BY EW.COM
For the last five years, Gerard Way has been the frontman of My Chemical Romance, a New Jersey-based rock band that, depending on who you ask, has either blossomed into one of the most talented acts in popular music (highlighted by last year's stunningly operatic concept album, The Black Parade), or been criminally responsible for the slew of heavily eyeliner'ed emo teens running amok in our nation's malls. In an attempt to explore both phenomena, EW joined Gerard and Co. on the road in the U.K. last winter, and somewhere between Liverpool and Glasgow, we couldn't help but notice the tour bus was overflowing with comics, pens, and sketches — evidence of the 30-year-old singer's past life as a struggling artist and animator.
The School of Visual Arts grad may have chucked it all to start My Chem, but now he's finally putting that diploma to use: This September, Dark Horse will release The Umbrella Academy, a six-issue series conceived by Way and drawn by Casanova artist Gabriel Bá. It promises to be something of a big deal, both to Gerard's army of rabid fans and to the struggling comics industry, providing the latter with an influx of new readers and the former with yet another thing to OMG about on MySpace.
But before the madness starts — preorder those copies now, kids! — we grabbed the always-lovely Mr. Way himself on the phone from Europe (where the band is about to join Linkin Park's Projekt Revolution tour) to give us a first look at his first issue, explain the predictably oddball story, and reveal why Hot Topic will most likely not be carrying a line of Way-designed apparel anytime soon
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: So we're here looking at pages 11-13 of Umbrella Academy's first issue. Let's start from the beginning: Tell me about the art, and where the idea came from.
GERARD WAY: I had adopted this style that was a little mixture of modern superhero meets Tin-Tin or European comics. I wanted something completely bizarre, that felt like you got the chaos of an early superhero comic, but didn't look like one. So I said, What if Genet directed X-Men? What would it look like? That's really the birthplace. It made finding the artists a really tough process. [Cover artist] ''Firemen,'' and I was like, This is the guy, for sure.
Did you do sketches to give him a sense of what you wanted, or did you just give him the text and structure and let him run?
I actually did a ton of drawings. The comic really started on the Take the Chaos tour, when I finally started to get my footing after being clean and realized I had nine hours of free time a day. I was up when everybody was still passed out, and I was drawing in the catering room. So fast forward to when I'm about to leave New York to do Black Parade: I completely designed every character, plotted it out, and sent it to Scott. And then when Gabriel decided to do the book, it was totally based off the artwork in that proposal, and he managed to create this whole thing.
Explain that relationship. Are you saying, ''Okay, I've already drawn this, now just re-draw it in your style''?
By nature, I'm the kind of person who wants to be surprised, and I love collaboration. Anybody I ask to work on this book with me, I do it with their understanding that I'm gonna draw stuff, but I want you to draw stuff. You don't have to agree with me. I love interpretation. Spaceboy, the main character — he went through a lot of changes. Gabriel completely put this giant gorilla-like body on him. And there was a moment where I was like, ''All right, how about we kind of compromise on this? You can beef him up, and he can walk like an ape sometimes.'' There's back and forth, and I invite it. I'd rather have that. I don't want to just be telling people what to do all the time.
Has my old high school buddy Matt Fraction — who writes Casanova — forgiven you for stealing his artist?
Well, he got Gabriel's brother, so I think he's fine. [Laughs] They're both so amazingly talented. And while their styles are completely different, there's something about them being brothers that carries through. I've never met Matt Fraction. I want to pick up the Casanova trade and read the whole thing, but it's in hardcover, and those are hard to lug around, so I'm waiting for the paperback.
And you're back out lugging stuff on the road again right now. How come every time I talk to you you're in Europe? What's that about?
The band does really well in the U.K., so it seems like we're going to the U.K. every few months. And then every summer there's the festival run. We opened up for Muse at Wembley Stadium yesterday. That was something. I hadn't been that scared since we were a band for three months and opened up for Jimmy Eat World at the Allentown Fairgrounds.
That's a little smaller than Wembley Stadium.
A lot. But to a band that just played a basement? We saw 10,000 people and we were like, Whoa. So last night was terrifying. Oh my God that is a lot of people, and they're all here to see Muse. [Laughs] It was humbling.
You're in France today?
Yeah, we're in Paris. We just got here. We're in this really weird hotel that looks like it was designed by Stanley Kubrick or something.
I find it interesting that you're in Paris, since the pages they sent me from your comic actually have to do with the Eiffel Tower. What a brilliant segue I've just created for us here! Let's just talk really specifically about what I'm looking at. These are from when the Umbrella Academy are still kids?
What you're seeing here is a snippet from the middle of the issue, which shows our heroes at age 10 on their first mission, and their first mission just happens to be the day the Eiffel Tower went berserk. The title of the issue is actually The Day the Eiffel Tower Went Berserk. Hargreeves is the older guy on that airplane. He's a space alien, but nobody knows he's a space alien. He's an extremely wealthy entrepreneur and inventor. He's good at everything. He's just a weirdo, an eccentric, rich weirdo, that's actually a space alien with an agenda...
[Snort.]
Okay, it's all over the place. [Laughs] Basically, it starts off with a wrestler. And the wrestler, he knocks out this space squid. And when he does that — and it's completely a matter of coincidence — extraordinary children are born, on Earth, instantly. Now, this wealthy entrepreneur guy, he tries to adopt all of them. He only finds seven of them.
How did he know about the wrestler and the space squid?
How he knows how to find these kids is something I won't explain until much, much later.
Sure. Wouldn't want to spoil it.
It's different being cagey about your stories than it is being cagey about a record coming out or something. It's like, No, I actually can't tell you, because that happens in like Series 5. So anyway, what we're looking at here, it's one of these scenarios where stuff has already gone bad. We get a breather on the ship that gives a little bit of character, kind of showing how cold Hargreeves is, and how bad of a father he is. 'Cause he's an alien. He doesn't know how to raise kids. He treats these kids as tools, basically, to save the world. And then you go back to the Tower, where things have gone from bad to worse. Basically the image I had in my head that really spawned this whole scene was a 10-year-old child knocking out the Eiffel Tower. I thought that was something so insane, and so over-the-top that I had to do it in a comic. And then we come to find that, in the control tower, after all these years, there's a zombie robot Gustave Eiffel. Which, I don't know how the French are gonna feel about that. I think Gustave Eiffel is a pretty big national hero.
Okay. Well, that all makes perfect sense. Now: Is it a coincidence that these 10-year-olds appear to share makeup tips with My Chemical Romance?
They actually have masks. I'm a big fan of domino masks, like Zorro, or Robin. You could put a domino mask on anything, and it becomes a superhero. You put a domino mask on a milkman, and he becomes, like, Super Milkman. So they're actually just mild-mannered British schoolchildren with a little of The Prisoner mixed in. I threw domino masks on them, and wiped their identities.
They're just referred to as numbers throughout?
Yeah, also inspired by The Prisoner. I wanted Hargreeves to really alienate these kids. A lot of the focus of the book is connecting with that part of somebody that, when they were a kid, they were forced to do something they didn't want to do. Like if your parents wanted you to play soccer, but you didn't want to. And if you're not really great at it, how bad do you feel about yourself? I was trying to connect on that level. So to further alienate these kids, he wiped their identities. They have no names. They're not allowed to play with other children. They have to wear masks at all times. And they can't even call him ''Dad''.
And then he dies, and they have to come back together.
Yeah. He passes away at the end of this issue. They disbanded a while ago, because of lots of personal problems, and the death of one of the kids. They disbanded when they were in their 20s.
Oh, they're like a boy band!
They are like a boy band. They were literally these kids that were there to save the world — those were the salad days — and then when they get older, they're supposed to be responsible superheroes, but they're not any good at it. They don't know how to interact with each other or anybody else, and they mess up in this thing called the Jennifer Incident. So after that they were like, This is useless, we're wasting our time. And the second issue is called We Only See Each Other at Weddings and Funerals.
I'm quite certain people are now very curious to see how this all plays out. Are you going to have time in your touring schedule to hit ComicCon this year and do some more explaining?
We're trying to work out some flights, but the plan is I'm going to be there on the Saturday, I believe.
That may be rather nutso for you.
I don't know. The previous year was great, because it was really low-key, it was under the radar, and it was really humbling standing next to Gabriel and James. I've met a lot of people who are interested in the book because Gabriel and James are doing it. That was good for me to see. I feel like I've actually been knocked down a few notches, and I needed that. So I don't know what it'll be like this year. The Free Comic Book Day preview we released got a great response — I think people were so skeptical, but I'm very used to that. It's like a tool in my toolbox now.
There may be skeptics in comic land, but the hordes of fans from your quote-unquote day job might make up for that. There's fervor there for a different reason.
Right. And the idea behind all of this is to get these people into comic stores. Comics are my first love, and I hate seeing an art form that I love suffer. So it's like, Well, I'll do something, it'll bring people into the shops. That's why when I went to Scott, he was like, ''Why'd you pick Dark Horse, why didn't you go to a bigger company?'' And I'm like, Because I want people to read Dark Horse books. Everybody knows who Batman and Spider-Man are, and that's fine. I'd rather go with a mom-and-pop. I'm really proud of the first issue. Free Comic Book Day is nothing compared to the first issue. The first issue is nuts. Every single page is nuts.
This is all very exciting. Do you feel like this is something you've been working toward your whole life and you finally got there, or do you feel more charmed and lucky and blessed with an opportunity?
I never intended to actually get an opportunity to do comics from being in a band. I feel it's just a gift. It's just an opportunity, and I'm very choosy about my opportunities. I'm not an opportunist. Like, I don't have a clothing line.
You really maybe should, Gerard.
[Laughs] Everybody would just look like they were in The Avengers.
Striped fingerless gloves for the world!
Basically, yeah. I won't do that kind of thing, and I'm very careful. Like when someone says, ''Hey, we want you to act in this movie,'' I'll be like... ''No... [laughs], I kinda just like being in a band.'' And that's why we've kept the band so separate from the comic, and I think Scott and Dark Horse have been really good about that. It's not on the cover, it's not on the poster, it's not my comic. It doesn't say, ''Gerard Way's Umbrella Academy.'' That stuff was all very important to me. I want my name right next to Gabriel's. So yeah, I think I'm lucky. I'm blessed. I have an ability to tell stories and I have an opportunity to do that in another way right now. I feel the same way about directing videos, or directing films. I would take those opportunities. Any opportunity where I have to work? It doesn't feel like I'm being an opportunist. If you don't have to work that much — if you design a jacket or something, like I did for Hurley — you do that for charity.
There's gonna be a whole slew of angry jacket designers now.
[Laughs] Yeah.
Posted Jun 20, 2007
