Marvel capes:
Magneto is known to wear a lot of capes.
Psylocke wore (wears?) one.
Venom had that tiny little web cape for a while.
The original Green Lantern had a cape, but the rest of his costume was so god-awful and garish, no-one noticed.
Three major characters that were eventually absorbed by Marvel debuted in the early forties, and none of them wore a cape: Captain America, the Sub-Mariner (well, except when he was being especially regal) and the Human Torch.
Over at Fawcett, though, they played it halfway and Captain Marvel had a tiny little cape that barely covered his soulders.
Nothing particularly useful to add to the discussion here, but since we’re on the subject of super-hero capes, y’all need to check out Jim Lee’s work if you’ve never seen it before. He’s just about the best artist out there right now for really cool looking capes. Pick up a recent copy of Batman to see what I mean.
ok, my cite is pretty questionable (a campaign proclaiming all “great” canadian milestones) but it has the guy who invented Superman (don’t remember the name. Shuster?) going on about the cape being used to “catch the wind and fly”. I got the impression from the early days that the whole “flight” thing was more akin to Hulk’s jumping really high and far, but using the cape to glide that extra bit. I don’t think Superheros were quite so stupendous back then. “Faster than a speeding bullet and stronger than a locomotive” isn’t really in the same league as being able to fly faster than light etc, like modern superman has done.
Superman has definitely gotten more super as time has passed. That’s one of the reasons the character was totally revamped recently (within the past 10 or 15 years) and scaled back a lot. Writing effective fiction with an omnipotent character is almost impossible. If the hero can do just about anything, lift just about anything, see just about anything, hear just about anything, crush just about anything, and shrug off just about anything, what credible conflict can you possibly come up with for him?
Ah, Heritage Minutes. That particular one showed a rather geeky young man named Joe catching a train for Cleveland because he was going to take some job there. As he rambles on and on about this new hero he’s created, his ever-suffering (and oddly accented) girlfriend Lois tries to keep him focussed. As the train pulls away, he hands her a simplfied Superman sketch. Yep, that’s Joe Shuster, and he was from Toronto and the rest of it is complete hooey. He didn’t cocreate the character until he met Jerry Seigel in Cleveland, and they kicked around numerous ideas for several years (published in their own fanzine) before getting around to Big Blue. They even used the name “Superman” for an entirely different character, though they almost certainly stole it from Doc Savage’s pulp fiction stories, in which he was routinely described as a superman (though still human, but cool and daring and whatnot).
Superman’s power inflation got pretty damn dramatic between 1938 and 1970, when Superman #233 showed the dramatic “Kryptonite Nevermore!” scene. In that issue, a science experiment inadvertantly creates a sand-based double of Superman (who ends up stealing half his power) and neutralizes all Kryptonite on Earth (which up to then had been ridiculously easy for even dime-store thugs to get hold of). It was Denny O’Neil’s attempt to bring the character away from the godlike abilities had gradually picked up, as well as make the stories less dependent of the Kryptonite plot device. It was the first serious modification to Superman in decades, but it didn’t last. Kryptonite popped up again in the eighties (there was still lots of it in space, you see) and Supes’ power levels were still way too high. In 1987, John Byrne tried a really serious alteration, but pre-Byrne elements keep sneaking back in because, frankly, why even bother trying to make Superman serious and plausible? He’s Superman, fer cryin’ out loud!
You can come up with a LOT of credible conflicts – omnipotent man vs. society, omnipotent man vs. self, omnipotent man vs. environment, etc. There’s just not many that are as visually interesting as a good ol’ darg-'em-down fistfight, or ones that a teenage audience would care about reading for $2.25-$2.99 a pop.
Also, Superman isn’t really allowed to lose significantly or even deliberately (or inadvertantly) hurt other people. But the logical consequence of all these superhuman battles in heavily populated cities like Metropolis should be lots of dead and maimed bystanders – but when has that EVER happened onpanel in a regular, Non-Elseworlds-type mainstream Marvel or DC book? (Sorry. Mini-series don’t count.)
Which is why we see writers use those old, hoary science fiction standbys: alien invasions, time travel, time paradoxes, clones, cosmic menaces, alternate dimensions, mistaken identities, betrayal by friends, unexpected power struggle with a close enemy, deaths, disappearances, disasters and resurrections.
I was going to segue this with a clever observation about how this all ties into superhero capes. Turns out there isn’t one.
The other thing the Heritage Minute fails to mention is that Joe Shuster moved to Cleveland when he was ten years old.
From Wang-Ka
IIRC, several years ago there was a graphic novel called “Batman 3-D” by John Byrne, where Batman does use his cape as mentioned above. (spoiler coming up)
Batman is doing battle with two of Two-Face’s accomplices, female twins skilled in the martial arts. After a while, Batman mutters something about ending this right now, throws his cape over both women, and knocks their heads together. Must be a technique he learned during the years he studied under Master Moe Howard.
Ok, I gotta call you out on that one. When did Venom ever wear anything but his symbiote and when did it decide a cape would be a good idea? Seems outta character.
Doctor Doom has a cape too, but it’s attached to his hood and is also kinda royal. I’ll be damned if I tell him to take it off.