The Umbrella Academy volume 2: Dallas


By Gerard Way & Gabriel Bá (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-59582-345-8

Superheroes have been around long enough now that they’ve been able to evolve into different sub-sets: straight Save-the-World continuity types as championed by DC and Marvel, obsessively “real” or realist iterations such as Marvelman, Crossfire or Kick-Ass, comedic spins like Justice League International or She-Hulk and some rare ducks that straddle a few barstools in between.

Addressing the same Edgy, Catastrophic Absurdism as Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol, the archly anti-didactic antics of The Umbrella Academy offered readers a subtly subversive take on the idiom which impressed the heck out of everybody and lured many disillusioned fans back to the pitifully tired and over-used genre when first released…

This second collected volume gathers the frenzied fantastical follow-up 6-issue miniseries as well as an offering a chance to see the 8-page online yarn from MySpace Dark Horse Presents #12.

Once upon a time a strange event occurred. All across Earth, 43 babies were unexpectedly born as the result of apparent immaculate conceptions – or perhaps some kind of inexplicable parthenogenesis.

The births even surprised the mothers, most of whom discarded, abandoned, sold or had adopted their unexpected, terrifying newborns.

Notorious scientist entrepreneur and closet extraterrestrial Sir Reginald Hargreeves, inventor of the Levitator, mobile umbrella communicator, Clever Crisp cereal, Televator and a process which enabled chimps to speak had a secret plan, and he knew the kids would all be special. He thus acquired seven of these miracle babies for an undisclosed purpose, subsequently rearing and training the children to become his private superhero team to enact it.

He was in no way a “good” parent…

The callously experimental family, after a spectacular early career eventually proved to be unmanageable and the Umbrella Academy – created and trained “to save the World” – sundered in grief and acrimony, but not before poor Ben, Number 6 AKA “The Horror”, pointlessly lost his brave young life and Number 5 “The Boy” took a short trip into the future and never came back…

The surviving members of the utterly dysfunctional superhero team parted but were reunited twenty years later when the news broke that Hargreeves – whose nom de guerre was The Monocle – had died…

In the interim, Number 1 son Luther became an off-earth defender and pioneer, so hideously damaged by a doomed journey to Mars that to save him, Hargeeves had grafted The Spaceboy‘s head onto the body of a colossal Martian Gorilla.

Poor, neglected Vanya, whose musical gifts Hargreeves deemed utterly useless, became a drop-out and wrote a scandalous tell-all book before becoming a voluntary exile amidst Earth’s lowest dregs. When Number 7 returned she was again rejected by her “family” and summarily seduced by a manic musician who unleashed her true potential and almost destroyed the world with her untapped power…

The Boy returned after sixty years of ranging through the time-stream and materialised in the body of the ten-year old he had been, However, his physical form was frozen and he stopped aging at that moment…

Favourite friend, technologist, housekeeper, actual lifelong care-giver and talking chimp Dr. Pogo had died in Vanya’s – or rather The White Violin‘s – apocalyptic attack which had left Allison (Number 3, The Rumor) with her throat severed, apparently forever deprived of her talent for warping reality with a word…

Diego (Number 2, The Kraken) remained the obsessive scary vigilante psychopath he’d always been but Klaus (Number 4, The Séance) was even weirder than before: a floating, shoeless space-case who talked to the dead and pulled the wings off the laws of physics…

Once upon a time, long ago and whilst still children, the UmbrellaAcademy saved WashingtonDC from an animated and extremely angry Lincoln Memorial. They’ve had an odd relationship with American Presidents ever since…

Now having saved the entire world from prophesied destruction, the dysfunctional quintet are at a loss and killing time in the rubble of their old home: Luther zones out watching TV, Klaus pampers himself, Diego keeps busy assaulting various underworld ne’er-do-wells, and maimed Allison offers rather radical treatment to amnesiac Vanya.

Only The Boy is really busy as he deals mercilessly with yet another attempt by chronal cops of the Temps Aeternalis to make him fulfil the mission they recruited and rebuilt him for.

In ‘The Jungle’ of the modern world nobody is a more apex predator than the time-locked tyke, but his former masters are adamant he should fulfil his purpose and send in their most dreaded expediters Hazel and Cha-Cha…

‘Boy Scouts’ sees The Kraken and Police Inspector Lupo closing in on the mystery assailant leaving dismembered bodies all over the city – and slowly becoming aware how little they really know about the fortuitously returned Number 5 – whilst billionaire John Perseus arrives back in town with a most mysterious crate which definitely bodes badly for all humanity….

It’s The Rumour who actually tracks down The Boy and gets to the truth even as the unstoppable Hazel and Cha-Cha make their first gory move…

‘Television or Are You There, God? It’s Me, Klaus’ sees The Séance desperately seeking assistance before succumbing to the time-tossed, sugar-crazed killer couple as the horrific story of The Boy comes out.

Temps Aeternalis spent a lot of time and effort upgrading the kid into the perfect assassin for difficult, history-altering missions and even after a relative eternity of brutal successes they still need him for the Big One.

Dallas 1963…

Klaus, meanwhile, has moved on and is chatting with the Big Guy in Heaven when Luther becomes Hazel and Cha-Cha’s next target in the campaign to get the rebellious Number 5 to do what he was re-made for. If the world is to survive Kennedy must die – but Number 5 just won’t play ball and reality is beginning to suffer…

A countdown to nuclear Armageddon starts ticking as ‘A Perfect Life’ finds the separated Hargreeves clan all zeroing in on yet another end of the world and taking extraordinary steps to stop it.

Rumour and the Boy for example, ally themselves with the Temps Aeternalis and agree to personally stop The Boy (the other one but it’s really him too, see) whereas Luther, Diego and the freshly resurrected Klaus opt for a straight time-jaunt to the kill-zone to lay in ambush.

Sadly they miss by years and have to wait a bit for their plan to come to fruition in ‘All the Animals in the Zoo’ before all the alternate Earth craziness is superbly made sensible and satisfactorily wrapped up in the deviously bravura climax of ‘The World is Big Enough Without You’…

Also included are an Introduction from Neil Gaiman, a brace of Afterwords by Way and Bá (‘Texas is the Reason’ and ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’ respectively) and a short revelatory glimpse at the rebellious teen years of Vanya and Diego and their punk band The Prime 8s in the deeply moving ‘Anywhere but Here’ from MySpace Dark Horse Presents #12 (July 2007).

This volume concludes with more fascinating behind-the-scenes secrets of ‘Designing the Umbrella Academy’.

Whilst happily swiping, homaging, sampling and remixing the coolest elements from many and varied comics sources, The Umbrella Academy created a unique synthesis and achieved its own distinctive originality within the tired confines of the superhero genre. It’s a reading experience no jaded comics fan should miss.
Text and illustrations of the Umbrella Academy ™ © 2008, 2009 Gerard Way. All rights reserved.