Capes #1

History

Writer Robert Kirkman launched Capes as a companion piece to Invincible, which was already gaining traction at Image in 2003; he paired with artist Mark Englert, whose earlier work on a Savage Dragon backup had drawn positive notice from readers and critics. The series was planned and executed as a three-issue miniseries from the outset, with Kirkman using the Capes, Inc. concept — superheroes as employees of a government-funded, then privately operated corporation founded in the 1960s by Big Brain and the Meteor Twins — to explore workplace comedy within a superhero framework. Following the miniseries, Kirkman expanded the Capes characters into backup stories beginning in Invincible #27–31 and continuing through additional issues; those backups were later collected alongside the original three issues into a trade paperback released in 2007. In 2025, Kirkman and Englert returned to the property with a remastered version featuring substantially redrawn art and revised dialogue, followed by all-new stories beginning with issue #7.

Trivia · 8 facts

• First appearances: Bolt (Bruce Bolt), Commander Capitalism, Kid Thor, Claire Voyant, Big Brain, Captain Cosmic, the Comet Twins (Ed Malone and Marshall Winslow), and the villain Titan all debut in this issue.
• Sam Haze is indexed by the Grand Comics Database as appearing in this issue; no further narrative detail about the character was recoverable from available sources.
• Written by Robert Kirkman with art and cover by Mark Englert; published by Image Comics, cover-dated September 2003, as the first issue of a three-issue miniseries.
• The issue contains a five-page preview of The Walking Dead #1, published the same month (September 2003), making it one of the earliest print appearances of that series and its characters.
• Capes, Inc. is depicted within the story as a corporation that employs superheroes for profit, founded in the 1960s by Big Brain and the Meteor Twins — a concept that runs through the entire miniseries and its subsequent Invincible backup stories.
• The series is set within the Invincible Universe; Capes, Inc. characters later appeared as supporting figures in large-scale storylines within Invincible, and the Capes backup ran in Invincible starting with issue #27.
• The three original issues, plus a 72-page backup story from Invincible, were collected into a trade paperback in 2007 titled 'Punching the Clock.'
• In November 2025, Kirkman and Englert released a remastered version of Capes #1 with substantially redrawn panels and revised dialogue, relaunching the series as an ongoing under the Skybound/Image banner.

Cast · 6 characters

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