The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite

by Gerard Way, Gabriel Ba, Dave Stewart, Nate Piekos

Genres: Fantasy, Graphic Novels, Science Fiction
Pages: 184
Series: The Umbrella Academy #1
Rating:

Synopsis:

In an inexplicable worldwide event, forty-three extraordinary children were spontaneously born to women who'd previously shown no signs of pregnancy. Millionaire inventor Reginald Hargreeves adopted seven of the children; when asked why, his only explanation was, "To save the world." These seven children form the Umbrella Academy, a dysfunctional family of superheroes with bizarre powers. Their first adventure at the age of ten pits them against an erratic and deadly Eiffel Tower, piloted by the fearsome zombie-robot Gustave Eiffel. Nearly a decade later, the team disbands, but when Hargreeves unexpectedly dies, these disgruntled siblings reunite just in time to save the world once again.

I thought I’d give Gerard Way’s The Umbrella Academy a shot, though I didn’t know anything about it other than that there’s a Netflix(?) series, and I kinda liked the violin-woman design on the cover.

It’s… a bit of a mess, to be honest; there are some interesting character designs, but it jumps around, motivations aren’t clear, characters don’t really have coherent arcs, etc, etc. The idea of taking a bunch of “special” kids and training them to fight/unlock their powers/etc is a classic, but barely really used here; why they’re so dysfunctional, alluded to but barely touched on; the whole situation for Vanya, nope…

I don’t really get it, overall. Though I still think the violin-body design is astounding to look at.

Rating: 1/5