Rock stars who dig comics and trade on their fame to break into the field are certainly nothing new, or even unusual.
What is unusual, however, is for the rock star in question to downplay rather than trumpet their involvement, as My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way does with his new series, The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite (Dark Horse Comics).
Even more unusual? For the comic to be this great.
Way’s first comics work is remarkably polished, and he takes to scripting far better than many of the other celebrity comics writers coming to the field from other media, most of whom evidence a still-getting-the-hang-of-it learning curve for a while. Beyond simply being not bad, Way’s loony action adventure tale fits squarely into his publisher’s zanier pulp riffs, like Mike Mignola’s Hellboy and Eric Powell’s The Goon.
When wrestler “Tusslin’ Tom” Gurney delivers an atomic elbow to the space-squid from Rigel X-9, the reverberations set off cause 43 (not pregnant) women to spontaneously give birth to miracle babies. Eccentric millionaire Sir Reginald Hargreeves adopts as many of the babies as he can, and, 10 years later, they’re outfitted in darling little black domino masks and private-school uniforms and using their bizarre super-powers to fight a berserk Eiffel Tower. I’d hate to give too much away, but the line “Just as I suspected—Zombie-Robot Gustave Eiffel!” is uttered.
Brazilian artist Gabriel Ba (De: Tales) captures this all in energetic line work, although seeing his flat, chunky art after painter James Jean’s round, textured cover art can be a bit jarring at first.
Those who like space-squid wrasslin’ and zombie-robot versions of eminent 19th-century engineers should be in heaven; those who don’t—well, what are you doing reading comics, anyway?
Much more down to earth is Michael Cavallaro’s Parade (With Fireworks) No. 1 (Image Comics), the first half of a two-book story the writer/artist unearthed from his own family history. Intimate in its focus on the personal history of a few people and a small town, Cavallaro’s tale nevertheless reflects broad national and international politics. Set in the 1920s, between the two world wars, Cavallaro’s story follows young Paolo as he leaves his ancestral home in Italy for Chicago, then flees back when most of his friends and associates start getting murdered.
Things are less than idyllic in the old country, though, as some of the more passionate men in the village divide between the fascist and socialist political parties. The story takes its title from this issue’s central event, a long, tense march home from an Epiphany celebration, with a gang of drunken fascists harassing a band into playing for them, while a gang of socialists keep an eye on things, should violence erupt. Their presence, of course, practically guarantees violence (hence the “With Fireworks” part of the title).
Cavallaro’s art is simple in design, the images giving off an illustrated-children’s-book vibe that is at once perfect for a family story spun from the oral tradition and subversive in its address of political violence.