The Cape team poses with a signed page (L - R: Jason Ciaramella, Zach Howard, Joe Hill)
This weekend at WonderCon, IDW Publishing and writer Joe Hill announced a prequel to their hit 2011 miniseries The Cape. ‘The Cape: 1969′, will be a four-issue series and debut in July, and go back to Vietnam to tell the story of the Cape before its most recent incarnation. Here is what Hill told FEAR.net about the upcoming comic.
“The Cape was sort of like Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer if the dude could fly. And originally it just started as a one-shot that was based on the short story in my book 20th Century Ghosts, and the scripting was handled by Jason Ciaramella. Jason’s a great writer and an endlessly curious guy, and he looked at that first story and he said, ‘Well, what happens next?’ And he became such a pain in the ass about it that I said, ‘Why don’t you figure out what happens next?’ So he went and wrote this great miniseries. Over the following four issues, you get to see the mental disintegration of this guy, basically a lonely burnout, who’s given an unbelievable power and it’s more than he can handle. So it was a very satisfying exploration of the character. But one thing we haven’t explored is how did he get the power in the first place. So later this year, The Cape: 1969 will come out, and it will provide a back story for why The Cape allowed Eric to fly in that story.”
“It’s dark, and it’s dark in a different kind of way. When I was a kid, I loved Haunted Tank, and a lot of these Weird War comics from the 1970′s. It’s a little bit like that. It’s a little bit like a Weird War comic.“
