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 volume 1: The Apocalypse Suite by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba ::
by William the Bloody
A few decades ago... forty-three children were born simultaneously to women who had, until that moment, shown known previous signs of being pregnant. Many of these children were abandoned or put up for proper adoption, well, the one who survived anyway. One Sir Reginald Hargreeves, world famous scientist and unbelievably wealthy entrepreneur, sought to adopt as many of these extraordinary children as he could. He found seven of them, erased their past identities and reissued them numbers, 00.01 through 00.07. Why would this man do such a thing? To save the world, naturally. From what exactly, Hargreeves never said, but he spent the next ten years training them and honing their uncanny abilities, and at last set them on their first heroic mission: stopping a mad zombie-robot Gustav Eiffel, except for Number 00.07, who apparently has no special powers (other than violin playing) and Number 00.05 who ran away from home through the time stream. Roughly ten years after their crime fighting debut, the children of the Umbrella Academy have grown up and the group breaks up and start their own individual lives. During this time apart, Number 00.03 got married and had a daughter, Number 00.01 took up a post on the moon in order to protect the Earth from any threats from space, 00.02 remained a crime fighter on his own, and Number 00.07 wrote a tell-all book about her life inside the academy and the dysfunctional family within. Now, ten years after the team disbanded, Sir Hargreeves is dead and these wayward children, all grown up, have come back together for the first time to lay him to rest. At this time, Number 00.05 has returned from his fifty year stint in the future to warn his adopted siblings that the world will end three days after Sir Hargreeves's death and that they must work fast to find out the hows and whys in order to stop it. Unbeknownst to her siblings, Number 00.07 who did not attend her father's interment and never seemed to have any amazing powers at all, is asked to audition for first chair violin for a mad orchestra who will play a devastating piece known as The Apocalypse Suite.
The Good: Fans of comic book super heroes (especially those in Marvel Comics) will have no trouble identifying with the whole "dysfunctional family with super powers" concept, but here we have that idea with a neat slant I can't quite put my finger on. It reminds me a little of the movie Brazil, where the events take place "in the 1980s" as though all that time and the inventions are are simultaneous, existing on one dot of time. Umbrella Academy kind of does that with the history and evolution of comics. You have all sorts of crazy things like you used to find in 1960s comics like people with gorilla bodies, villains named Dr. Terminal, and a hero with the ability to conjure other dimension creatures through his chest, combined with the dysfunctional family dynamic which was perfected in the late 1960s, 70s, and early 80s, the violence and gore as well the less than linear story telling of modern comics. I am pleased with the way this group is presented. We get 5 pages at the start of issue one with the basic back story of Hargreeves adopting the seven infants, then jump ahead to their first mission as ten year olds, then jump ahead to twenty years after that to Hargreeves's death. It was quite clever, actually to do issue one like that. You get just enough set up to understand each of the character's personalities in the post-Hargreeves setting, especially 00.07 who was always shunted aside for never having super powers. Many decisive events happen in this story, people die, some are crippled, but the concept of jumping around in time to see past events in this tale really opens the series up to the possibility of telling stories at various points in these characters lives, which is very promising. One of the members, 00.06, is already dead at the open of the post-Hargreeves story, but no details are given other than it may have occurred during one of their missions and 00.01 blames himself. If that isn't a story worth telling one day, I don't know what is. Gabriel Ba's art work is perfectly suited to illustrating a tale so bizarre and unique as this. Gerard Way and Ba may as well have shared a telepathic link. And kudos to Ba on not scrimping on the backgrounds. Worth noting, in the volume 1 collected trade paperback, you get treated to the two page teaser story previously only online as well as the free comic book day 12 pager! Many keen concept sketches, too!
The Bad: There were a couple of things I wasn't too clear on, such as what were 00.02's powers exactly? They never mention it, not once, except that he has a penchant for throwing knives. He is nicknamed The Kraken, and they show him swimming off once, but I didn't get it. Also, I'd like to know more about why 00.07 was kept on at the academy despite her decided lack of powers, but perhaps that is a story or another day? Some of the ideas may in fact be a bit too weird or out there for people who aren't into comics.
All in all, I really did dig it. Umbrella Academy has some really interesting and truly original concepts to it. The way in skips around in time here and there only makes in extra fascinating in my opinion, opening itself up to the opportunity to "fill in the gaps" whenever it wants. The character designs are cool and I really, really did get into the whole orchestra of doom looking to end the world through music. You just don't see enough stuff like that in comics today. It's traditional comic book concepts turned on its head in a weird way. It's totally different but totally wicked.
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