Capeworld Comics

Yeah, I’m a jackass. But am I wrong?

 

Large sunglasses are the natural evolution from domino masks. I don’t know why I’m like, the only one to see it. It gives you a little something over the top of your face without being so tight you feel like something is trying to squeeze your brain or so loose it swings over one of your eyes and blinds you so that Gingerbread Man kicks your ass. And look at this–see how cool it is when you whip it off and whip it on. Off, on, off, on, off–ouch! I poked myself…

 

With art by Espear.

 

Name:

 

Matthew Roy

 

Supername:

 

The Coat

 

When he was a child, Matthew happily went by the moniker Blanket Boy. Post-puberty, Matthew wants nothing to do with Blanket Boy or the tiny media empire his mother made writing about his boyhood adventures. He’s the Coat now.

 

Average Grade:

 

A+

 

Matthew is academically gifted. Shame we can’t say the same about his social skills.

 

ERC:

 

3

 

Matthew wants to be a superhero, particularly a “dark” superhero like Mr. Sikes, the Red Cardinals, or Martina’s father Vampiro. He wants to be tough and cool and give the bad guys a thrashing. He’s good at it, he puts in the time and effort and by all standards he’s excelling. He’s learned how to make his blanket do incredibly weird, creative things in ERC 3 like turn into antimatter.

 

Matthew is gifted, talented, and insufferable.

 

The solution to his insufferability is to get him to run through more social-based programs in the CRS. Instead of “capture all members of Satan’s Hollow” and “defeat the Vril adepts,” Matthew needs to run through “defuse the Earth State protest” and “show the diplomat from 161 around Joyous Harbor.” He needs to run through group programs–but no pair programs, please. He’ll make sidekick jokes. Three or more only.

 

Personalized Curriculum:

 

Emergency Response With A Focus In Superhuman Combat

 

Matthew wants to be a superhero, so he takes the “superhero class.” He’s in it for the long haul like Burning Bright, Martina, and Gunnar.

 

Contact Education:

 

The Red Cardinals of Joyous Harbor, The Turner Museum of Superheroics, The Warp Authority

 

Matthew is very interested in the rooftop running, alleyway prowling tactics of “dark superheroics,” so the Red Cardinals were natural mentor picks. We thought of sending him to the Mainline City group so he could train alongside Gunnar, but since Matthew has lived his entire life in Joyous Harbor it made sense to keep him local. He doesn’t have to spend time learning the patrol layout of a new city. He’s also very happy to be working with a legacy as venerable and prestigious as the Red Cardinals. Matthew may act like a brat, but he has a genuine love and respect for the classics. He’s even thought of becoming a Red Cardinal himself after graduation, though his mind isn’t made up. He can in fact change his coat from mustard to ketchup.

 

With Matthew’s love of superhero history and culture, it made sense to get him working at the Turner Museum in Joyous Harbor’s Statesmen Center. Not only is it one of the largest superhero museums in the world, it’s something that Matthew has been visiting since he was a child. He knows the layout of the museum like his house.

 

The museum has Matthew work as a researcher and more importantly as a tour guide where he has to be polite and helpful. It seems to be helping him. He’s fairly popular as a tour guide. Guests like his enthusiasm and ask for him.

 

And, of course, he’s Blanket Boy. Everyone wants to meet Blanket Boy. He’s got pictures of himself as a child in the museum, and though he hates posing for pictures next to his exhibit, he swallows his pride for the sake of the job.

 

Matthew, due to his ability to make stars within his coat, is mentored by the Warp Authority who like to use him to swallow up potentially dangerous astral phenomena like nascent supernovae, black holes, and star leviathan eggs.

 

We’ve got him with the Warp Authority to try and broaden his horizons beyond the superhero track, but he’s probably not going to keep up with the Warp Authority after graduation. HIs heart is as much set on superheroics as Gunnar’s.

 

Hyperstasis:

 

Mentally controls a semi-independent mass of variable matter.

 

Matthew Roy, The Blanket Boy

 

“Matthew Roy was a kind, quiet boy who like many kind, quiet boys, loved superheroes. Sometimes, Matthew would wear his favorite yellow blanket like a cape or cloak and pretend he was a superhero. One day, his blanket draped itself over his shoulders…”

 

–Opening line of Blanket Boy’s Adventures in Joyous Harbor, the first book of the Blanket Boy series

 

Emelia Roy’s Blanket Boy series is a sentimental but mostly accurate account of her son as a young boy growing up in Joyous Harbor. Matthew traveled around the city as a self-described “junior superhero and also boy detective” doing little things for people to make their lives just a little bit brighter. Blanket Boy flying through the air on his yellow blanket became a beloved sight for Joyous Harbor residents along with Captain Snork the Thule leviathan. Matthew found lost animals, carried groceries, helped deliver the mail, shoveled snow, and was always on the lookout for a mystery. He wanted to be a superhero in the mold of the hardboiled “mystery men” of the 1920’s and 1930’s. He wanted to uncover a smuggling ring like the first generation Fishermen or capture flamboyant gangsters like the Fearless Fox. He never got to solve a big mystery, but his naive earnestness to try beyond his age and abilities was part of his appeal.

 

Matthew was often accompanied in his adventures by his close friends Will Blake and Simon Wheeler. Will Blake had the gift of Sekmet even as a child and was an adorable little furball. He didn’t call himself Burning Bright back then, he was much too young to know about the other William Blake, and went by Kid Kitten. He and Matthew remain close friends. Simon Wheeler was a basic when he was a child and hadn’t yet developed the “clubhouse” power which would spoil him rotten. He and Matthew drifted apart as they got older. Matthew wanted to do things with his life and Simon just wanted to play video games.

 

The Blanket Boy series became a huge hit. There was a live-action film series and currently Ghibli is working on a series of animated films. Written for children, Blanket Boy found success with all ages. Children identified with Matthew and adults identified with Emelia and the wistful, nostalgic voice she used to describe her son’s adventures. Matthew’s guileless pursuit of novelty, adventure, and mystery cut deep to the heart of our cynical zeitgeist. Ennui spreads far and wide in our world. We’ve figured out how to live forever, but not how to want to live forever. The simple joy Matthew found in life–in getting interested in cats after saving one from a tree and trying to find out what kind of cat Will was, in acting as “security detail” for an old Black Terror Soldier come to Joyous Harbor to see an exhibit on his old unit, in unwittingly helping a BOL supervillain on his first assignment by giving him directions to the Statesmen Center and guilt tripping him into giving up on his plans by calling him a superhero–spoke to people. You could even go as far as to say that Blanket Boy saved lives–that was even the subject of chapter five of Blanket Boy Under the Sea, Blanket Boy and the Tired Man.

 

Blanket Boy finds a man sitting on the side of a bridge and asks him what he’s doing. The man tells him, after carefully thinking over his words, that he’s trying to find a way to not be so tired anymore. Blanket Boy tells him he should take a nap, and the man agrees. Blanket Boy asks the man why he’s tired, because it’s not even the afternoon and there’s so much to do today, and the man replies that he’s tired because for a long time, he’s felt like he’s been trying to solve a mystery without a single clue. Blanket Boy says that for him, it’s usually the other way around–he’s been looking a long time for a mystery to fit his clues.

 

The boy and the man shared a laugh, talked at length, and then Blanket Boy helped him down from the bridge to find someone to help with his tiredness.

 

The man was named Scott King, and he had come to look at Joyous Harbor’s museums because he always wanted to see the museums and then kill himself. Blanket Boy saved his life.

 

Matthew hasn’t spoken to Mr. King since. He’s terrified that he’s going to find that Mr. King relapsed into his depression and killed himself. But I have good news. I did a little detective work, and I found that Mr. King lives a quiet life as a chef for the Admiral Pizza on the boardwalk.

 

We just need to find the right time to schedule a meeting between Matthew and Mr. King. I think it would do Mathew a great deal of good to see that Blanket Boy had a positive, lasting impact on Mr. King’s life. His opinion of Blanket Boy soured considerably during adolescence.

 

Matthew Roy, The Coat

 

You can probably imagine that puberty was difficult for Matthew. You can’t chat up girls when your name is Blanket Boy, and you can’t look cool in front of the boys when it’s your name either.

 

Matthew was known around the world as an adorably curious, endearingly cautious seven year old. But now he was a teenager, and he wanted to be known as a teenager. 

 

As a child, he was content with his celebrity. He even liked it. He told his mother that he liked being an inspiration to boy adventurers everywhere. Boys have the freedom to be earnest in their kindness. But as he got older, he started to get teased, and he learned that an open heart is a vulnerability in adolescent society.

 

He learned how to be a viciously sarcastic smart alec as a defense against bullies. His mother was a clever writer, and her cleverness was passed down to him. His middle school self went through a phase of absolute Blanket Boy hatred. He tossed his Blanket Boy toys off the boardwalk. He turned his blanket into a coat that was far too big for him and turned it black. He took to prowling around shadows and rooftops like he was the Spirit or the Question and sneaking up on people just to look tough and creepy…to little effect. There’s not much that a short middle schooler can do to look intimidating. A giant trenchcoat floating in the wind behind you does nothing when you look like a scarecrow…the various superheroes and supervillains that pattern themselves off scarecrows notwithstanding. Those guys are creepy.

 

Matthew has cooled off in recent years. He doesn’t like being called Blanket Boy, but he won’t pick a fight over it. He doesn’t dart around shadows like an idiot. The poor blanket is finally back in its natural yellow, though it’s still rather big for Matthew as a coat. And he’s made his peace with the Blanket Boy series. He thinks it’s overall a pretty maudlin account of stupid stuff he did as a dumb kid, but he respects it as his mother’s work, as a source of wealth for his family, and for what it represents to fans around the world. He’s also glad for the challenge Blanket Boy gave him. It was his desire to get out from the shadow of his fictionalized self that drove him to become a star student at Martin’s and a promising up-and-coming superhero.

 

“I don’t hate Blanket Boy anymore.” He said. “He’s a good kid, if a little clueless. He doesn’t deserve to be hated. I think I hated him because, even before I really cared about such things, I knew where Blanket Boy stood. Everyone did. He was immortal and unchanging inside the pages of my mothers’ books. But I didn’t know where the person I was growing into stood, and that scared me.”

 

If you ask him, he will give you an autograph provided you don’t try and embarrass him about it. Edith got her Blanket Boy collection signed by him and his mother.

 

Matthew’s Progress

 

When he was Blanket Boy, Matthew’s buddy kept him out of danger. Whenever something potentially dangerous was nearby, such as a speeding car, it would wrap itself tight around Matthew. One might think that having a cuddly guardian angel would have made Matthew a reckless child. It didn’t. It made him a reckless young man, but that happened later. Blanket Boy was the kind of kid who was afraid to go into the water even with one parent and two arm floaties. His blanket helped him explore the world. It became a flying carpet (with handrails and seatbelts) or a bathysphere (with several air tubes). His mother believed that his blanket was Matthew’s courage in physical form.

 

His buddy was always by Matthew’s side when he needed it. Even if was across town, it would teleport to him in an instant. As the Coat, his buddy is still just as loyally protective, but Matthew has learned how to tap into its impressive reflexes for his own use. He can speed up his mental processing speed and freeze the world. He uses it often in fights and we’re trying to get him to use it to give a little more thought to what he’s going to say next. That might have been a mistake though. It gives him time to think about his words–and craft them to be even more cutting.

 

When he was Blanket Boy, Matthew could do simple things with his blanket. He could make it into a backpack to carry around his snacks (he still has a soft spot for Royalty snack cakes and fruit pies because of an advertising blitz Royalty did in the seventies that involved like, every single big-name superhero at the time. If you ask him for a fruit pie, he’ll give you one) and action figures or into a flying carpet to carry him down to the Statesmen Center or Rockatansky Park. He could stretch it and grow it and, to a limited extent, alter its mass. He could make it large enough to be a clubhouse tent for himself, Burning Bright, and Simon Wheeler or small enough to be a bandito mask for when they wanted to play old west superheroes. But his control over his blanket has grown considerably during his high school education. He can change the phase of his blanket and turn it into liquid, gas, and even plasma. He can turn it into energy, antimatter, alter its Fox harmonic, and turn it into Astral matter. He can warp the space around it to “shrink” down objects and store them in the folds of his blanket. He can use this power to, for instance, hide Lucia Regio and an entire stage and piano-themed grill inside his coat (this was their entry for the last BBQ contest. They took first place.)

 

Sometimes you can see stars inside Matthew’s coat. These are actual stars. He learned how to create them and a couple of black holes out of the infinite mass reserves of his blanket during his sophomore year. He’s got his own supercluster inside his coat, right next to the Royal cherry pies. He’s even won an award for his stars. The Chromian Empire held a contest for star makers all around the universe and Matthew placed 3,279th, which might not sound impressive until you factor in the scale of the universe, then it does sound impressive.

 

The stars inside his coat bring to mind Spectro, the famous (or perhaps infamous) member of the Circled Square who shrank down the red rectangle nebula and wore it as a cape, its natural symmetry serving as a focus for his thaumaturgy. Rumors circulate around the school that Matthew is somehow related to Spectro, that Spectro was secretly a relative or a mentor. These rumors are all false, though Matthew does nothing to discourage them.

 

It may sound that with all the star-creating and antimatter shenanigans that Matthew has gotten a lot more creative as he’s gotten older. But in a mature moment of reflection, Matthew admitted that this isn’t the case. “I can make stars with my buddy now, but that’s not creative. The universe does this on its own to the tune of more than one billion trillion. No, what was creative was back when I was a kid, and I could have my buddy here just be a bit of fabric in my hands…and he would be a ray of sunlight, a beam of starlight, a sail for a boat, the wing of a bird…anything. Everything. But no matter how hard I try, I just look at it now and I just see fabric. It’s probably for the best. If I was creative now as I was back then, I’d be a god. And you wouldn’t want that, would you?”

 

Matthew often acts younger than his age. But sometimes, he acts older.

 

Behavior:

 

Fair

 

Oh Matthew, Matthew, Matthew.

 

He doesn’t get in fights, though he did when he was a freshman. He used to fight at the drop of a hat with anyone that called him Blanket Boy.

 

He doesn’t play pranks like Monster, and god knows he could be a terror with that blanket of his if he applied himself.

 

He doesn’t skip class, he doesn’t sneak into the teachers’ lounge to steal Ms. Cryptic’s cookies, he doesn’t cheat on tests, and he doesn’t try to sneak cigarettes and alcohol (he knows that more than a few “mystery men” survived fighting the mob for years only to die of lung cancer and/or alcoholism).

 

He’s just a mouthy little brat.

 

Matthew wants to be an adult and he wants to be an adult now. He latches onto superficial displays of maturity to compensate for his history as Blanket Boy. He’s sarcastic and flippant because he thinks it means he’s confident. He teases and puts down others because he thinks it means he’s clever and funny. He’s a braggart because he thinks it means he’s accomplished.

 

This all being said, Matthew is not without his virtues. He has absorbed the lessons of the early superheroes, he doesn’t just ape them on a superficial level (though he does ape them–just look at his costume). He earnestly believes in doing the right thing even if the world is against you, that authority doesn’t mean someone is good, and that the greatest superpower of all is a clean conscience. He talks up his power, and he teases people, but he never teases people about their powers. In fact, he’s very encouraging to his fellow students when it comes to their powersets. He can usually find something nice to say about a person’s powers. Matthew believes that anyone can be a superhero. It doesn’t matter if they’re weak. It doesn’t matter if their only power is that they can talk to bees. If they suit up and dedicate themselves to the arduous task of superheroics, then they are a superhero worthy of as much respect as Captain Marvel or Blue Beetle.

 

Matthew’s genuine belief in the brotherhood of superheroes is one of the reasons he’s against the Ishinomori tournament. He believes that superheroes shouldn’t compete, they should cooperate, and that the tournament is nothing more than a power-measuring contest that does more harm than good to the superhero community.

 

Appearance: 

 

Matthew likes to imagine himself as a continuation of the “mystery men” of the 20’s and 30’s–trenchcoat and fedora wearing superheroes who played by their own rules in a time where the legalities of superheroics were in a gray area and supergangsters had the local police in their pocket, men who did the right thing even when it was illegal.

 

I don’t think any of them wore sneakers and t-shirts with their trenchcoats and fedoras. And the sunglasses…

 

Why Lucia is interested in the boy is a mystery for the ages.

 

Matthew can make his blanket look like anything, but he prefers a yellow trenchcoat. It’s the core of his image. Yellow is his favorite color. He’s changed a lot since he was Blanket Boy, but his coat remains his little yellow friend. Sometimes, he switches up the color for holidays and special occasions like his buddy Adam. But he always comes back to yellow.