HANCOCK. THE INCREDIBLES. THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO. METEOR MAN. M. A. N. T. I. S. THE CAPE...?
There’s a history of superheroes and movies not (directly) based on any four-color periodicals, and now, the National Broadcasting Company’s adding another face to this unaffiliated, unrelated league of justice. According to the Hollywood Reporter , the peacock’s picked up the pilot for a new light TV drama titled THE CAPE.
The official synopsis goes a little something like this…
Whoa whoa… slow down. “Fictionalized version of Los Angeles.” Dude, I’ve been living in LA for more than a year and it feels mighty fictionalized as is.
The biggest prior credit of Tom Wheeler, the creator, is the 2005 mini-series EMPIRE. That show was about the rise of the Roman emperor Augustus and, somehow, I’m not anticipating much of a thematic link between the two. Obviously, there’s not a lot to go off based only on this rather general premise. Like a riddle from the sphinx, you can read much into the choice words employed here. There’s a very wide latitude over how an ex-cop vigilante fighting to exonerate himself and gets his kid back can be played out.
Personally, I’m hoping for something that’ll be a true heir to BLANKMAN, the 1994 Damon Wayans movie that was, more or less, about a grown-up Steve Urkel fighting the mob in his pajamas.
--Tom Pinchuk is the writer of UNIMAGINABLE for Arcana Comics and HYBRID BASTARDS! for Archaia Comics. Watch out for the HYBRID BASTARDS! hardcover collection this March - - available for pre-order now on Amazon.com.
