REVIEW // Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite // Gerard Way, Gabriel Ba // Dark Horse Comics

                As can be seen as an influence of such other great team ups as The Doom Patrol, Gerard Way brings together a group of six unlikely characters with, well, a chimpanzee.    The story starts with a wrestling match and the night that a lot of babies were born at the same time, some to unsuspecting mothers.   Of the survivors, The Monocle managed to get seven and adopt them because he needed them to save the world.   He never said from what, but there you have it.    This story then really restarts itself as they all come back together (more or less) for the funeral of Monocle. 

                While this series of six issues collects a story which is not only an introduction to the group but also focused largely around Vanya, who was number seven and told she had no super powers, the real hero in all of this for me is The Boy.   Though he was warned, The Boy traveled too far through time and ended up at the end of the world.   He then had to find a way to travel back in time (This took seemingly forever) to prevent the world from ending.   When he comes back, he still has the body of a boy but is something like 60 years old.   He just doesn’t age.

                When I read a collection of Myspace Dark Horse Presents, Gerard Way had a conversation typed up in it with someone else and he discussed how too many people who read comic books these days want answers to everything possible.   One scenario proposed was if Tony Stark can build an Iron Man suit or two, why not just create an entire army of them to finally do away with crime altogether.   The fact remains that most of these questions can be answered by the simple fact that if such instances did occur, then the characters would no longer have stories or seem as interesting. 

                What Gerard Way is going for with this series- I believe- is simply that it’s going to have a mix of everything from sci-fi to comedy, but also it’s going to just stand as what it is.   It’s not going to explain a lot or have a great deal of back story answering every single tedious question a reader might have.   I actually really like that about this.

                My favorite chapter title is: “We Only See Each Other at Weddings and Funerals”, as is probably most peoples.   It’s just that clever writing, mixed with interesting characters that make the X-Men look boring (and fit into the Dark Horse realm nicely) and the art is just… yeah.  You’ll be blown away by how this looks.  It really looks- in my opinion- far too good to ever try and be translated as a movie.