The Umbrella Academy (Apocalypse Suite) By Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba

The Umbrella Academy is an unusual comic book about a number of odd occurrences. The world of The Umbrella Academy is strictly one of fantasy and the art work here by Gabriel Ba is appropriate to this setting. This first trade paperback of The Umbrella Academy contains the first 6 issues first published in 2007 or so. One of the telling items of The Umbrella Academy is that it is created by Gerard Way a very popular singer of the band Chemical Romance. There seems to be a bit of carping about that, as if it mattered any, which of course it doesn't. Mr. Way is surely good enough as a writer to have a comic book via Dark Horse Comics. You do get the sense from the book that he wants to keep the two genres separate, and with young men hugely into Comic Books and Rock Music he may not want to be stepping on any perceptions.The basic premise of these first issues concerns the birth of about 43 children by women who weren't pregnant! There isn't a whole lot of explanation to this o
ccurrence. 7 of the children are immediately adopted by Millionaire inventor Reginald Hargreeves who informs the world that the children he adopted will save it one day. From here it doesn't take much time for the book to enter into the children's adult lives. One lives on the moon, he has been transformed into a sort of Ape Man with ape arms and feet! He is called Space. The other children, who are now grown adults make up an unusual group in that they each have some sort of 'powers', these powers don't seem too self-evident at first... and one Vanya has no powers but can play the violin.Well as things progress The Umbrella Academy is reformed after the death of their beloved caretaker/father Hargreeves, who apparently was admired and loved by the children but didn't love them back, or so they believe. There is quite a bit about him not loving them, and Hargreeves doesn't like them calling him father. And oh yes, there is a talking monkey as well. The Apocalypse part comes
in play as some villains from in the past try to kill the newly formed Umbrella Academy and Vanya, the Academy member without any special powers becomes a killer with a violin. She plays and people die, so her brother's and sisters must stop her from apparently destroying the world... by playing her death tunes. That's the just of The Umbrella Academy, which I felt was a bit loose yet promising towards the end. I can't say that I was 'touched' by the story, but there is surely much to work with here and perhaps I'll look further into the later issues of this series. I want to see how things Mature, if the characters really have that extra dimension that will make the series noteworthy.

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