If you haven’t had a chance to check out Umbrella Academy, you gotta! Imagine a twisted take on the superhero genre, with a passel of brilliant kids born to mostly single women who had shown no signs of pregnancy. Since then, the kids have (mostly) grown up into relatively confused and extremely dangerous superbeings. One of the kids can travel through time, and another can make rumors true. The White Violin, ostensibly the least powerful sibling, actually possesses apocalyptic powers.

Written by My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way and illustrated by Gabriel Bà, the series is fascinatingly original, darkly comic and filled with surprises and absurdities. It can be unsettling at times, and also hilarious. You’ll have a hard time figuring out what will come next.

Earlier this year the comic concluded its second volume, Dallas after making a huge splash in ‘07 with its first volume Apocalypse Suite. Now, as the run continues with another arc, Dark Horse is sweetening the deal — for a limited time, they’re giving away issue 1 of volume 3 as a free iPhone app (download here). Now you can find out what the fuss is about without spending a cent.

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Gallery Links
Magazines & Scans – NME [Feb 21 09]
Other Projects – The Umbrella Academy – “Hotel Oblivion” – Promotional

“I like the titles from The Umbrella Academy issues better than my song titles now,” Gerard Way announced at his Saturday afternoon panel at Comic-Con International. “They’ve leveled up. There’s nothing better than titling an issue of Umbrella Academy.” The frontman of My Chemical Romance, Way is also a longtime comics fan — he mentioned that he’d freaked out about seeing Jeff (Bone) Smith the night before, and rhapsodized over Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard’s The Walking Dead (“After The Walking Dead, I don’t know that you can touch zombies. It’ll be a good five or 10 years before somebody else can do a zombie comic”).

Of course, Way has also become an award-winning comics writer himself in the last few years. At the overflowing panel that’s now an annual Comic-Con tradition, he announced two new comic books he’s working on: the third Umbrella Academy miniseries, subtitled Hotel Oblivion and drawn by the Brazilian artist Gabriel Bá, and a new series called The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, drawn by Becky Cloonan (Demo). Way talked to Rolling Stone about the new comics, as well as the MCR record that’s in progress right now.

What’s the story with The Fabulous Killjoys?
It’s written by myself and my co-creator Shaun Simon. He was the keyboard player in Frank [Iero]‘s first band, he’s our good friend, he was our merch guy. I think a lot of ideas we came up with back then in the band are what ended up in Killjoys.

Like what?
Like the notion of driving by a children’s playground off to the side of the desert and realizing that it’s a cemetery because it’s where childhood dies — stuff that we’d say to each other, driving around. But it’s from the perspective of a gang, because that’s basically what a young band is. You stop being a gang at a certain point, but you always chase that feeling. You want to get that feeling back.

How has it been working with Becky Cloonan?
She’s awesome. When I first talked to her about it, she sent me a sketch of Rachel, one of the characters, and I knew right away she had to be the artist for the book. The great thing about her is that she comes from that world. She went to SVA, and she got her start doing show fliers for CBGBs — she saw the bands and went to the shows. She’s very punk rock in that way, and her art has that energy that a punk show has.

You’ve talked about your master plan for The Umbrella Academy; where does Hotel Oblivion fit into the big picture?
It’s pulling further away from what people think a superhero comic, or even a comic, can be. It’s going to trigger a major event that needs to happen in the comic. I’m very excited for it.

What’s happening with the next My Chemical Romance album?
I’d say we’re right in the middle of it. Brendan [O'Brien] is the kind of producer who really likes a lot of things going on at once, so we’re tracking and he’s going right across the hall and mixing. It’s a process that always keeps everyone involved the whole time. The songs are all wildly different, but the one I’m really excited about is called “Death Before Disco.” It’s a completely different sound for the band — it’s like an anti-party song that you can party to. I can’t wait for people to hear it. It brings back, lyrically, some of that wonderful fiction from the first album. I think we wrote our “Born to Run,” and I’m so amped about that. To me, it’s the greatest song we’ve ever written — it’s my favorite MCR song.

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Gerard Way has enjoyed such success with his Dark Horse series “The Umbrella Academy” that it’s almost no longer necessary to mention that he also happens to be a rock star. Together with artist Gabriel Ba, the My Chemical Romance frontman won an Eisner Award for Best Limited Series in 2008 for their first miniseries, subtitled “Apocalypse Suite,” and the follow up “Dallas” has been enthusiastically received by fans and critics. Dark Horse announced Friday at Comic-Con International that Way and Ba are now working on a third series, titled “Umbrella Academy: Hotel Oblivion,” and Way will announce another project at Saturday’s panel. CBR News caught up with Way to discuss both projects. Our discussion of “Umbrella Academy” series 3 is right here, and be sure to check back tomorrow for part two of the interview.

“Like series 2, series 3 of ‘Umbrella Academy’ is going to pick up a bit after we left off,” Way said. “But it’s going to start off with a flashback and we’re going to get to see one of the old characters from the Free Comic Book Day story, Murder Magician. Basically, we’re going to see what Hargreeves did with all these villains over the years.

“I really like this series, I’ve had this one in my head for a long time,” the writer continued. Though Way noted that his stories often shift in the telling, he does have a strong sense of how the events in “Hotel Oblivion” play out. “This time, I’m thinking it is going to deal with other characters than the Umbrella Academy, at least for half of it. You’re going to see the other side of things,” Way told CBR. The core cast, however, will continue on with their lives. “Obviously, Spaceboy’s left again, we’ll deal with that, and everybody’s in kind of a whole different state of disrepair. Although I’d like to see the family get a little bit functional at this point. You’re going to see Rumor take a very different attitude toward Vanya now, for a lot of reasons, number one being her own guilt. That story is now going to develop.”

In noting that there is a whole hidden history of what has become of the world’s bad guys, Way hints at a notable aspect of “Umbrella Academy,” the device of frequent allusions to events that have not been shown to readers. When “Umbrella Academy” debuted as a Free Comic Book Day offering, the team was made up of teenage heroes; by the time series one, “Apocalypse Suite,” launched, they were adults, with physical and mental scars suggesting that the intervening years haven’t been easy. Way said that the Umbrella Academy’s past will continue to thread out through flashbacks, with no plans at present to devote a series to their younger, more innocent days. “In terms of what really happened in the Jennifer Incident and that sort of thing, I think it would be nice to dedicate an entire story to that one. But I think that’s a ways off,” Way told CBR. “We’ve still never explained why Kraken doesn’t have an eye, we don’t know what happened to Rumor’s arm, there’s all these weird little questions still in the air. As we go along, when those situations become relevant, I tell them. This story in particular, I am really excited about because it deals with what Hargreeves did with all these villains, where he put them, and what’s going to happen in the current day.”

“Umbrella Academy” has been recognized for its inventive storytelling and often surreal plot elements, but Way’s stories display a strong internal logic holding even the strangest bits together. “I think there’s definitely a logic to how it operates,” the writer said. “It’s gotten to where I can call Scott [Allie, series editor] and run him down with how I think the issues are going to break out, or run him down how I think a series is going to go. And a lot of times I notice when we’re in a pickle, so to speak, with how to solve a problem, there is a very ‘Umbrella Academy’ solution. So there’s things I think we can get away with in comics that you can’t get away with in heavily-guarded treasured continuity books. Which is really what I like about ‘Umbrella Academy,’ which is one of the reasons I created it. Time travel, you could sit there for months and try to make sense of it. Ultimately, it’s just never going to make sense the way you want it to. The good thing about ‘Umbrella Academy’ is that it doesn’t attract the kind of readership that’s going to sit there and look for the big gaping holes in the time continuum. Because time travel is not the point. The point is that the characters got somewhere, the fact that they are there and what they’re doing. When all’s said and done, I think this will all fit pretty nicely. But I don’t know how much of the timeline, if you timed out all these flashbacks, if there’d be holes in that, but I don’t think that matters as much as what’s happening, when you’re seeing it. I think we’re going to re-cast the dog, for example. Because we now want a very specific dog. I want to use Gabriel’s dog, that he has in Brazil. When we came up with the dog, we didn’t think of using Gabriel’s dog. When you’re dealing with the ‘Umbrella Academy,’ you can just re-cast something. ‘Oh, I don’t like this dog, let’s redo it.’ Make no mention of the fact that it was a completely different looking dog.”

“I’m really excited about about both of the books. I’m going into ‘Hotel Oblivion’ with the fact that I’ve got past series two. Series one was, you know, can this person write comics, and series two was, can this person keep writing comics? Hopefully series three will just be, what’s going to happen in this comic? That’s really exciting to me. Series two of ‘Umbrella Academy’ was starting to really hone what the book is. Series one was a very linear story, even though it was told with some weird flashbacks. But series two has more breathing room. There’s more inventiveness, there’s more developmental stuff going on with the characters, sometimes you simply see a character sitting down, these kind of introspective moments. If anything, I think you’re going to see more of that. This book’s really going to get a little bit more introspective, a little bit more postmodern, a little more inventive, exciting in that way. A little bit more experimental is what you’re going to see from ‘Umbrella Academy’ series three.”

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The Umbrella Academy, by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá, hit the comics scene in 2007 like a psychotropic bomb. Dominated by offbeat characters, nonlinear storytelling, and art resembling a vivid acid flashback, the first miniseries, Apocalypse Suite, won the Eisner Award for Best Limited Series in 2008 and was wildly popular, to boot. Fortunately, hungry fans just got to feast on The Umbrella Academy: Dallas, the second miniseries, which just released issue #6 on May 13.

I was lucky enough to interview Gerard–also very well known for his band, My Chemical Romance–about Dallas, the upcoming hardcover edition, the proposed Umbrella movie, and his next comic book series for Dark Horse. Read on, but be warned: there are multiple spoilers for issue #6, so if you haven’t read it yet, be careful!

TFAW.com: Thanks for taking some time to talk with me!

Gerard Way: No problem!

TFAW.com: So, what led you to creating The Umbrella Academy and working in comics?

GW: Before I started the band, I spent a lot of years trying to break into comics, and eventually finding work in toy design. What happened was, the band started to really take off, so I had to quit all my jobs–all my freelance gigs and everything–and I really just missed it. I missed the whole world, and creating stuff like that. I missed the whole thing–the art of it, and the scripting, and the possibility, so that was the whole motivator.

TFAW.com: What’s your favorite part of writing The Umbrella Academy?

GW: I think my favorite part is that the comic is so loose. I like being able to surprise myself, and Scott [Allie, Dark Horse Comics Senior Managing Editor], and sometimes we have conversations where we surprise each other, and I love that part. I’d say, “Scott, this is the rough overview of the six issues,” and then by the time we’re at issue three, things have already changed, in a really good way, and I’ve got a whole new opening now. I never knew how I was going to end Dallas. I knew the facts, I knew what would happen, but I didn’t know how it was going to end, the specifics. There was all this weird stuff, like the Vietnam thing in issue #5, stuff like that was able to happen, to occur to me only as I’m writing the script, and that’s my favorite part.

Sending this stuff to Gabriel, and then seeing it come back and come to life, that’s actually the most rewarding part. I would get really excited whenever my email inbox would show something of his, and then I’d get to open it up and see what he’s done, and it’s always amazing.

TFAW.com: Cool! What made you choose JFK for the second series?

GW: You know, Dallas was going to be a later story–I wanted it to be a one-shot, at a certain point. I was like, “I just want this really crazy one-shot issue that’s maybe 40 pages long, that involves the characters having to assassinate JFK, and then being torn about it.” That was the original idea, and then what we realized is that we had a lot more. There’s so much more going on with these characters since the first series, and there’s so much more happening with their lives, that we can make a whole six issues out of it. The JFK thing really only takes up a quarter of their story in the series, but there’s so much more to it. I guess we could have done just that story in one issue.

Dallas was supposed to be the series that happened later, after we got through some more A-plot stuff, like where are the other kids? What really happened to Hargreeves? What happened to the Horror? Things like that. But Scott had said, “I think this is how you follow it up, you follow the first series with something that’s very different and kind of severe,” and that’s what we did.

TFAW.com: Are you still going to pursue those other storylines? I know everybody wants to know what happened to the Horror.

GW: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, right now, as soon as Gabriel is done with his other commitments and taking a break–I think Gabriel deserves a really nice vacation–as soon as he’s done with that, we’re gonna go ahead and get into some more of the A-plot again, which is, what happened to the other kids, and what’s going on here. So by the time we get to the fourth series, we’ll be deep in another plot.

TFAW.com: In Dallas, it seems like Spaceboy has kind of lost it. Was that because of the trauma of Apocalypse Suite, or Allison being injured?

GW: I think there is so much disappointment in that guy’s life, and I think he’s his own biggest disappointment. I think he just lost it because he apparently saved the world, but nothing seemed to have gotten better. Nothing’s different, for him, and that’s usually the case, but you never see that when you’re reading Superman. He’s always saving the world, but the next week, it’s the same thing, and you never really see that affect the character’s personality.

I think the biggest thing is, he’s trapped in this [Martian gorilla] body, so, now that’s they’ve saved the world, it’s time to celebrate and move on, and go back to their normal lives, and he can’t really do that.

TFAW.com: Yeah, because he’s a gorilla!

GW: Yeah! He can’t move on at all!

TFAW.com: It’s seems like he can’t move at all–he’s gained all that weight, like he hates the body.

GW: Exactly. So he’s stuck in this situation and body, and he can’t move on from it. But oddly enough, neither did any of the other characters. They didn’t go back and have normal lives.

TFAW.com: Well, how much of normal lives did they have before?

GW: Yeah, exactly.

TFAW.com: We saw more of Seance in this arc. Do you have any plans for him in the near future?

GW: You know, Seance is a character that I’m really happy has delivered the goods in terms of what he needed to be as a character. He played a very small role in the first series, up until the end, and now it’s nice to see that he’s actually kind of–that’s how I always wanted to use the character. He ends up using his personality more than his abilities, but I’ve always wanted to get more of him in there, and I found in this series that I could do that.

Me and Scott talk all the time about potentially doing a series with Seance, because of all the characters, it felt like he was the one that had the most room for other stories–he’s got this lost 10 years that were probably just a big party for him. But I’m sure there’s other things involved, because he’d lost his allowance for such a long time, when he split from Hargreeves, and he’s the kind of guy who’d do a lot of weird things to survive.

TFAW.com: Well, he had a kid back in Vietnam, so does he possibly have an adult child now, in the present?

GW: That is something I think we’ll see, if not in the next series but in the one after–the issue is definitely going to be addressed. Him having a kid in Vietnam is actually one of those interesting things where, it started off as something very simple, like, I just wanted him to have had a kid, I wanted to show the passage of time. Also, I’m assuming that a lot of people think that Seance is gay, and I wanted to play with that notion a little bit, too, because I’m not sure that he isn’t, but that doesn’t mean he can’t have a kid. So, you never know how that happened.

So that’s another interesting subject, but I really, out of all the characters, I thought, “It would be the most interesting if Seance had a kid,” and then the fallout of that we’ll just deal with later. I don’t know what the repercussions of that are, but I wanted to show that at least a good three years have passed.

TFAW.com: Well, we didn’t see a lot of Vanya in Dallas. Is she ever going to be forgiven by the family? It seemed like Rumor was opening up a little bit.

GW: Yeah, I feel like Rumor climbs into bed with her because she realizes that, “Hey, we all do horrible things. I did something horrible, and who am I to judge?” I think that they’ve kind of come to peace. So we’ll see a little more of Vanya and Rumor together next time. And potentially, Space might be on his own, Space might be with somebody else, so I think the team is going to be really split off now in different directions, and that should be pretty interesting.

TFAW.com: Does Vanya have any powers, besides being used as a weapon of mass destruction?

GW: The interesting thing is, by the time we get to see her again–and as the writer, I’m not even sure when that is, that could be series four or series five–she does in fact have the ability to play that violin and make things happen, so we’ll hopefully get to see that.

TFAW.com: So, is Number 5 always going to be trapped in his childhood body?

GW: As of right now, yeah (laughs). That’s another thing about the comic that’s really fun. I don’t know! Who knows what might happen there? As of right now he’s absolutely trapped in that body. I think now that people are so attached to that character, that if I had done anything with his body it would probably be disappointing. Because it’s not like he’s a precocious kid; he’s 65 years old or something. And I think that’s more interesting than just a precocious kid.

TFAW.com: He actually reminds me of Damien from The Omen. Was that on purpose?

GW: (Laughs) I think any sinister child is going to come off like that. If and when the [Umbrella Academy] movie ever does come out, it will be interesting to see how the actor–whoever they get to play that character–acts, because he’s not just a super-genius boy. You have to pretend that you’ve lived an entire lifetime of mostly murdering people, and you’re smarter than anyone in the room. It’s also been hinted at that Number 5 has had lots of sex and lots of drugs, so he’s someone who’s had a very full and extreme lifestyle.

TFAW.com: With future storylines, are you going to go chronologically from Dallas, or are there going to be more flashbacks and flash-forwards?

GW: By now, I think we’ve got this weird–I don’t want to call it a formula–but I like to feel like the flashbacks, the history, while it doesn’t exist until I write it, it’s there when I need it.

A really great example is the flashback at the beginning of issue #6 of Dallas, with the diorama of the solar system. This series is really about Number 5, so I wondered, what’s an example of something from back when he really was a child, that could really give the reader the sense of where his sense of rebellion comes from, where his sense of self-purpose comes from. Or at least an example of the rebellious nature he used to have. I wanted the story to be about his strong personality, his rebellion, so that’s why that scene was really important to me.

TFAW.com: Who is the third series going to focus on, then?

GW: That’s kind of up in the air right now. I knew going in that series one was about Vanya, and series two is about the Boy, and now it’s going to be kind of interesting, because we’re now going to see some other characters who are totally new to us, and I don’t think the book’s going to revolve around them, so it may revolve around–I don’t think it’s going to be Seance, but it’s gonna revolve around a main character from the group.

TFAW.com: Do you think it’s going to include the other kids from the mysterious birth?

GW: I think that we will see that more around series four.

TFAW.com: I was just wondering, with Spaceboy mentioning them at the end of Dallas, if they were going to be in the next series, or if you were just seeding it for future story arcs.

GW: He’s going to be actively looking for them, and he’s going to find some things out. I just don’t know how much yet.

TFAW.com: Is it safe to assume that the other kids will have powers?

GW: I would naturally assume that they also have powers. It’s weird–it’s not like I don’t want to give away stuff, it just hasn’t been written yet, which is a good thing.

TFAW.com: Are there going to be any MySpace Dark Horse Presents stories?

GW: I think Scott’s trying to get one more out of me. It’s really difficult with doing the album–that’s actually the hardest part, I’ve been doing this album. When I did the first Umbrella Academy series, I finished the pitch, and I sent that off, and then I couldn’t touch it until, I mean, even when Dark Horse called to do the series, I was literally in the middle of tracking, and I said, “I can’t work on this book until after I’m done with this record,” so it will be the same situation here. It’s very hard to do comics right now, even though there are some exciting things I’d like to do: doing an MDHP story, doing a one-shot, an Umbrella Academy adventure, all kinds of stuff. Fitting it into my schedule is the hard part.

TFAW.com: What about the Umbrella Academy movie? What’s happening with that?

GW: We just had a weekend of meetings, which was awesome. Writer Mark Bomback flew out from New York, and he met Scott and I here at the house, and we had a full day of meeting about the first film, about the script, about the things he was going to add to the mythology, things he was taking away, just making a really solid film out of it.

At the second meeting, we met with Universal and some people from the studio, and Mike Richardson and Scott and some people from Dark Horse Entertainment, and talked about the film itself and Mark’s script.

At this point, we’re waiting on a script from Mark–he’s finishing up some other commitments and then he’s going to get into it–and then we’ll move from there.

TFAW.com: Is it going to be an adaptation of Apocalypse Suite, or is it going to be a new story?

GW: Thankfully, it’s an adaptation of Apocalypse Suite. It doesn’t even involve that many changes. The only changes are stuff Scott and I had wished I’d thought of. It’s kind of like, “Oh, that’s cool. I wish I’d thought of that.”

TFAW.com: So it’s like your second chance.

GW: Yeah! And there are also some scenes that didn’t make it into the first trade because we ran out of room that will now make it into the movie.

TFAW.com: Oh, that’s cool. So it’s like a little bonus.

GW: Yeah, there’s a little bit of fan service in there, too, because by the time the film comes out, series three and four will already be out, so readers may see things from series three in the movie, which may excite them.

TFAW.com: Cool! What did you think of the Umbrella Academy PVC set?

GW: I loved it. I got a test run at my house, with the packaging, and after that they sent a case of them, and I opened them up, and I couldn’t believe how well done they were. I guess I should have believed it, but I’ve never seen PVC this good and this detailed.

TFAW.com: The paint jobs are really cool, the way they reproduced what was in the comics.

GW: Yeah, I think that’s my favorite thing. Oddly enough, the initial prototypes were painted by a woman I used to work with at the old toy studio I used to freelance at, before I had to quit for the band. She’s the one responsible for making the paint jobs look like Gabriel’s art.

TFAW.com: Do you have a particular favorite of the figures?

GW: I think my favorite is probably a tossup between Kraken and Space, because Kraken has some really interesting things going on with his paint job, there’s a weird little detail with the hair, certain shadows on him, and Spaceboy obviously has a lot of the same treatment. So the characters with the most detail colorwise in the comic have crazy detail in the figures.

TFAW.com: The Umbrella Academy: Dallas hardcover is coming out in September–what are the extras in that?

GW: We’re locking those in right now. The plus and minus of this whole series was, Gabriel and I had to become so tight of a unit, that I honestly did a collection of just three or four drawings for this series. Gabriel has such a better handle on the world that he does all the design work now–a lot of the time, right on the page. I would give him a description of the character and then I would see it right on the page. I don’t think he worked out too much on a sketch pad beforehand. Little bits, like Hazel and Cha Cha, he spent a little time on, and Carmichael he spent a little time on; characters like that. But that was it. So there’s very little art from me this time, so I don’t know what the extras will actually be.

TFAW.com: No apple pie recipe?

GW: Yeah, exactly (laughs).

TFAW.com: So, if you could have a crossover between The Umbrella Academy and any other comic, from any publisher or era, what would you pick?

GW: I think a really interesting crossover would be either Doom Patrol or Challengers of the Unknown. That’s one of the unspoken influences on the comic, those really old ’60s Challengers of the Unknown comics. There’s some crazy stuff that happens in the books.

TFAW.com: The members of The Umbrella Academy have powers, but they’re not really presented as a traditional superhero team. Do you consider it a superhero comic?

GW: I don’t consider The Umbrella Academy to be at all a superhero comic. If anything, series two pushed that even further away. With series three and four, it’s going to get even further away from what’s traditionally perceived as a superhero comic. I don’t know what it’s going to be considered as–maybe a post-modern science fiction drama? But that’s what I feel it’s moving toward. There’s not even a lot of costumes going on. I think of the comic more as an adventure comic.

TFAW.com: You and Gabriel Bá are a pretty good team, but are there any other artists you’d like to work with?

GW: Yes! Actually, the next series I’m doing with Dark Horse, I’ll be working with Becky Cloonan, and she’s someone I’ve been wanting to work with awhile. I kinda want to keep it in the family, and to me, that’s Gabriel, Fabio Moon, Vasilis Lolos, Becky, Rafael Grampá–all the guys who did the 5 anthology. I’ve had a really strong connection with them, personally, and I want to work with all of them. Those are the guys and girls that excite me the most–that kind of tight little group. They all kind of found each other. I think that eventually I will have worked with all of them–that’s what I’d love to do.

TFAW.com: So you think you’ll do any artwork yourself, or will you stick with the writing?

GW: Right now I’m going to stick with the writing. As far as concept stuff into the comic, Becky has already nailed it. I expected that I would do the same thing as I did with Umbrella, which was create a ton of drawings, but it’s been really hard with the record so I haven’t had a chance to do that. But I did get to build a model, which was really fun for me, and this was the first time I’ve ever built a piece of reference for an artist for a comic.

TFAW.com: What was it?

GW: I can’t actually say yet, but everyone will get to see it eventually. It’s this car model. It’s very integral to the comic series I’m doing, in the way that Kaneda’s bike was kind of a character in Akira, this car is the same type of thing. When I built the model, it took me about four days to get it to look right and do all the masking and detailing and stuff, but I wanted to get it totally exact to the way it should look in the book. It’s going to be a really interesting thing when we finally do a collection, to have photos of it.

TFAW.com: This project with Becky, is this the next Umbrella Academy series, or a one-shot?

GW: Oh, this is a totally new series.

TFAW.com: Oh, okay!

GW: Gabriel is always going to be the one doing Umbrella. Right now, he’s taking a break, and I didn’t want to give him something else to do. Gabriel and I have both decided that if we’re working on something together, it should be Umbrella.

TFAW.com: What’s the new series? Can you talk about it?

GW: I don’t know if I can yet, to be honest with you. Once I finish writing my lyrics for this album and start doing my vocals, I think then I’ll be able to sit down and really plot it out. I think it’s going to be a seven to eight issue series. I need to lock down the plot points so I can talk about it when people ask.

I’m writing it with a partner, who is an old associate of mine. We kind of wrote it together when we used to tour together in the van. I think that was the genesis for a lot of the slang and the locations in this comic. But it’s by no means autobiographical at all. It’s a really crazy sci-fi action comic, conspiracy story. So that’s going to be me with another writer, and Becky is the artist. And I think Dave Stewart is gonna color it.

TFAW.com: Well, I guess that’s the end of my questions! I want to thank Gerard for taking the time to talk with me, and he’s definitely piqued my interest for the new comic series.

So who has finished reading Dallas? What do you hope to see in future Umbrella story arcs? Will you check out Gerard’s new comic book series, even with a different artist? Anyone wondering how Gerard is on the phone (he was really nice)?

Source: TFAW.Com

The scribe has been tapped to adapt the Dark Horse comic created by My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way and set up at Universal. Dark Horse’s Mike Richardson is producing.

The Umbrella Academy is a group of disbanded superheroes who reunite after the death of their adoptive father, Sir Reginald Hargreeves, an alien disguised as a wealthy entrepreneur. Hargreeves collected the members of the group shortly after their birth and trained them to save the world, and after his death, they carry on his plan.

The comic first came out as a six-issue miniseries in 2007, winning an Eisner Award to the surprise of many. A second miniseries is being published.

Bomback’s writing credits include the DC Comics adaptation “Constantine”, “Live Free or Die Hard” and “Race to Witch Mountain”. Repped by Endeavor and Anonymous Content, the scribe is working on “Jack the Giant Killer” at New Line.

Source: Hollywood Reporter

Best Graphic Album—Reprint
Best Penciller/Inker or Penciller/Inker Team
Best Cover Artist (two nominations)
Best Coloring

Congratulations on the nominations, and good luck! To read the full list of nominees, click here.

“There’s been a lot of progress on it,” Way tells K!. “Things in Hollywood move slow typically, but the comic was optioned as a film right before the San Diego Comic Convention last July. As soon as I got home from that I started meeting people at Universal and the film got fast-tracked and so recently I’ve been in talking to them about three times a week, first talking about the tone the film might have and then talking about screen writers who are going to work very closely with me when it comes time to do the film.”

As creator of The Umbrella Academy, Way has also hinted that directing is something he’d like to turn his hand to in the future.

“Directing is something I’d be really interested in,” he says. “People ask me if I would act, but acting to me is not nearly as exciting as directing would be. When I was talking to [video director] Mark Webb about the Ghost Of You video I was talking about the idea and I broke it down into shots and he’d said ‘You should really consider making your own videos eventually’. And I think that making videos would be fun and easy, but I’d definitely be interested in directing features. After this record cycle I’d be really interested in trying something like that.”
Source: Kerrang!

Way recently talked with GraphicNovelReporter about his background in comics, the influences behind Umbrella Academy (the second series, Dallas, is underway), working with Gabriel Bá, writing on the road, how My Chemical Romance got involved with Zack Snyder and the Watchmen soundtrack, bringing new readers to comics, and why an Eisner trumps a Grammy.

Umbrella Academy isn’t your first foray into comics. Can you give readers a bit of background on your involvement in the medium?

Actually, my first job was in a comics shop. I started writing comics early. When I was 15, I was already doing comics, and after that I had gone to SVA [School of Visual Arts] to work on the drawing aspect. So I suppose it’s more than that, because I realized if I had all the skills to make comics, then it would be better. It would be much easier for me to get these comics made. If I was always relying on somebody to have to draw them, it was probably going to be a problem. And I knew breaking into the comic author part is way harder than breaking in as a comics artist, so I had wanted to be in comics that bad. After that, basically, I interned at DC for about a year during my senior year of SVA, and around then [DC editor and writer] Andy Helfer gave me a drawing gig to do a page in the Big Book of the Weird Wild West. After that, I moved on from there and I floated around from animation for a while. I was an intern on a show called Sheep in the Big City. After that I got involved with Curious Pictures. After that I got a job doing toy design. That was great. And I did turnaround, a lot of turnaround, a lot of design work. It was fun, and then the band took off, kind of accidentally.

What is the first comic you can remember being really into, and what did you like about it?

As far as making my own decisions, not a comic that was given to me but one that I actually purchased myself, it was probably a [Chris] Claremont/[Marc] Silvestri issue of X-Men. That’s the first comic I remember being my decision, and I was very excited about it. I chose to follow that book. I think that if the issue I’m remembering is correct, it was the issue where Wolverine is crucified to this big, wooden X. That’s if I remember correctly, because I do think I might have started during the “Inferno” series. So that was a thing at a really young age that impacted me. Then after that I got progressively into the weirder stuff.

Who would you cite as the top influences to your writing and/or art style?

For art, I would say it has always been Alex Toth. And I actually wasn’t aware of Alex Toth; I just knew what I liked. I knew I liked Super Friends, and I knew I liked that really streamlined, simple design—this really barebones design that works so well, with as few lines as possible. I knew I liked that, and it wasn’t until I had a class with Sal Amendola, who was one of my instructors at SVA. He said, “You know who you’d love is Alex Toth, because that’s kind of who you’re drawing like. Whether you realize it or not, he’s influenced you, because you probably used to watch Super Friends when you were a kid and Space Ghost and all this stuff.” Yeah, I did, and I love that stuff. So he brought in—I think he was doing Hot Wheels comics—and he brought an old copy of a Hot Wheels comic and showed it to me, and I was blown away and thought, This is the greatest thing in the world to me. As far as writing, it would definitely be Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. Obviously [Pat] McEown, [Neil] Gaiman, and Garth Ennis as well. There are a lot of great writers that are really big.

How would you describe Umbrella Academy to someone who is not familiar with it?

When somebody asks me what it’s about, I basically spew off the first seven pages of the first series for them. I say it’s about this, and that’s how I describe it in this quick-fire kind of way. That’s really the only way to describe it. But when I get deeper into it, not talking so much what the actual plot is about—because there’s something deeper going on that has little to do with the plot—it’s really an experiment in ideas. To me, it’s a comic that didn’t exist, in that it’s post-modern but it takes a lot of my favorite stuff, what I consider the best stuff, and puts it in there. There’s a reason you can’t tell what time it is, because when you see wrestling, it’s when wrestling was good and real. It’s when radio was great. It’s when TV was great. The cars are great. It’s to me all the best stuff from all the eras. I think that’s what it is. It’s this sort of post-modern superhero comic. It’s almost not a superhero comic. It’s about family, and it’s about people, and lots of crazy ideas. So that’s how I describe it to people.

Can you explain a bit about where the idea of Umbrella Academy came from? I’ve read that you liked the concept of your heroes fighting an idea, rather than a physical villain. What works directly influenced its style, and what are you trying to accomplish with the books?

Definitely the thing that lit the fire under my ass was when Vertigo reprinted the old Doom Patrol trades. You can literally pinpoint the exact moment trade #1 came out and when I started. I think it was right around the time trade #2 came out, I literally started banging Umbrella Academy together. It was weird. I talked to Grant a lot about the series and he said to me some of his favorite stuff in that series is simply the characters sitting around and talking, having a therapy session, realizing it’s not when they’re fighting a bad guy. And out of the bad guys that they fight, they are fighting villains, but you kind of boil those villains down to concepts, and that’s kind of what it is. The whole concept of “The Painting That Ate Paris,” that’s a concept, and the title alone is amazing. And they’re not really going after a bad guy. There are bad guys involved, but… That was the direct thing where I said, “Wow, not only does this hold up; it actually probably makes more sense now.” And not only that, but there’s nothing like this today. There’s nothing like Doom Patrol, and I don’t want to copy this, but I want this kind of—Grant had given this interview where he talks about this new wave of lo-fi weirdness, and I wanted to be a part of that. I didn’t realize at the time that interview was 4–5 years old. To me, there was still nothing like it. A lot of the weirdness you see in comics up to that point—it was kind of steam-punk stuff or something. Everything was steam-powered and everything was just about that. That’s as weird as it got.

Where did you get the name for Umbrella Academy? Every time I read it, I can’t help but think of the scene coming down the steps in the MCR video for “Helena,” or Resident Evil. Any connection to either of those?

I hadn’t realized that too about Resident Evil. I actually really like Resident Evil, but I’ve never seen the films; I’ve only played the games. And I didn’t realize that that was such a big thing. I hadn’t even considered the “Helena” video thing. What it actually came from was—there’s an old punk band from New York called Stiffs Inc. They are one of the most influential bands to me, if not musically alone, then aesthetically as well. They were great. They kind of dressed like old Victorian detectives or butlers. The music was really punk, kind of in an adverse type way. The lyrics were about Sherlock Holmes and space travel and George Orwell and things like that. And they had pictures like old silent-film stars. They had a huge impact on me. That band had broken up a long time ago; I never got to see them live. Their singer, Whitey Sterling, had briefly formed this band called The Umbrella Brigade, then that band broke up. I always thought that would be a great concept for a team name, just something involving an umbrella. I’m glad I changed it to “Academy” because he reformed that band recently and he finally has a new record out, so that would have been awkward for sure. But at the time, I felt he was finished with that band, his second band. So to me, it was a really cool nod to this kind of obscure band that really inspired me. He’s got a new record out now and it’s awesome.

What is the writing process like for you and how do you manage all of your time with this and the band? Scott Allie writes at the end of the Apocalypse Suite trade paperback about some of the difficulties of getting scripts while you’re on tour. Is the second series faced with similar issues?

There are a whole different set of challenges, I guess, when you’re on the road. I have to literally get up and find a place, not only a place to work, but I have to find the time. Luckily, it’s harder to find a place to work. I usually have a lot of time, because all you have to do, especially after your record has been out for a little bit and you’re in the middle of a tour, are in the middle of your cycle, you’re not really doing any interviews anymore; you’re not doing many appearances. You’re simply just playing shows. So if you wake up at 10 in the morning, 9 in the morning, you’re not playing until almost 12 hours later. So it leaves a lot of time to do stuff. That’s how that would get done. The only reason stuff ends up getting late sometimes is because there’s a lot of travel involved, and time differences are huge. When I finished the last issue of Apocalypse Suite, I think I was in Malaysia, and I think I was a day behind, actually, or ahead. So I wasn’t quite late yet; I had an extra day because of where I was in the world, and that really saved my ass. But that would add to stuff taking longer. And when I’m home, the different set of circumstances is that it’s hard to sit down and be able to focus, because I do have other things going on with the band. And I have to micro-manage those things on a daily basis. That makes that harder, but I’d say it is easier being off the road and writing for sure. I haven’t been late yet with series two.

How did you hook up with Dark Horse to publish the project?

Jim Krueger is a comics writer and a really good friend of mine. He would literally give me work-for-hire. He’d pay me out of pocket to do jobs for him, because we met on the train and he really liked my art. We stayed in touch, even through the band. He’s even come to a couple shows, and whenever I was in New York City I would meet up with him for lunch. And we’d do this a couple times a year depending on my schedule. We had lunch one day and I said, “I have an idea finally. I want to write comics again and I have this idea.” He goes, “Where do you want to take it?” And I said, “I think I want to take it to Dark Horse because I love what they’re doing over there.” And then he put in a call to a friend, Eric Wiler [executive assistant to Dark Horse founder Mike Richardson], over there. Then the ball just kept rolling, and then Wiler found me an editor, and that’s how I met Scott Allie and that was it.

The second series of Umbrella Academy is underway. What can fans of Apocalypse Suite expect from the new books?

I think you can expect a change in the tone of the series. As much as I was fighting back doing the origin story, I think Apocalypse Suite is an origin story without you feeling like you’re reading an origin story. I think it cuts out a lot of the fat and extra garbage that usually comes with an origin story. There are usually a lot of scenes of discovery and surprise involved in origins, and we’ve seen those things so many times I don’t think we need to dwell on them. I don’t think we needed a scene where the kids are discovering what their powers are. I wanted to avoid that stuff at all costs, but it probably has its purposes. It’s kind of an origin. It really sets up the world and the sandbox, and now I feel the comic is more about doing whatever I want. Now each series is going to have its own voice, and its own feel, and its own tempo. The overarching theme of series two is not only slightly political, or examining what a hero is; it’s a mission. They have to deal with the JFK assassination; that’s their mission. What happens in issues 1 through 5 may or may not have anything to do with that mission. It’s always kind of more about the journey we take to get to the ending, not so much about the ending or “Who is the bad guy?” I never really wanted it to be like that, because if you look at a lot of limited series, they’re almost formulaic in a way that. Issue 1 will introduce the problem, by issue 3 they’re having their first brawl, and by issues 5, 6, 7, they’re fighting the bad guy and beating him. That’s something I wanted to avoid. I didn’t want people to even know what was going on until issues 3 or 4.

Looking back at Apocalypse Suite, how well do you think you achieved your vision on the page? Is there anything you wish you had done differently or lessons you’ve learned from mistakes that you’re taking with you into the second series?

I learned a great deal. I’m much more confident in dialogue now. I also started to embrace the fact that the book is actually funny. When I started this comic, it originally wasn’t intended to be funny. I wouldn’t consider it a humor comic, but there’s a sense of black humor and cynicism that stems from watching bold shows like The Prisoner and things like that. I’ve learned to embrace the dialogue and that humor in this second series, and I think the first series I had a very difficult time writing dialogue. This time, it’s very easy. That could be because I’m writing more comics, or that I’m getting more comfortable with the characters. I think that’s a big thing. I think if I had to do it again, I would have made the first series one or two issues longer, simply so we could get more of the orchestra in there. I think it would have been nice to have an earlier experiment of theirs, or some kind of attack, or assault, before the final one. Actually, I would have added a little more depth. There are tons of flashbacks I probably would have put in—at least three or four more flashbacks, but I think its ending kind of abruptly and borderline existentially on this kind of peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich is part of the charm of that first series. So I could look back and say I would have changed that, but I think it happened for the best.

Were you a fan of Gabriel Bá prior to working together on Umbrella Academy? How did you two come together for this project?

I actually hadn’t heard of Gabriel. Gabriel was still pretty under-the-radar at that point, although he had a lot of underground fans. Scott, who always has an amazing eye for talent, had kind of discovered Bá and his brother Fabio [Moon] before Bá was working on Casanova. I think they had put out a book of Gabriel and Fabio’s even before Casanova. He said, “I think this is your guy.” He said, “I think Gabriel is on the verge of breaking through with comics. It’s not going to look like a superhero book, which is what you want. Go check out Casanova.” And I did. I went to the store and knew right away he’d be the right guy. Because I also knew, in looking at Gabriel’s stuff, and the scripts that [Matt] Fraction had written for him, I knew that I was going to use Gabriel in a completely different way. I was going to move the camera totally different. I was going to use less panels, for example. I knew the comics would end up looking very different, which they did at the end. So that’s how I was turned on to him, and after I saw it, it was an easy decision.

Going back to what you said about going to school in the first place to be able to write and draw your own comics, why get an artist involved instead of doing the art yourself and having total creative control?

I think sometimes too much control over something is a bad thing. There are really great examples of someone like Craig Thompson who can just bust out the whole thing by themselves and have it be amazing. I think that requires a completely different set of discipline, which I don’t think I had. I think my brain moves too quick and jumps too much from thing to thing. I think if I had to write the comic and draw it, I’d be choking on it by the end. And I simply didn’t have the time. I did want a comic to come out, eventually, and I think if I tried to draw it on the road, pages would have gotten lost; they would have gotten destroyed. I am certain that if I had mailed some pages out from Moscow, they never would have made it. There are a lot of factors involved in stuff coming from all over the globe. It’s just a bad idea. So I really wanted to put the comic out, and I felt that I didn’t have the discipline that someone like Gabriel had to sit down, chain himself to the desk and do it.

Do you have a favorite character in the series, or one that you particularly relate to?

I used to kind of think so, but I don’t have a favorite anymore, especially writing this series. I find that they’re all extremely useful to me at any given time. Usually if I’m stuck, I just turn to the characters. I was stuck almost at the end of Apocalypse and I was like, “What the heck am I going to do here?” I hadn’t thought about the character Séance, so I was like, “Man, this guy hasn’t been used at all in the series as much as I’d like him to,” and I had him play a really big part in that last issue because of that. I enjoy writing Number 5 a great deal. He’s a little bit of a mouthpiece in a way that I can get extremely dark and cynical with that character. That’s kind of fun. Séance is super fun to write. If I identify with anybody, it’s more like Number 3. I think she’s the most normal.

What was it like to find out the series picked up an Eisner Award last year?

Winning the Eisner and then the Harvey was the biggest deal to me ever. That was more important to me than a Grammy or anything, truly, for so many reasons. I never cared to win a Grammy. I didn’t really know what an award like that really meant anymore. I think at one time it probably meant something. It doesn’t really mean anything to me, because the band is just a reactionary thing. I just do it. It’s just waking and taking a shower or something. It’s just very automatic, and I just do it. But something like comics, where it’s something I really had to work at a tremendous amount—not that making records isn’t a lot of work, but comics were way harder. It was way more challenging, and I had a lot stacked against me. I think that’s what made it better to win that award, is a lot of people thought it was going to be horrible. And to me, what I consider to be the best of all Eisners to win, is for Best Limited Series.

Were you surprised to get interest in a movie deal so quickly? Also, how do you feel about the recent surge of comics to film? Some artists love to be involved, while others scorn the idea of movies being made out of their books. Where do you stand?

It’s a good thing and a bad thing, to be honest with you. They’ve kind of been out for so long that we’re getting to see ones that are good, but if they don’t progress or evolve, it’s the same film over and over. If they keep coming out with really crappy ones, then it’s going to ultimately hurt that, and everything comes around. Obviously, comics movies are really hot right now and they won’t be, eventually. And it will be most likely because the quality control on them simply goes down, if anything brings them down.

So I think they can be a good thing. As the writer of the comic, you hate to pull yourself out of the situation. You need to pull yourself out and go, “You know what? I already wrote this. This is done.” There’s an old famous quote by an author. Somebody said, “How do you feel about your books being ruined?” His answer to that was, “They’re not ruined. They’re still on the shelf. I can pick them up and read them anytime.” And I feel that way. I’ve written a comic, so I’m done with it in terms of that. If it gets turned into a film, for better or worse, hopefully it’s always for better. I’m fully willing to accept the vision of whoever wants to make it, because there obviously is going to be something that excites them about it.

How much more material do you have in mind for Umbrella Academy? Is this something you can see yourself doing for years to come? Any other projects in the works?

I have other ideas for projects, and I’d really like to do them. I definitely have ideas, though, for Umbrella. I have laid out through series four, but then even after that I know where it’s going. I think, all in all, it will be eight or nine trades. At least seven, but most likely nine graphic novels, and I think that will be the end of Umbrella Academy.

How did My Chemical Romance get involved with Zack Snyder and the Watchmen soundtrack? And for those that aren’t aware, can you explain the connection of “Desolation Row,” the song the band covered, to Watchmen.

For those that aren’t aware, Bob Dylan plays a huge part in Alan Moore’s Watchmen. It’s not just Dylan; there are all kinds of quotes of lyrics, from Nat King Cole to Jimi Hendrix. There is all kinds of music in there, but Dylan is one of the most important artists that Alan Moore quotes in that series. So Zack wanted to bookend the film by having it open with a Dylan song and end with a Dylan song, and he wanted those feelings to be very different. So he wanted a modern band to cover a second Dylan song that he could use at the end of the film. We were a likely candidate, because I’m a huge comics fan. That was the biggest comic to me. I’ve obviously written my own comics, and while Warner [Bros.] Pictures and Warner [Bros.] Records are two separate entities, usually when they put out the soundtrack, it comes out on Warner Records. So, our head of marketing had thought that we’d be a really perfect fit for Zack, so he brought us up to Zack and he said, “Yeah, it makes sense, because this band is actually genuinely into comics. The singer actually writes comics and Watchmen is a huge inspiration to them.” So that’s how it came about, and the next thing you know, I’m on the phone with Zack and he said, “What are you thinking for this cover?” I said, “I think it needs to be a product of the era, which is basically early-age punk, late ’70s glam-punk.” He felt that was a really cool take on it, so that was really it. The hardest part was, I love Dylan so much and I love that song so much. They’re some of the best lyrics ever written, so I’m trimming out almost half the song and a lot of the great lyrics, which was a drag for me to do. And I realize it’s not something you can do lightly, to take this epic song and then trim it down to three minutes, but I felt if it was going to be this kind of sucker-punch, slightly nihilistic punk exercise, it was going to have to be short—as short as it could possibly be.

What was it like getting to do your music video for the track with Zack Snyder, and what can you say about the part it plays in the ending of the film?

I don’t think the video will, but the song does. That was amazing. I’m sure that will end up on the DVD of the film. You get to work with some really amazing people. I’ve worked with some really great directors on our videos, but we’ve yet to really work with a director who did film, and it was a different experience. Even the treatment that we got for the video—Zack didn’t even have to do that to impress us; we were already going to work with him. He probably most likely did it for himself. This treatment was amazing looking. He had pulled all this photo reference, all this crazy stuff, and it looked like it was going to be one of the most exciting videos we’d ever shoot. And I think the end result is something that’s very different from any of our other videos. I think the band looks more natural in it. Obviously, there’s no makeup happening. A lot of the extras were almost a product of the era as well. I think it fits right into the Watchmen universe.

How closely would you say your comic experiences shape the things you do with My Chemical Romance, from imagery in songs to album art to the music videos you make?

I always felt that no matter what you’re doing, your creativity is very relative. So I think if I’m writing kind of nihilistic comics or working on the ones that haven’t even come out yet, that’s going to spill into the music somehow, because it’s obviously what I want to be saying. Aesthetically, too, I think there’s something very relative about the visual aspect. It’s all tied together. Even if a guy like Tim Burton had a band, I’m sure it would reflect the work he’s done somehow in film. I think all that stuff is relative. You just find the best avenue with which to pursue your idea or your vision, and then if it’s a song, it’s a band thing. That’s great. If it’s a comic, that’s great. You just have to find the best avenue for it.

What is it like for you to undoubtedly be bringing some My Chemical Romance fans into the realm of comics for the first time?

That was a big goal of doing Umbrella Academy. To me, comics are a medium I have learned and taken so much from in my career and my personal life. They were so important to me and so important in changing who I became that I owed it to comics to bring an entire readership to them that hadn’t read them before. In fact, during the first signing, one of the best parts of meeting some of the people when the first issue came out was the fact that most of them told me it was the first American comic they’d read. They had only read manga up until this point. That was really great to me. And of the manga they read, they could go to Barnes & Noble and just sit in the aisle and read it. With this type of thing, they actually have to go to a comic shop, so I think retailers ended up being really happy, and I think it was great for the industry, and that was a goal of mine: to get a whole new generation of people in the comic shops.
Source: GraphicNovelReporter