Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá, The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite (Dark Horse Comics, 2007-2008). Six-issue miniseries, $2.99 each.
By Alex Boney
My initial interest in
The Umbrella
Academy had
nothing to do with the fact that Gerard Way is the lead
singer in the pop/indie/emo band My Chemical Romance. Not
that there’s anything wrong with Gerard Way or My Chemical
Romance; The Black
Parade is a very
good album. But since the series was first announced (and
well through its publication), all the reviews and press
buzz around the series focused on Way’s vocal work and his
crossover appeal—neither of which have much to do with the
actual comic book series. What drew me to
The Umbrella
Academy were two
things: 1) It’s a Dark Horse comic book, and Dark Horse has
been publishing some of the most interesting comics I’ve
read in the last few years, and 2) many early reviewers
were comparing the series to Grant Morrison’s
late-80s/early-90s run on Doom Patrol, and Morrison had actually spoken
favorably of the parts of the series he’d read. So I
decided to try it out and see if the book lived up to the
hype. What I found was a pleasant surprise: This isn’t a
work of some polished, long-undiscovered prodigious novice,
but it is a very fun, well-crafted escapist fantasy story.
And these days, this is indeed distinctive in mainstream
comics.
The Umbrella
Academy is
difficult to summarize without sounding outlandish. I
suppose this is part of its appeal. When you’re hesitant to
describe a boarding school run by an alien disguised as a
British millionaire who hopes to avert the end of the world
by adopting and training a group of seemingly
parthenogenetic children born with extraordinary powers at
the exact moment when a wrestler delivered an atomic flying
elbow to a space-squid…when you’re a little embarrassed
actually writing it, but you love reading it, you know
you’ve found a mix worthy of at least a cursory
perusal. The
Umbrella Academy has all the absurdity, vibrancy, and
energy of 1950s/60s-era DC and Marvel comics, but Way and
Gabriel Bá inject their project with enough modern
sensibility and attention to craft that the story is able
to bridge the gap between the Silver Age of comics and the
21st century. While Way borrows (even outright steals)
elements from familiar team books such as
X-Men, Challengers of the
Unknown,
Doom
Patrol, and
even League of
Extraordinary Gentlemen, none of the final mix feels derivative
or stale.
Although Gerard Way’s contributions to The Umbrella Academy
have received widespread
notice, Gabriel Bá is at least an equal reason for the
book’s success. Bá’s panel compositions and progressions
are highly kinetic, largely due to constantly shifting
perspective. He also maintains an effective, consistent
balance between cartoony and realistic styles—something
that is incredibly difficult to pull off but the only way
such an absurd story could be told. His style is
reminiscent of Richard Case’s and Philip Bond’s—both of
whom illustrated highly-experimental and influential
Vertigo series in the mid-90s—and Hellboy creator Mike Mignola’s, but Bá’s
backgrounds and panel props are more detailed and his
characters’ forms are more individually distinct.
There are so many ideas working simultaneously in
The Apocalypse
Suite that it
becomes easy to get swept up in the story and to lose the
details. But like the symphony that forms the book’s
climax, the overall story wouldn’t be nearly as effective
without over-the-top individual details, characters, and
incidents. When the Eiffel Tower, commandeered by
Zombie-Robot Gustave Eiffel, attacks Paris before blasting
off into space (issue #1), it’s baffling and hilarious at
the same time. And when an appreciative Parisian mayor
gives the kids the key to the city and declares “ice cream
for everyone” immediately afterward, the tone and pace are
set for the series. It’s an unrelenting whirlwind that
accurately captures the flow of a rapid-fire modern media
age. The fact that the modern-day team is coordinated by a
talking chimp makes perfect sense in the context of the
Umbrella Academy world.
The
Apocalypse Suite isn’t all sun, fun, and good cheer,
though. Part of the reason why the jokes and witticisms
don’t get old fast is that Way also writes (and Bá draws) a
deep pathos into the characters. Sir Reginald Hargreeves,
the man who adopts and trains the children, is a horrible
father-figure. He really doesn’t care much for the children
beyond his use for them as tools in his grand plan. As we
learn beginning with the second issue, the children grow up
to be unstable, dysfunctional adults who rebel against the
Academy in various ways. By the time the modern story
begins, it’s clear that these are young adults with serious
issues who don’t want to be working together and certainly
don’t want to be saving the world. Despite the fact that
the children are initially named according to the order in
which Hargreeves found them (Number 1, Number 2, etc.), the
characters are all well-defined. This is especially true in
the series’ individual issues, which include character
descriptions told from different perspectives. Hargreeves
provides his assessment of the children in the first issue,
Vanya Hargreeves (Number 7) provides her point of view in
the second issue, an enemy named Dr. Terminal gives a
run-down in the third issue, and so on. These pages are not
included in the recently-released collected edition, which
is unfortunate for a reader who hasn’t read the original
issues. But at a time when all periodical comic book
stories seem to be written solely for the inevitable trade
paperback, it’s refreshing to have a reason to buy
individual issues again. The single issues of the series
are well worth tracking down.
The Umbrella
Academy feels
like a story out of place in modern comics. It seems like
it would be more at home in mid-90s Vertigo or in Alan
Moore’s America’s Best Comics line. But this, too, is a
reason to read the book. There really is nothing like it on
the shelves right now. Perhaps this is indicative of what
Dark Horse Comics has become. The Umbrella Academy
is as unique as
The Goon
and Hellboy; these books are nothing like each
other, but they’re nothing like anything else either. They
provide idiosyncratic stories and voices and worlds that
make reading comic books enjoyable. The Apocalypse Suite
isn’t a work of genius, but
it did my make my brain click and pop like few other books
have this year. In this way, it’s absolutely worthy of the
Eisner Award it recently won for best limited series of the
year. I hope Way and Bá have more stories under their
belts, because I’m looking forward to returning to the
world they’ve created.
