Interview conducted by and copyright Edward Gross
In The Cape, a framed, disgraced cop is wanted for murder, but he stays on the run trying to clear his name and, to give his son hope, brings the boy's favorite comic book hero, The Cape, to life to make a difference in Palm City.
In reflecting on the show's origin, series creator Thomas Wheeler explains, "For a long time I had wanted to do a story about a father who assumes his son's comic book hero identity. I thought of it as a feature, but the thing that was tripping me up was that I didn't have the hero. I thought you could do a lot of cool, emotional work with those characters in that sort of context, but without the hero to ground it, it didn't feel complete. I wanted something iconic, something straightforward so that it felt like a throwback. I'm not sure how The Cape of it all came about, except for the symbol of it.
"We talk a lot around here about what The Cape represents, the mythology -- it sort of represents the shadows, this anonymous feeling and what that brings out, and a kind of darkness. I was just shocked, because it was one of these few untapped iconic images that I thought worked. For this particular world, I thought costumes would be fun, but I also wanted to limit it as it's not a super-powered world. Amazing things will happen and The Cape does amazing things, but we try and keep it within the envelope of science or just a touch of mysticism. It really is a costumed crime drama. Once I had The Cape, it kind of fell together."
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