan is running. Yowsah. If we see his cape billowing behind him, we know he’s just jogging, but if that cape is straight out streaming behind him, we know he’s just passed Mach II…

Batman, perhaps, has gotten more mileage out of his cape than any other superhero. First of all, it makes him look bigger when it billows out around him. He can wrap himself in it to make him look creepy and cloaked. He can “cheat” it into big dramatic bat wings. And, best of all, he seems to carry several different capes with him, for different situations. When he’s parked on a rooftop or cornice with the moon behind him, he wears his “Posing Cape,” which is at least twelve feet long and several yards wide, billowing out behind him in the wind…

…but when he’s mixin’ it up with the Joker, he wears his “Fighting Cape,” which can’t be more than three feet wide, and barely reaches the backs of his knees.

(this tradition probably reached its apex with the “Spawn” superhero, whose cape is in fact a living creature, and varies in size at any given time from ankle-length to several city blocks…)

Weirdly enough, in the real world, Renaissance swordsmen studied and developed a variety of fighting tricks with their cloaks and capes, involving tangling an opponent’s arm or weapon, snapping the cape in their faces, or snarling an enemy’s entire head, right before you cold-cock him or stick him through the middle like a cocktail shrimp. In the comics, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a superhero do anything like that.

FYI other DC non-fliers who wore capes: The Red Tornado I, Phantom Lady, The Atom I, Sargon the Sorcerer, Dollman and Dollgirl, Zatanna (sometimes).

That’s all I can come up with for now.

Actually, there aren’t really that many superheroes that wear capes. I’m having trouble thinking of a single MAJOR Marvel Universe hero who wears one.

Guess it depends upon who you consider “major”, Fibber. Thor, Moon Knight, and Doctor Strange all have or had their own titles. As noted above, the Vision and the Scarlet Witch are also caped. The biggest Marvel villain, Doctor Doom, also wears a cape. But overall, I think you’re right, capes are rarer in the Marvel universe.

Nighthawk and Valkyrie (just to name Defenders) also wore capes. I don’t think either of them could fly by themselves (Valkyrie had any one of a number of flying steeds).

I wouldn’t call Moon Knight a major character, though. Yes, he had his own title, but it was a limited series, by design rather than circulation problems. He had a pretty cool setup, though, I’ll give him that.

I wish I still had my Who’s Who. This is tough going from very long-term memory…

Moondragon was caped. As was Adam Warlock (who was, after all, the major heroic character in a fairly important Marvel saga). If you can call those furry boa thingies that hang off of the Creeper a cape, he has one.

You’re right, though. Marvel does seem to be less cape-able than DC.

Well, yeah. Most of Marvel’s major stable came decades after DC’s success with Superman.

In the quarter-century between the birth of Superman and that of the Fantastic Four, enough non-caped heroes had been successful that a cape wasn’t ABSOLUTELY necessary… and I really think Spider-Man and the Hulk in particular would have looked pretty freakin’ silly with capes…

Bat-Package???

:smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

I just snorted Diet Tonic Water out my nose. Happy??

I like Abby’s answer.

For the most part, super-hero capes were used for one reason…time. In the early days, comic book artists used capes and skintight uniforms because they were quicker to draw then street clothes. As most were traditionally trained, it was easier to draw a nude figure and add the lines to make the costume design. Same with capes. It was faster to hide part of the character with a cape then it was to draw the figure. IIRC, most of the early costumes were based on circus acrobats and trapeze artists costumes of the time, most of which included a cape, much as boxers wear a robe on the way to the ring.
As for reasons within the comics, most are after the fact. Somebody decided that it was stupid for the hero to run around with a cape without a reason, so they created a situation where the cape served a purpose.
As for Batman’s cape, no cite, but i recall reading that Bob Kane originally based the scallopped edge on one of DaVinci’s flying machines (the ornithopter?[sp])

Peace-DESK (recovering comic geek)

capes were in fashion when some of the comics started. in the forties a man wearing white tie would also wear a cape.

the cape also gives the illusion of movement.

Doctor Strange went from cape to trenchcoat for a while, and might I say he looked quite bad-ass in the coat…for a magician. Not sure Doug Henning could have pulled it off.