My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba’s now-famous The Umbrella Academy: The Apocalypse Suite is best described as a bare-bones, psychedelic deconstruction of the superhero genre and its’ subgenre’s much in the vein of Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol – one which Way followed up fairly recently in his run on the title. I must say I personally prefer the show as it very much piles on meat on the comic’s bare bones, which somewhat ruins its pace as it is a breeze to read through. However, it is a very energetic read and clearly homages and deconstructs superhero teams in the vein of X-Men, Doom Patrol and even the Avengers – a pastiche of genres led by a leader who may or may not be manipulating things behind the scenes irrespective of how his proteges must be affected. In fact, it is very much also an allegory for child neglect, as all seven team members, alive and dead, indicate clear signs of poor coping mechanisms for such neglect.
I can’t say I disliked reading it, but I do wish it had more meat to it.
