Saturday, December 13, 2008

The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite

This comic book had every opportunity to be truly awful. Consider the following factors: non-comic writer from an emo-esque band (Gerard Way from My Chemical Romance), obvious influence (from Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol), low-end marketing campaign (compared to Big 2), and artist I am not at all familiar with (Gabriel Ba).

Well, it was less truly awful, and more good - I have absolutely no idea how this happened.

There's absolutely no question that this was put together by someone who loves Grant Morrison, but the characters were clever (and surprisingly sympathetic), the art was evocative, and most of all, it didn't come across as a fan letter written by a fan, it was a legitimate piece of work by someone who has a lot of love and respect for the medium.

In closing, if you like weirdish superhero comics, I have no reason to believe you won't like this book, or the upcoming miniseries (Dallas).

RATING: 74% (which means that it is better than The Birthday Bat, but worse than Frank Miller on Daredevil)

3 comments:

DCP said...

Everybody keeps talking about how good this comic is, but I just can't believe it. I mean, My Chemical Romance? Really?

Bryan said...

My advice is to go into it with low expectations, then be pleasantly surprised. It worked for me.

Also, it helps to know that before Gerard Way was a rock star, he worked at DC.

Jacqui said...

Believe it or not, I just got The Umbrella Academy a couple of weeks ago at Barnes and Nobles. I have yet to read it, because I'm in the middle of two other novels. I don't really have low expectations of it, though. Then again, I'm not exactly a comic book connoisseur.