Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
:: Umbrella Academy by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba ::
by William the Bloody
The Umbrella Academy is a new group of super heroes! Unfortunately, they've just discovered the dead body of The Rumor, one of their teammates. As Séance the team mystic confirms the identity of the deceased he has the unique pleasure of passing this information on to The Rumor herself! The killer goes on a villain television talk show to brag about his crime, the Murder Magician and his minion The Assistant and they take the studio audience hostage with their giant murder robot! Can the Umbrella Academy stop these nefarious villains and figure out how there are two Rumors and how one wound up dead?
The Good: I was pretty surprised that a comic written by a notoriously emo rock musician actually did NOT suck. Really, it didn't. The Umbrella Academy characters had that sort of Grant Morrison or Alan Moore-esque feel about them where they're almost parodies of the genre, but not and I actually kind of like them. Yeah, they're sort of weird, but that's increasingly par for the course with this sphere of story telling. The character designs were quite refreshing in that the women actually do not go around flashing their cleavage all over the place and I really do dig their little umbrella logo. Murder Magician feels like he's straight out of a DC history book and that's cool, man.
The Bad: This was a Dark Horse Free Comic Book Day offering and unfortunately this story was full length but had to make room for two partial story teasers (Dark Horse DOES want you to actually spend money on their books, after all). Way had to cram quite a bit into the twelve pages he was allotted, so some stuff does come off as rushed. Who know what they would have gotten done had they been allowed a WHOLE comic?
All in all, it had kind of a Grant Morrison X-men era or Doom Patrol kind of feel: we have a group of bizarre and freakish heroes who are all under the tutelage of a mysterious teacher who can go to extreme lengths of harshness. The team members seem like they could be interesting if given half the chance. Hey, it's a FREE comic, so go on and ask your local comic shop if they've got any spares lying around they can give you. Definitely worth a free read and may be worth looking into if they get a real run at Dark Horse.
B
