Comics Review: Love And Capes

From the title of Thomas F. Zahler's six-issue mini-series, Love And Capes (Maerkle Press), the comics-savvy reader might easily assume the book is in the vein of that critically acclaimed alt-comics heavyweight, Love And Rockets, but that is far from the case. Billed on the cover as "A Heroically Super Situation Comedy," L&C is an engagingly lightweight romantic humor comic that has more in common with Tom Beland's True Story, Swear to God than it does the Hernandez Bros.

The Capes part of the title is repped by Mark Spencer, a.k.a. the Crusader, a Superman-styled figure who works out of Deco City. (How much like Superman is the Crusader? So much so that he has his own Captain Marvel-styled imitator!) In his secret identity, Mark's a mild-mannered tax accountant ("I just do taxes at super speed," he explains at one point. "Except depreciation tables. Man, are those things complicated.") and it's in that capacity where he meets and falls for bookstore owner Abby Tennyson.

Within the first five pages of L&C #1, he reveals his superhero identity to the blond and lithesome shopkeeper, who now has to contend with parts of the guy's life (the tendency to suddenly drop everything when superhero duty calls, the pressure of keeping a Really Big Secret, a large-breasted Amazonian ex-girlfriend who could squish Abby like a grape if she wanted) beyond the bounds of most dating relationships.

As the sitcom subhead suggests, Zahler primarily plays this basic set-up for punchlines. Both Abby & Mark are given confidantes (in the former case, it's her sister Charlotte; for the latter, it's a black version of the Batman named Darkblade) with whom they can comically process the pitfalls of their particular relationship, and Zahler typically paces each page like it was the set-up to a series of one-liners. (It'll probably come as no surprise to read that Zahler is selling copies of an unproduced teevee script on the same page as he does pb collections of his more serious Raider action comic series.)

The plots are typically the stuff of romantic sitcomedy –- meeting the boyfriend's folks, struggling over getting each other a Christmas present, setting up the single sister with one of Mark's co-workers, etc. -– with the superhero underpinnings meant to add a smidgeon of comic zest to the essentially sweet proceedings.

As a scripter, Zahler has an easy ear for dialog (wish he didn't make his word balloons so translucent, though) and a facility with the quickly established character joke. Though he peppers his script with periodic fannish comic book japes, he's also smart enough to make 'em secondary to the situational punchlines. As a writer, Zahler plays fast and loose with his universe, occasionally alluding to comic book characters beyond the pages of Maerkle Comics. When Abby asks her Crusader boyfriend if he has any weaknesses, for instance, he notes that the "last guy I knew who told his girlfriend his weakness wound up seeing it splashed across the front page of a great metropolitan newspaper." Mark has reason to be wary of keeping too many secrets with Abby, we already know, since it didn't take any time at all for her to spill the beans to her sister Charlotte.

Article Author: Bill Sherman

Bill Sherman is a Books editor for Blogcritics. With his lovely wife Rebecca Fox, he has recently co-authored a sudsy comic fat acceptance novel entitled Measure By Measure.

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