Champions United!

Wow, so this is a week late - there were site issues and as you can see, the images are still presented funky. Oh well, England prevails.

This was a week of cameos and the formation of Champaign’s first (and last) super team. Muffy returns from earlier this year and Dan Dougherty’s Beardo and Adam Foto’s Dragon and Goat stopped by.

Plus, we learned a bit about the enigmatic Cowl and her powers, and Cape with his lack thereof.

Cape & Cowl © Matt Knicl 2008
www.shanesmithart.com

Of course, saying that is not ground-breaking. The people that participate know that. What I am amazed at is these “intelligent” future leaders display incredible acts of stupidity all under the pretend veil of “It’s college” and alcohol.

If you participate in Unofficial, you’re a child. That’s the crux of it.

Read the rest of this entry »

I Left My Cape In Champaign-Urbana

In celebration of Valentine’s Day, Cape & Cowl give each other presents. Cape’s questionably-titled book was another sub-plot, too. We replaced Friday’s strip with the one for NIU. Read the rest of this entry »

By now you have all heard of the shootings yesterday at NIU. We all have friends, loved ones, or family members in that region. This hits close to home.

My artist, Shane Smith is a student at NIU and lives in Dekalb. Our comic strip, Cape & Cowl, also runs in NIU’s Northern Star. While he is okay, talking to other people in the area it is clear that it will take time for things to fix themselves. For some it never will.

As a resident advisor, one of the things I told my kids was to call their parents. I know it seems like a no-brainer, but if you haven’t called home yet I encourage you to touch base with your family. When they hear “student” and “shooting” we all know they imagine what would happen if they lost us.

To the right is our comic strip for today. It’s not our best strip, but I think it’s our most important strip.

Cape & Cowl © Matt Knicl 2008
www.shanesmithart.com

Crisis Of Finite Capes

This was a week of shameless cameos. There is interesting back story to these strips, especially the ones involving Rough Rider and Blue Lama. The first was a jab at Understanding Comics‘ Scott McCloud, a writer whose comics are nonfiction explications of how comics “work.” Read the rest of this entry »

Every Cape Wants To Rule The World

This week Cape becomes evil, as all long running comic characters do, really for no other reason than to mix things up. I figured I would get that out of the way early on. It leaves more time for the inevitable Death of Cape and otherhackneyed plot lines. Read the rest of this entry »

Cape’s Myth-behaving

Following the traditional week-long story arch formula of comic strips, this week Cape & Cowl try to drum up some suitable in-fight jokes. This was a fun week to write.

This week featured the introduction of a new member of the Cape & Cowl family, Muffy the Vampire Killer, a totally unique character that has never ever ever been thought up before. *ahem* Read the rest of this entry »

A Cape By Any Other Name

Cape (left) & Cowl (right)

Hey kids! This was Cape & Cowl’s first week in print, not only at the U of I in the Daily Illini, but in my artist Shane Smith’s college paper, The Northern Star at NIU. That means my strip has a circulation of about 48,000 statewide!

This week Cape looks for a new name, apparently dissatisfied with it after one strip! He is foiled time and time again until he decides to adopt a lesser known moniker (lesser known for obvious reasons). Read the rest of this entry »

This will hopefully be the first of several interviews with the writers of the comic strips in the Daily Illini.

Dan Dougherty writes Beardo, a strip that portrays the future of many college students if your major is Art, History, Art History, Classics, Philosophy, English, Creative Writing - basically everything that’s not science. His strip can be seen every weekday and was one of my inspirations for my comic strip, Cape and Cowl. Check out the interview below, plus the epic crossover - When Beardo met Cape! Read the rest of this entry »

Soon…

The Daily Illini resumed printing today, which meant that Cape & Cowl debuted on campus early this morning (for those of us who were actually here).

This single strip is Cape & Cowl: The Origin Story, a reflection on how the duo came into creation. Cape and Cowl were designed to be a superficial, shallow dynamic between a cliché idiot male character and the cynically smart female. The main point of the strip is to have fun and not take yourself too seriously. Read the rest of this entry »