Happily ever after (with more to come)

It is no secret that I’m a huge fan of Love & Capes, the superhero comic masquerading as a romance comic (or is it a romance comic hiding inside of a superhero comic?) Truth to tell, I never get that right, however, I honestly don’t care which one it is, because it totally works.

This is easily one of the top five comics currently being published in today’s market. It is the love story of Abby Tenyson (the owner of a small, independent book store) and Mark Spencer, a mild accountant (who happens to be the Crusader, the most powerful superhero on the planet). The book has been coming out for a couple of years, and I’ve just acquired the recently-released issue #12 of the series where Abby and Mark finally tie the proverbial knot. Writer, artist Thom Zahler, manages to crisply capture realistic dialogue that conveys both the romantic byplay between the lovebirds as well as heroic dialogue of the heroes.

To be sure, the heroes themselves borrow heavily from established DC & Marvel characters but only so much in the shorthand of their superficial appearances. The story, as well as the characters themselves are pure Zahler. With this issue, Zahler did a truly wicked-cool marketing maneuver, he gave long-time fans the opportunity to attend the wedding of their favorite characters, and (for a small fee) to have Zahler (a respectable caricaturist as well as a top-flight cartoonist) insert their image into the church as the couple exchanged their vows. He produced a pair of covers (one with Mark Spencer and a second with The Crusader), as well as an interior two-page spread (which became a for-sale print).

Now how cool is that?

If you haven’t seen Love and Capes yet, you are going to want to pick up a copy. Want to give it test run before investing your hard earned money? no problem, Zahler has been producing a Free Comic Book Day issue for the past couple of years (which is how this writer first discovered the comic), proving that making sample comics available on Free Comic Book Day really does work.