(Thanks to Mikey Way Online for the heads up!)

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.

Continue…

Mark Bomback is getting out his parasol for “The Umbrella Academy”.

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

The Umbrella Academy is nominated for 4 awards this year, in the following categories:

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.

My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way has exclusively revealed to Kerrang! that he’s in talks with Universal about turning his graphic novel series The Umbrella Academy into a film.

“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!