Love and Capes/Tear Jerker

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Abby at first takes it well that Mark is the Crusader. Then she sees a giant fight on television, where he gets injured. It never occurred to her that the Crusader could be hurt.
  • Love and Capes is mostly a warm and lighthearted book, but Abby gets a genuinely heartbreaking moment near the end of #10:

"Fifteen people fell off the bridge...and I could only save fourteen."

  • In the second volume arc, Abby gets tossed into a timeline where Mark died shortly after their first date. She wakes up on what's supposed to be her wedding day in her apartment, utterly confused.
    • Amazonia in this timeline has adopted a costume with muted colors, to honor Mark. Because Mark and Abby never became a couple, Amazonia is much nicer towards Abby when Doc Karma brings the latter to the headquarters. She says that it sounds like her to become jealous of Mark's next flame, but is more than fine with Abby fixing the timeline. Abby asks if she's sure, as she prepares to save her future husband. Amazonia says if she can be friends with Abby in this timeline, she's sure that they can be friends in the fixed one.
    • To save Mark, Abby has to go back in time with Doc Karma's help and warn him about Evil Brain planning his assassination. She at first has no success because with her disguise, as a brunette, Mark thinks that she's just a random crank. Realizing she's not going to see him again, Abby takes off her disguise, leaps into Mark's arms after the date, and gives him The Big Damn Kiss. She cries, thinking she'll never see him again, only to check her watch. It's midnight. In the alternate timeline, he died at 11:58. She did it.
  • Windstar, who also managed the purchase of the bookshop building, dies. Turns out that though he had super-speed, he didn't have super-breathing power. He pulled a Heroic Sacrifice saving innocents from a fire. Everyone is shocked, as his niece discusses if she could take up his mantle, or even if she should.
  • Because of the usual tropes involving heroes coming back from the dead, Doc Karma has to do rudimentary checks that the body isn't a clone or from a parallel universe. Doc is a little guilty that he's died more than three times, which is what necessitated these rules.
  • Windstar's father has a heartbreaking line. He says that no one believes that his son is dead, waiting for Windstar to come back from the dead and they are watching the funeral because it's expected. But this death? It's real to him.
  • After they come home from Windstar's funeral, Abby asks Mark with some curiosity, and some concern, if he thinks that he will ever die. After all, he is near-invulnerable but still can die, as noted by the alternate timeline. Mark says that he probably will die, since he is aging, but he has no plans on risking his life recklessly, and leaving Abby alone.