Once and awhile you come across a line-up of covers that justify the price regardless of the comic’s contents. From Casanova to The Umbrella Academy, Gabrial Bá knows how to make covers shine. His work demonstrates a graceful ability to shift between the deceptively simple to the impressively complex while often blending the two together to create something unique. With gorgeous colors that make his covers truly stand out, Bá’s recognizable art also boasts a strong understanding and playfulness with original layouts and designs. Bá certainly isn’t afraid to experiment with his illustrations; the comics his covers house are made better because of it. From pastels to solid backgrounds and complimentary details, Bá dances from shading to...
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*Starred Review* The space squid in the opening panel has little to do with the plot but sets the tone: outré and sardonic, with cool art. A mysterious alien professor in human disguise adopts seven mysterious superchildren so that they can "save the world"—first from a zombie-robot using the Eiffel Tower as a weapon, then from another fiend who turns amusement park vehicles into killer droids, and finally from one of their own. Early on, child Number 7 learns from the professor that there's "nothing special" about her (yeah, right). Along the way, the plot delivers twists and flashbacks, dropping clues about why this dysfunctional family team disbanded for 20 years and how come Number 1 is hanging out on the moon. But questions remain...
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Umbrella Academy is my favorite comic on the stands. There, I said it. I'm very careful about that kind of terminology usually, and I mostly lean towards vague qualifiers in the vein of "one of the best" or "in the top tier," but Academy is just too good for that nonsense. If you're in any way a fan of serialized monthly comics, you should be reading this book. Last issue revealed the crux of the Dallas storyline: JFK's assassination in 1963. This issue puts the pieces in place: The Rumor and Number Five are drafted to ensure the president's assassination by preventing a time-traveling future Number Five from protecting him, while the other half of the Academy jumps there to... well, do the same thing, but for different reasons...
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The Umbrella Academy is so delightfully offbeat that it’s easy to overlook its few flaws. It’s not a perfect graphic novel (the story sometimes meanders and doesn’t ultimately make a whole lot of sense), but it’s entertaining and inventive in so many ways. The entire story is a bit complicated, but here’s a brief synopsis: One strange day, 47 women unexpectedly give birth, despite having previously had no signs of pregnancy. As if that weren’t weird enough, seven of the children are immediately adopted by Dr. Reginald Hargreeves, an eccentric scientist who trains and takes care of them all. The kids develop strange and wonderful powers as they age, and by the time their nearing adolescence, they have become a superteam. Hargreeves...
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The original Umbrella Academy series was an impressive debut from Gerard Way. It was easily the best rock-star-written comic in the history of mankind, which, honestly, doesn't tell you a whole lot, since we were never treated to a David Lee Roth-penned run of "Speedball, the Masked Marvel" or Eddie Vedder's Guy Gardner, Warrior. In other words, Way didn't have a whole lot of competition from the music industry, as far as comics go. But what was amazing about Umbrella Academy (besides Gabriel Bá's art, which was indeed amazing), was the confidence of the storytelling. It never felt -- not for a second -- like anything other than a fully-realized, deeply important salvo from a writer who wanted to make great comics. Way wasn't slumming,...
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Believe it or not, this installment of The Umbrella Academy has become even more insane than Apocalypse Suite. And Apocalypse Suite had dismemberment, a heinous surgery, and a monkey getting his brains blown out. The insanity in Dallas is largely thanks to the wonderful new villains, Hazel and Cha-Cha, members of the underground organization, Temps Aeternalis, a sort of time continuum police who are after Number Five for his defection from the group. But they are CRAZY. Really crazy. Dismembering you as they discuss Girl Scout cookies and eat licorice whips crazy. They are like a cross between Vincent and Jules from Pulp Fiction and Smoochy the Rhino from Death to Smoochy, and they’re amazing. Number Five gets more and more fascinating...
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Umbrella Academy is the best comic on the stands right now. It's true. And you don't even have to dig deep to behold its magnificence: UA: Dallas #2 has what might be the greatest opening page I've seen in eight years. From start to finish, this issue is exquisite. I said it dozens of times about the first Umbrella Academy, but if you're even on this website reading about comics, you really should be picking up this title. The overarching story of Dallas seems to be that the members of the Academy all hate each other and are being threatened by a secret evil. If that sounds vaguely similar to the first go-round, that's because it is. But it's the details of Gerard Way's masterpiece that make it so phenomenal you'll want to read it a...
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The trailer for the film version of the 1980s superhero reinvention Watchmen is already driving sales of its source graphic novel, and fans clamoring for more self-referential superheroes can look to The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite (Dark Horse, $17.95), written by Gerard Way, lead vocalist of the band My Chemical Romance. Way’s sly interpretation of the action genre features a septet of superpowered siblings reuniting at the death of their space alien foster father, but the real focus of the book runs deeper, incorporating elements of family dynamics, adoption and parenting, and an elastic storyline in which time travel, for example, serves as a metaphor for alienation. Plus, a talking chimp wears a levitator belt. - Aaron...
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Gerard Way, the lead singer of My Chemical Romance, and Gabriel Ba created a surreal world of super powers, musical villains, and intelligent chimpanzees. Forty-seven children were spontaneously born to previously unpregnant women. Sir Reginald Hargreeve (a.k.a. The Monocle), a Nobel Prize-winning scientist and inventor, adopts seven of the children "to save the world." The children, collectively identified as the Umbrella Academy, encounter a myriad of bizarre villainy in the guise of the zombie-robot Gustave Eiffel, the chronal-irregularity fixing entities known as The Terminauts, and the musically-empowered White Violin. Not since Grant Morrison's (who wrote the introduction to this collection) kinetic Doom Patrol of the 90s has a...
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Summer’s mostly over, but you’ve got the entire month of August ahead of you, and you’ll need something to read. Actually, there’s something you need to read no matter what the time of year. Run, don’t walk, to your nearest comic shop and get yourself a copy of the trade paperback of Dark Horse Comics’ The Umbrella Academy, cleverly written by Gerard Way, and brilliantly illustrated by Gabriel Ba. This six-issue story arc, called The Apocalypse Suite, tells the story of seven children born under extraordinary circumstances and who each develop extraordinary (albeit unexplained) abilities. They are sought out and adopted by a rich inventor (and alien) named Sir Reginald Hargreeves, who takes them back to a mansion dubbed “The Umbrella...
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I tried. I really tried...but no matter how many story angles I slide in and out of to gain a foothold on this beautiful, melodic jam of funny pictures, at the end, it's hard to steer clear of musical comparisons when talking about Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá's The Umbrella Academy. In the first place because the trade collecting the first six issues of the series is sub-titled, Apocalypse Suite; next, because one of the heroes turned main evil dudette is a living, lethal musical instrument hellbent on destroying the world with her music; and lastly because Gerard Way is the lead singer of My Chemical Romance. But it doesn't stop there. When you stop sucking in the story in separate layers of pictures, words and color, and really let the...
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Anyone familiar with the band My Chemical Romance would probably expect an extension of its pop-goth sensibility in the comics work of lead singer Gerard Way. It's there in the Way-written, Gabriel Bá-drawn six-issue miniseries The Umbrella Academy, collected in the trade The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite (Dark Horse). But it's only part of a jumble of elements in a series that's part X-Men and part The Royal Tenenbaums, with uniforms and talking chimps. The story of seven super-powered kids whose makeshift family reunites, mostly, after the death of their adoptive father, the series is at its best when it focuses on the slyly witty possibilities of the scenario, and at its worst when the plot and characters reveal themselves as a...
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Yes, this is the Gerard Way from My Chemical Romance, and no, you don't have to like his band to enjoy his comics. The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite is a surprisingly robust debut, fully indebted to the superhero genre while still ruminating thoughtfully enough on family, memory and betrayal (both emotional and physical) to appease the snootier comic aficionado. It's like The Royal Tenenbaums crossed with Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol. The dissolution and failed ambition of a family of superlative youths is enmeshed with apocalyptic paranoia and impressive Morrisonian weirdness. The plot's a little thin for the length, but Way's good at misdirection, obscuring that weakness with a bevy of inventive details that ably flesh out this...
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Gerard Way, best known for his music as a member of the band My Chemical Romance, has written a startlingly good comic with his new series for Dark Horse Comics: The Umbrella Academy. I was initially skeptical, as there have been many recent high profile "comic debuts" from authors and artists in other media that have fallen flat. While the Umbrella Academy on the surface is a love child of Hellboy, the Incredibles and unhinged '50's science fiction, Way has succeded in creating something unique and special. Gabriel Ba's art evokes Mike Mignola, with its heavy lines and liberal use of blacks without slavishly aping it. The fantastic colour palette of Dave Stewart is another reason that fans of Mignola's Hellboy will enjoy this series....
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There’s a Secret Invasion going on in the comics industry, but it has nothing to do with Skrulls or multiple Earths. The once-quiet (and continuity-heavy) superhero genre is now overrun by celebrities. Buffy creator Joss Whedon recently finished a twenty-four issue stint on Astonishing X-Men, The O.C. and Grey’s Anatomy’s Alan Heinberg revamped Wonder Woman, and bestselling author Brad Meltzer recast The Justice League of America. With superhero film adaptations filling the seats at the superplex, comics aren’t quite as exclusive (or reclusive) anymore. Gerard Way, the frontman for My Chemical Romance, is the latest entry in the name-in-lights trend of comic writers, as he’s recently published a six issue mini-series for Dark Horse...
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The observant may have noticed that I didn’t join in last year’s “year in review/best of” series here at Rack Raids. This is at least partly because I don’t feel that I read enough mainstream comics to be able to pass judgment. This might be a bit silly, since after all no one could read every comic, or even most comics, produced in a year, but still, my tastes lie enough outside the mainstream that I feel I’m not fully plugged-in to the comics scene sometimes. It’s not that I don’t have my own opinions, though. I just feel the need to qualify them the way I just did. Well, qualification over. Here’s an opinion: the first issue of The Umbrella Academy was my favourite single-issue comic published last year. And now that the first...
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The past few weeks I've been trying to make a dent in my rather large collection of funny books, picking out things that I consider "classics" and that I really should reread. Or, alternatively, I've also been reabsorbing books I haven't read in years and have almost no recollection of. And going through this process I came upon the perfect mesh of these two objectives of mine: Grant Morrison's DOOM PATROL run. And, just like the first time I read it almost four years ago, it blew my mind. Just the sheer amount of unadulterated (and most likely drug induced) creativity within those pages: the concepts, the quirks, the crudeness and the metaphysical, it's just amazing. But it got me thinking, where are the comics like that today? There...
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The first issue of Gerard Way's The Umbrella Academy was a pleasant surprise when it arrived last month. I know almost nothing at all about Way and his band, so I was expecting a simple vanity project from an egocentric rock star trying to cash in on his fame; instead I got an engaging, creative story from a talented artist making an earnest go at creating comics. In this issue, we learn more about the leads, as the remaining members of the Umbrella Academy (minus the dead one and the ostensibly useless one) gather at the funeral of their "father", Professor Hargreeves. The team bickers incessantly and barely seem to tolerate one another, suggesting an authentic family dynamic that goes a long way towards humanizing each character....
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Humans are reinventing themselves in very literal ways — steroid super-athlete serums, continuity-extending cosmetic surgery and prosthetic limbs more powerful than the original are closing the gap between our everyday condition and superhero fantasy. Coming at us from the other end of the imagination are superheroes that don’t quite look like we remember, in Matrix-chic and with murky motivations and morals. Dark Horse is a particular haven for these types, and we’ve seen the paramilitary paranormals of B.P.R.D. and The Perhapanauts. Many fans have been anticipating the first field trip of The Umbrella Academy, a weird band of preternatural preppies, but all comparisons to their comic elders are fruitless — this is an entirely original...
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Umbrella Academy is the new crack! Promoted solely on the fame and crazy of its writer and creator, rockstar Gerard Way, him of the Chemical Romance fame, I expected nothing more than a dose of wacky with a side order of amazing art, courtesy of CASANOVA's Brazilian power-art-house Gabriel Ba (with a funny accent mark on the a I can't replicate right now. Gabriel Ba', Gabriel Ba'). Who knew a rockstar could write our socks off? The Umbrella Academy is nothing sort of amazing and I'll tell you all about it: Fathered and led by wacky wealthy and world-renowned inventor Sir Reginald Hargreeves, a.k.a. the Monocle, the Umbrella Academy consists of 7 mutant children-prodigies, the surviving few of a world-wide simultaneous miracle birth...
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Rock stars who dig comics and trade on their fame to break into the field are certainly nothing new, or even unusual. What is unusual, however, is for the rock star in question to downplay rather than trumpet their involvement, as My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way does with his new series, The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite (Dark Horse Comics). Even more unusual? For the comic to be this great. Way’s work is remarkably polished, and he takes to scripting far better than many of the other celebrity comics writers coming to the field from other media, most of whom evidence a still-getting-the-hang-of-it learning curve for a while. Beyond simply being not bad, Way’s loony action adventure tale fits squarely into his publisher’s...
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