It’s been a while since I last reviewed Love and Capes, the comic book series from IDW Publishing that’s written and drawn by Thomas F. Zahler. This volume collects issues #7-12 of the original series.

The thing I love about this series is the way it takes down-to-earth human-interest stories and effortlessly mixes them with traditional superhero stories. The series is basically a rom-com between a man and a woman, except the man is a superhero. It’s watching the budding romance of Mark aka The Crusader and Abby as they go through all of the things regular couples do, just with the added complication of things like supervillains, alien invasions, etc. I’m reminded of this quote about Superman from Grant Morrison:

For me, Superman has the same problems we do, but on a Paul Bunyan scale. If Superman walks the dog, he walks it around the asteroid belt because it can fly in space. When Superman’s relatives visit, they come from the 31st century and bring some hellish monster conqueror from the future. But it’s still a story about your relatives visiting.

And this is what Zahler is doing with this series. The last issue I reviewed ended with Mark deciding to propose to Abby, and that’s where this collection picks. He’s got the ring (which created himself by crushing a lump of coal into a diamond and is talking about it with his friends (who happen to be his fellow superheroes in The Liberty League). His original plan was to propose to Abby when they were at her parents’ house for X-Mas, but her sister Charlotte finds out about his plan and warns him that Abby hates the idea of big public marriage proposals, so now he was to find some other “perfect time” to do it.

In the next story, Charlotte has been gifted by Paul aka Darkblade, a scholarship to an exclusive art school in Paris, and agrees to take it, so Abby needs to find a replacement for her to work at the bookstore. This turns out to be harder than she expected, so Mark steps in to work there, as he doesn’t have much to do as an account until tax season. It starts off good but then they both come to realize that spending too much time together is annoying for both of them. Eventually, she finds a replacement, so they can go back to their normal routine, but then Marc and the rest of the Liberty League get abducted by some alien warlord and taken to a planet across the galaxy where they’re forced to fight various supervillains for the alien’s amusement. This ends on a cliffhanger, where Mark gets left on the alien as a shapeshifting supervillain takes his place on Earth.

In the conclusion to that story, the shapeshifter almost manages to ruin Mark’s life, as he’s about to break up with Abby, but Mark returns to Earth in time and with the help of Darkblade and Amazonia, exposes the imposter. Then Mark and Abby get back to the business of trying to find the proper venue for their wedding as well as the perfect wedding dress for Abby.

In the fourth story, Abby thinks that she can’t really be part of Mark’s life unless she knows what it’s like to be a superhero. So with the help of Dr. Karma (this series’ Dr. Strange analog), she temporarily gains powers similar to Mark’s (although she secretly gets the option to keep the powers permanently). Reluctantly, Mark teaches her how to use her powers, but in a very heart-felt tale, Abby comes to realize that the great responsibility that comes with having great power, is too overwhelming for most people, and decides to leave the superhero business to Mark, by relinquishing her powers and returning to her normal life.

Amazonia, of all people, decides to try to mend fences with Abby by inviting her and Mark to her magical mythical homeland, where she reigns as a princess and has her royal seamstress design a unique one-of-a-kind wedding dress. This, of course, does not go off without a hitch but ends with the two women getting drunk together and fully burying the hatch between them.

And in the final story, it’s the wedding day. Except Abby wakes up in an alternate timeline, eventually figuring out that a supervillain has traveled back in time and killed Mark. Her love for Mark is somehow the reason that she’s the only one who remembers the original timeline. With the help of the Liberty League, she’s sent back in time to the day of the murder, which is coincidentally the day that she and Mark had their first date. This is a clever way for Zahler to show us how this relationship started (since the series began with them already a committed couple), all while telling an exciting story with cosmic implications.

I don’t think I’m spoiling anything to say that Abby succeeds and the proper timeline is returned, and the wedding proceeds as planned (with a few more twists before it concludes).

Some interesting new characters are added to the series throughout this collection, we meet Bluestreak, a young superhero with superspeed whose womanizing ways are a contrast to Mark’s more mature attitude. There’s Jason, he’s the man who becomes Abby’s new assistant at the bookstore. We meet Abby and Charlotte’s parents and their annoying brother, Quincy, who ends up as Mark’s Best Man (since Mark can’t ask Paul, as they’re not supposed to know each other in their secret identities).

Love and Capes is a revolutionary superhero series that I think you’ll enjoy. Chacebook rating: FIVE STARS

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