A while ago, I read that the lead singer from My Chemical Romance was doing a comic.  Gerard Way had made an attempt to get into comics in the past, before reluctantly settling for life as internationally successful rock star. 

Now, with a global fanbase behind him, Way had understandably become of interest to Dark Horse.  It didn't sound very promising.  At best, I expected a self-indulgent side project of interest mainly to the band's fans.  At worst, a dreary slice of life story about miserable suburban teenagers in heavy eye shadow.

Umbrella Academy #1 is the comic in question, and quite honestly, when I picked it up, I'd completely forgotten who Gerard Way was.  I didn't remember until I reached the letters page.

This is not the comic I expected from Gerard Way.  Not at all.  The opening splash page features a wrestler fighting a giant squid, which is possibly the least emo thing imaginable.  And it continues in that vein.

The Umbrella Academy are a group of ten-year-old superheroes, all of whom were born simultaneously in some sort of mystic even, and gathered by the enigmatic Monocle, who's training them to save the world.  The kids regard him as their dad; he doesn't really see it that way.  He also seems to have given them numbers instead of names, and he sends them out to battle evil in perhaps the cutest costumes in superhero history - they wear school uniforms with domino masks.  Some of the kids have genuinely useful superpowers.  Some of them... well, don't.

The story takes place in two time frames - a past section with the kids in their pre-pubescent heyday, fighting gleefully bizarre forms of evil, and a future section twenty years on, where things haven't gone so well for the team.  One of the kids is a time traveller and gets to hop between the two.

Crucially, this is fun.  You could write this concept in a fairly grim way if you wanted - the Monocle doesn't exactly seem like the best father in the world.  But that's used more to add a bit of depth to an essentially happy, upbeat comic about kids fighting evil monuments.  Even in the future section where things are supposed to have gone off the rails for the team, Number 1's fate is so absurd that it undercuts any real misery.  Gabriel Bá's art catches the spirit perfectly - cute little moppets in a crazy and dynamic world where utterly ridiculous ideas fit in perfectly.

And it's good.  It's well paced.  The jokes are funny.  The story is intriguing.  It's a lovely book, it really is.  Now, granted, it's probably got two strikes against it.  For one thing, the basic idea of celebrating the slight silliness of Silver Age comics isn't a new one, and people like Grant Morrison and Matt Fraction have been doing it for years.  And it's true that the elements of this book are familiar, but for my money it uses them well enough to overcome that.  The other thing is that some of the kids get lost in the shuffle in the first issue.  Number 3 doesn't get much to do at all.  But it's mainly Number 1's story, and he's rounded enough; perhaps the others will get their moment in the sun in later issues.

I'd never have expected Way to produce something this... well, this cheerful.  Let alone to pull it off.  But I liked this a lot.  Why didn't this guy succeed in comics in the first place?

Rating: A

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