Ahem..I Finally Have Something Good to Say About Gerard Way

The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite is a f&$%ing kick ass comic book!

There, I said it. 

Finally, after about a year of this hit mini-series hitting the shelves, I've come to my senses and gotten over my preconceived assumptions. It took me over a year to read the My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way's first foray into superhero comics, and I'm ashamed to say I was a fool for ever denying it. The Umbrella Academy is an unparalleled success: a truly original comic full of pulpy, delirious surrealism, bold, inventive ideas, and a visual aesthetic, courtesy of artist Gabriel Ba, which combines the spooky and silly into a surreal kaleidoscope of gothic superheroism. 

Let me take this opportunity to apologize for purposely avoiding this excellent comic because of my feelings towards My Chemical Romance.  It's no secret that I am not a fan of that particular band, their fans, or the waves of death-obsessed pop-rock imitators which have followed in their wake. However, regardless of how you might feel about My Chemical Romance, It would do The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite a huge injustice to judge it in advance because of the author's connection to anything other than this impressive comic book debut from a visionary new comic scribe. 

The plot is familiar, but it's in the telling that The Umbrella Academy stands out among the legions of team books out there. An inexplicable event occurs, and in a single moment dozens of specially gifted children are born to mothers who weren't previously pregnant. Most of the babies are either left to die or are abandoned, and in steps wealthy philanthropist Sir Reginald  Hargreeves aka The Monocle. Hargreeves announces to the world that he is training the children to "save the world, of course!" And then, nothing is heard again from the mysterious Umbrella Academy. That is, until the superpowered tykes defend Paris from an anthropomorphized Eiffel Tower on a murderous rampage. After trumping the homicidal tower, the book jumps 20 years ahead into the future as the now-estranged children gather to face the funeral of their adopted father, and a masked madman who wants to bring about the end of the world with a symphony orchestra of doom. 

Wait..come again?

Yes. This is where The Umbrella Academy gets weird. Really weird. Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol weird. In fact, Morrison writes the intro to Apocalypse Suite. Gerard Way lists the so-called "God of All Comics" as a major influence in his work, and it certainly shows. In fact the setting and title of The Umbrella Academy's first issue, "The Day The Eiffel Tower Went Berserk," is an indirect reference to the Doom Patrol story entitled, "The Painting that Ate Paris." The similarities don't stop there, but I'm not going to bore you with cross-references to a comic you probably haven't, but should, read. What about the characters? After all, what good is a superhero comic if you don't care about the colorful cast?

The Umbrella Academy is made up of the 7 children who Hargreeves adopted, and in a nod to the classic British sci-fi series The Prisoner, each of the children are numbered in order of importance. There is Number One, or Spaceboy: a man whose head was grafted onto the body of a giant ape; Kraken, a knife-fighting vigilante who can hold his breath underwater; The Rumor, who has the power to make things become true by spreading lies; Seance, a powerful medium who communicates with the dead; The Horror, who controls octopus-like tentacles; and finally The White Violin, a character who possesses no special ability until her transformation later midway through the mini-series. 

Take one look at the cover to Apocalypse Suite, and it's obvious that the art inside is going to be just as good. Artist Gabriel Ba is easily of my favorite new artists, and his work in The Umbrella Academy easily rivals his art for Matt Fraction's award-winning Casanova. Ba's work is fluid, perfectly conveying the dynamic sense of movement, melodrama, and cinematic design required by Way's script. Ba's figures are cartoonish and exaggerated, without losing any of the emotional depth or aforementioned melodrama appropriate to the story.  Granted, this is just a six-issue mini-series, with more adventures soon in the upcoming "Dallas" storyline, but for an all-too brief taste of things to come, Way and Ba inject their characters with a serious amount of pathos and generate a lot of mysteries yet to be explained and uncovered.

I could keeping going on and on about this surprisingly excellent comic book, but I'd rather you go out to your local comic book shop or bookstore and discover The Umbrella Academy's charms for yourself.