Umbrella Academy, by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba

[sophia_sol]

I got Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite and Umbrella Academy: Dallas out of the library today, because Gerard Way. And so of course I read them immediately. (I read the first half of Apocalypse Suite while walking home, because I'm impatient like that. And very practiced at reading-while-walking.)

Two thoughts:

1. It is exactly the sort of thing I would expect Gerard Way to write, based on what I know about him...from...reading fanfic about him. Um.

2. It is way better than I expected.

It is really awesome, but also really weird. It is a story about dysfunctional family, and also about time travel, and also about music destroying the world. It's clever, and silly, and dark, and imaginative, and really well written. And it also made me have feelings all over the place, mostly about the dysfunctional family stuff.

There's clearly all sorts of fascinating history and backstory and complicated relationships with these characters and their family, which hasn't been explored, and it's all done in just enough detail to make it feel like a real, full life, but all of it leaving you desperately wanting to know more. Also it leaves you desperately wanting to punch Dr Hargreeves in the face a lot....

And the AO3 has fifteen whole fics about Umbrella Academy! Schweet. I hope one of them's about Diego and Vanya's teenage punk band! Although pls no Diego/Vanya because even though they're not technically related they're still siblings, and incest is defs one of my squicks.

(I'm pretty unhappy with the canonical Space/Rumor thing, because of the brother/sister thing -- but also because Rumor initiates it by doing her "I heard a rumor" thing which means she was kind of making it retroactively true that Space wanted her? Which is non-con. Or dub-con at best. DNW.)

I also hope one of the fics out there is about the afterlife that Klaus briefly experiences, but I'm betting this one's less likely to exist....

Comments

[tei]

I TOTALLY DID THIS TOO. I'm afraid I can't really talk about it at length because I didn't finish it... not because of lack of interest (I kind of love the concept, and I think it's gorgeous and why yes, I do want to read things just because Gerard Way has written them) but because... I just seem to suck at comic books. I kept missing plot points that were contained in the illustarations, and I couldn't tell which characters were which or sometimes even recognize objects. Which happens to me with video games and animated cartoons as well, so basically I'm just balls at visual media.

BUT you know I did get far enough to think it was really awesome that Vanya can destroy things with the ~POWER OF VIOLINNNN~!

[sophia_sol]

Ahahaha, uh, yes, I have the same problem, actually! I kept on having to go WAIT WHAT and turn back a few pages and look really closely at what was going on so that I could follow the damn plot. I am not good at comic books. I like WORDS okay! I mean pictures are pretty and all (and ooh, there's this one bit in Dallas that's just fantastically great-looking, where Klaus is in the afterlife and everything but him is in black-and-white -- except that he's pretty pale and tends to wear a lot of black, so everything except his hilarious hawaiian shirt is black-and-white and it's just a great effect.

But uh other than that I would have been MUCH happier reading these stories in words instead of pictures.

Because I managed okay through Apocalypse Suite but Dallas' plot was a bit more complicated (involving time-travel as it did) and so as a result I got a LOT more lost. Pretty much by the end I was reading for the characters and had given up on the plot, ngl.)

(Vanya's super awesome! I wish she'd had more to do in the second book.)

[neveralarch]

I really liked the Apocalypse Suite, but Dallas kind of lost me - I think that was just when I was getting out of comics generally, though. And I don't listen to MCR, so I always think of Gerard Way as a comics writer, haha.

[sophia-sol.livejournal.com]

Dallas kind of lost me too, actually! I thought that was just me and my inability to follow comic books and other visual media with any great acuity. In both Apocalypse Suite and Dallas I kept on having to flip back a few pages and stare a little and go WHAT JUST HAPPENED SORRY, but in Dallas it just wasn't working as well. But I didn't really mind, because it was still very good characterwise even if I was confused plotwise.

(and I think it's really amusing/amazing that you know him first and best as a comics writer!)