Some work I did in UE3 and Maya for the MMO DC Universe online.
The cape used strands of Maya's hair simulation on a joint chain with basic capsule collision because heroes need capes! You could also pose these using a simple rig to achieve more extreme poses similar to some of the things Jim Lee was doing with Batman.
I did quite a bit of work on the UE3 animtree and helped develop some custom nodes for torso blending and replacement to be able to merge animations and utilize analog movement. These are pretty early on and a little glitchy, but show the potential especially when used for both ground based and flying characters.