Umbrella Academy: Dallas #6

The frustration many comics readers feel having to wait month-to-month and sometimes much longer (as Jesse pointed out) for something even resembling a narrative to develop in their comics makes a lot of sense, but it also rejects a certain kind of wonder that only happens through serialization.

As the "Dallas" storyline wraps-up, Gerard Way reminds readers that it's the adventure itself, the panel to panel, scene to scene, issue to issue, temporal fun of comics that matter as much as it making sense or conventionally keeping your interest. This was something easy to forget because "Dallas" wasn't as delightfully comic-book as "Apocalypse Suite". "Dallas" leaped from events and time periods and groups of characters and back again, slowly rumbling towards some kind of big ending, then hanging out in Vietnam for most of the last issue, and still wrapping it up with a really moving, cinematic finale.

In short, there's a lot of dicking-around in "Dallas", just like every other comic book out there, but here, that's the point, not a way to keep you buying the monthly until the comic's no longer profitable and they end at abruptly at issue #87 or whatever. When at the end of their journey, The Seance says, "Everything looks the same...it's like nothing changed at all" and Spaceboy responds with a grumble "I wish you were right Klaus, but it all looks pretty different to me" and wanders away, Way's illustrating the subjectivity of "events" and "action" for the characters, but also for the reader.

A lot of people were enamored by Secret Invasion or proudly pass out copies of Y: The Last Man to friends or are inexplicably moved by boring-ass Watchmen but they all put me to sleep. They all lack the tiny details that make a great comic and not "tiny details" as in, little clues and symbols that build-up to the greater narrative that you maybe won't catch on first read, but like tiny details that make a page jump-out, the whims and weirdo impulses of the writer and artists--those weird asides. The latter rewards issue reading, the former chin-scratching trade paperback readers.

When Carmichael (fishbowl head guy) tells the group "the point is to maintain the status quo", it's a comment on "event comics" which send you on a game-changing whirlwind of events, deaths, re-characterizations only to land like three inches from where they took off. The difference though, is all the bullshit that "changed nothing" in "Dallas" stands on its own as pretty awesome while all the crap in Final Crisis is supposed to build to something and then just doesn't really. Of course, everything's changed--if it was all the same, why are they so bummed at the end?--but that's all obvious, right?

Take special note to Gabriel Ba's wordless, nine-panel page that comes right before Seance's comment that "Everything looks the same". The page is a big deal, its the half-spread the illustrates the results of the comics' actions but the joke is, it illustrates nothing more than regular ol' life moving on. It's the page that's supposed to show a dead villain, a writhing hero, a big explosion but it just doesn't. The lack of a conventional reward makes sense because going back through "Dallas", which began with Giant Booth shooting Giant Lincoln and featured Nam' Vampires and a huge fucking Mummy in the last issue doesn't need a big, giant "Woah" ending, it's given you all that in every issue. It never held back or jerked you around with bullshit events pretending to be important ("Where were you when Martian Manhunter died?") it just kept moving, confused and muddled yes, but bravely moving forward nonetheless.

Last issue review, I expressed concern that the ending would be a "boner kill" and it basically is, only it's like, such a boner-kill, such a non-event that it works. Pushing to the side some epic culmination, it rolls along with moments of comic book fun, but mainly riding a melancholy throb of confusion (Seance, Kraken, Rumor), anger (Number Five), and depression (Spaceboy) up to and through Way/Ba's bravura movie montage (complete with lyrics and all) ending.

Umbrella Academy: Dallas #5

Something we've all been sort of obsessed with lately here, is the always problematic issue of continuity and those few comics that aren't stand-alone, but can be read stand-alone. David's experiment with Elephantmen #17 being a good example. While issues #3 and #4 of the "Dallas" storyline sort of got like Final Crisis-crazy with plotting and jumping around, this latest issue totally moves the story along but is also just sort of awesome, if you just picked it up, out of context.

Way basically threw a total curveball here and it allows him to do some weird, crazy, stuff that the comic didn't exactly call for, but works at a tangent, and (in a way) most importantly, fits with the feeling and thematics of the story. Issue #4 ended with a time-traveling POP! and we expected the series' final events to really kick-off, but instead, we see the results of the time-traveling by just being dropped in the middle of it--as a reader you're as displaced as the Umbrella Academy. The comics readers equivalent of like Scott Bakula leaping and being like, "Woah, I'm in a dress? Okay, gotta figure this out..."

In the meantime, as you begin to connect the dots--in short, the Academy ended-up in the wrong year and location--you're treated to a really nuts Vietnam, battle sequence that's part every American 70s 'Nam movie stuck on atop of each other--really reminded of the very comic book-y Dead Presidents by the Hughes Brothers--and part, something else altogether, Vietnam through the looking-glass Apocalypse Now-style (maybe the amount of surreal I wanted Apocalypse Now to be) with Vampire Vietnamese and a Mummy and stuff.

Much of this issue's taken-up by a Vietnam fighting sequence that ostensibly, "means" very little to the plot. But that's great. It's great because it captures the sense of messed-up, disorganized, ennui of "Dallas" in a sequence. As I've said a lot, Apocalypse Suite was Wes Anderson-like in the reuniting of a family after years apart, and now "Dallas" is the team just sort of not getting along and trying to do their best to complete a very-important, superhero task without the joy hangover you get when you temporarily forgive people of all the messed-up shit you've been not forgiving them for, which is what fueled the Academy through Apocalypse Suite.

The group being in the wrong time, in the wrong location just generally confused is perfect. Additionally, the "extraneous" Vietnam sequence is great because it indulges in this very, like 90s, Liefeld/Jim Lee sense of comic book fun that a whole bunch of Umbrella Academy readers think they're too cool for--notice the way Spaceboy basically looks (and sorta acts) like Cable or you know, how a bunch of people fighting for no apparent reason invokes 90s X-Force (and really, X-Force in 2009 too, but that's another post. In short, envision something as Jack Kirby crazy and Rob Liefeld indulgent--Kirby and Liefeld are sorta the same person, but that's another post too--but filtered through the energy and mannered simplicity of Ba.

So yeah, this is great single issue and it pushes along the odd, unkempt feeling of discomfort and disorganization of the series even if it's mostly a tangent that doesn't move the plot along quite as swimmingly. But that's okay or like, you should be okay with that. The fight sequence is great, and the way that the members of the Academy that've been stuck in Vietnam have spent their time is really hilarious and poignant. I'm both nervous and excited for how "Dallas" is gonna wrap up in one more issue. Could be a boner-kill anti-ending, could be too much stuffed into a single, or it could just be bat-shit crazy and awesome.

Umbrella Academy: Dallas #4

In Umbrella Academy: Dallas #4, you feel the gears turning, or more appropriate for this in-quotes, in-love-with-pulp comic, you imagine writer Gerard Way in a room with future and past plot points chalked on the wall excitedly connecting them all together with mad dashes and arrows, after three issues of invigorating explanation and throat-clearing, and that's a problem...for now.

Maybe this'll all wrap-up and make sense as six issues together, but the beauty of "Apocalypse Suite" was how it felt like a comic book-comic. More what you think comic books will be like when you were just watching "Batman" on TV before you got your mom to buy you an issue at the super-market and were like "Robin's dead? Jason Todd? I thought it was Dick Grayson! This is stupid." This "Dallas" storyline ain't that bad, but it's not not like that either and I increasingly feel like I'm pushing through the fractured confusion of the plot because it'll all come together soon enough.

This is my biggest problem with comic books and most serialized media. The sense that I'm supposed to keep reading month-to-month--or viewing week-to-week--because eventually it makes sense and'll be really awesome. The best stuff of course, strings you along but drops enough rewards and visceral awesome-ness that you don't have time to stop and be like, "Huh, what?".

And there's some of that here. The intro dream sequence that builds to a two-page spread of Spaceboy gripping the charred skeleton of his child-monkey. The brilliant truly chaotic exit of Hazel and Cha-Cha that by the way, happens to show Nolan/Ledger's Joker to be a mannered maniac and not the rolling ball of chaos they tricked people into thinking he was. John Perseus as a super-successful blindly forward-thinking hot-shot (with shades and maybe even a critique of JFK Jr.??). Seance's sucking head-wound. An issue ending, page-high illustration of the after-math of time travel, with a lone sad robot longingly in the corner. What it all means I don't know and it's pretty damned cool but sounds better in the paragraph above than it feels while reading it. Almost too fractured and all over-the-place.

Of course, part of that's the point of "Dallas". "Apocalypse Suite" was the history of the Academy and a quasi-ideal reunification in adult-hood. As I've said before, this is where the Wes Anderson movie ends. "Dallas" keeps going after the credits roll and The Faces fades-out where all the ugly angry bullshit that was temporarily forgotten or suppressed or whatever comes back and stuff gets ugly and lonely again.

The narrative's not fractured because it's a major comic-book event trying to fuse every different 'verse and character into the issue but because the characters aren't speaking. Still, the whole thing feels disjointed and even as the plot comes together and the characters start interacting and figure stuff out together, there's something perfunctory about the whole thing. And maybe that's the point too?

That the best moments of the issue feel like single-panel flashes of virtuosity or isolated sequences of inspiration, is both a sign that the series is starting to lose its way and a summation of the scatterbrained kitchen-sink brilliance of the series.

Umbrella Academy: DALLAS #3

How good was the latest issue of Umbrella Academy: Dallas? Not good enough that I jumped on my laptop within minutes of finishing it like I did #1 and #2, but good enough that two weeks later I still feel the need to comment on it.

The first two issues I compared to the apocalyptic slow-burn of Morrison's Final Crisis, well issue three's the mind-bending headfuckery of Morrison's Doom Patrol. Like that series, Way's developing this sense of "anything can happen" and then filling every storyline and characterization with this palpable, awful sense of dread and doom, and then just when it gets too heavy, you get something really insane and playful like The Seance apparently in Heaven, only heaven's a color-less Monument Valley or something and God, a world-weary cowboy. Imagine the metaphysicality Sam Elliot's "The Stranger" from The Big Lebowski magnified and made really fucking explicit.

Meanwhile, Gabriel Ba's doing his simple jagged ugly line thing with perfect inking real uh, perfectly, and channelling like Moebius' Blueberry and Geoff Darrow's Shaolin Cowboy minus the obsessive-ness of those masterpieces. There's an especially brilliant panel where God rides away on his horse telling Seance "And stay off the drugs, Klaus" and Ba's punctuated the empty white with western movie settings signifiers (cacti, jagged rocks) and sticks God in the corner of the frame drawing some stretched-out M's to convey dust floating from the horse's feet stomping the arid ground and forgetting all other details so like, if you aren't looking closely it kinda looks like God and the horse are rocketing through the air and not clomping away into the desert. Or maybe that's the intention? Okay, it totally is, this weird secondary, more conventional idea of God going back up to heaven.

And then you turn the page and in that swiped-from-Wes Anderson-Futura-font, you get "DOWNTOWN." just as you got "HEAVEN." (which is perfect because both heaven and downtown are these weird idealized non-places) when the narrative bounced from sick fuck hitmen Hazel and Cha Cha electrocuting the pathetically fat Spaceboy to Way and Ba's John Ford-country heaven. What else happens is sort of messy and confused and involves a lot of time-travel insanity connected to wiping-out people so shit doesn't happen and it's all interesting but sort of weird because like, Umbrella Academy does this thing of sort of always being in quotes--with the constant referencing to everything and anything--but it's also really emotionally affecting and somehow, an ever-twisting mess of time-travel settings and history-erasing murders and history-creating assassinations seems a little too "in-quotes", know what I mean? We'll see.

Umbrella Academy: DALLAS #2

Issue #2 begins with a scene that seems to reference Hemingway's "The Killers"--or maybe Don Siegel's film The Killers or maybe Siodmak's film, or maybe both or all three--as two fake-friendly and therefore, all the fucking scarier hit man types needle a waitress and diner owner. There's probably some Edward Hopper's "Night Hawks" in there too, and the torture that follows is some Reservoir Dogs type shit (complete with Godard's thin suits that John Woo took that Tarantino then took), but it's more a big sloppy mess of references and ideas turned inside out and around one another than some in-joke clever pastiche that means nothing.

Then again, it doesn't exactly mean something either, it's atmosphere and context and slowly moving towards the same nebulous pre-hippie, late 50s/early 60s sense that issue #1 of "Dallas" touched upon with J.F.K and bowling alley blues and milkmen and all the rest. Unlike the first volume/story arc/mini-series of Umbrella, "Apocalypse Suite" which hit the ground running, "Dallas" is a slow burn that's moving towards some odd cohesion.

More than anything else, I'm reminded of DC's Final Crisis which before it stopped making any sense in issue #3, was a mess of scenes, ideas, and mini-events that only sort of connected but filled you with a weird, palpable dread. That series became so disappointing because I felt like I was in good hands with Morrison and that'd it all work out or end up a little clearer or at least be fun and it you know, didn't. "Dallas" though, I'm a little more confident in and each issue's filled with enough mini-moments and weird ideas that the fact that it's kind of playing the comic-book bullshit game by teasing you issue-to-issue becomes negligible.

At the same time, the disjointed, not-totally-satisfying feeling of "Dallas" makes a lot of sense because it's about all of them not being together and not getting along. The series was set-up as a kind of "The Uncanny Royal Tenenbaums" or something, with the series looking back to the victories as children, their failures now, and their re-finding their glory, but then, they all split up, and this is like the failure after the failure after the re-found glory. Each character's on their own and they're all kind of devastated, mad at one another, and mad at themselves. When you go from Number Five in an ugly ass tenement buiilding drinking liquor and watching a monkey dressed-up as Marilyn Monroe singing "Happy Birthday" to Seance drunk in a Hawaiian shirt in front of Pogo's grave at like midnight, you're not exactly reading for a story and where it's going hardly matters, you just sort of viscerally feel it.

And there is this comic book-y feeling of dread and whatsgonnahappennext??!! with the hit men, who are looking for Number Five--just like the rest of the Umbrella Academy or at least, the ones that care to look. They're funny and creepy, oversized Japanese Vinyl Toy heads atop the body of Mr. Blonde. I promise I'll stop with the old movie references but their companionship takes on a like misanthropic romantic aspect--like the hit men in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia--by the end when they hug one another in a graveyard after one hands the other a box of Girl Scout cookie thin mints. These guys are especially evil because we haven't really seen a true, at least for now unexplained evil in Umbrella. We've seen giant, city-crushing monuments and we've seen The White Violin, a member of the Academy, her "evil" caused by years of family resentment, but there's not been a conventional villain(s) bent on doing bad.

When talking about really good comics, I end up celebrating the story and writing more because it's kinda easier and there's more to open-up and discuss, but Gabriel Ba's art really needs to be discussed here. The first Final Crisis connection I made, outside of the pacing, was the way that like J.G Jones' stuff on that series, Ba (along with colorist Dave Stewart) do this thing of giving each part of the story--or each character's scenes--it's own color scheme and sense of shading and angle. It's something multi-character movies like Magnolia or Traffic do too, but there's a sense of colors bleeding into one another or abruptly contrasting here that works much more effectively. And Ba's work, is just the right amount of lines or details to be both cartoony and fun and devastating and ugly when it needs to be (Spaceboy's bloated laziness, the hacked-off arms and legs of the diner owner).

When Ba does "wide" shots, he just dashes off an oblong circle for a head and draws a stretched-out "W" for legs, but will draw each and every architectural detail of a building or the knicks and dashes of use and wear on a bedpost or windowsill. Last issue's brilliant eight-page fight scene was uh, brilliant, but the thing that really got me about it was the glow around the parking lot lights. They were colored, off-center circles and nothing more (the candle flickers at the end of this issue are really similar) but it was the perfect amount of detail and in a way, gave off this odd, eerie feeling that was the perfect, subliminal preamble for the violence about to occur. And that "something's about to happen" is what "Dallas" seems to be about, from the slowly moving narrative, to the mystery hit men--and the fact that it's called "Dallas" and had JFK in it, some kind of assassination's going to occur, right?--you keep reading for the big story, but you also read for the little, sad, ugly details of the Umbrella Academy's dysfunction.

There's also this really cool Ross Campbell drawing of "The Rumor" in the back:

Where My Money Went - Nov. 27th

Every Wednesday, I push the limits of my budget for my comic addiction. This is where my money went this week:


Brandon wrote about this yesterday, and really nailed it. The Jim Lee cover has something hilarious about it, the characters seeming completely different under his pencil: White Violin looks like a member of Gen13. The Umbrella Academy is more of a family than a super-team, where they feel connected to each other but work as individuals to prove to their "father" their worth. To sorta cement this, U.A. uses "Futura", the same font Wes Anderson uses in Royal Tenenbaums.


Superman has no problem beating the shit out of zombie-looking Vampires and feral Werewolves, but when he recognizes a face, he becomes this wimp. Superman and Batman vs. Vampires and Werewolves is secretly this great team book, where neither Superman or Batman are the main character. Green Arrow, Dimeter the Vampire, Janko the Werewolf, and now The Demon, are all fighting together. It feels like a Marvel book that brings old characters out of the white-box to make them exciting again. If only Kelley Jones drew this book...

The Thor one-shot series has gotten better and better with each and every issue. After reading DC Comic's The Ring of Nibelung it's awesome to see Thor and The All Father outside of super hero story lines, even if it's just retelling of myths. In this issue, Thor fights Brunnhilda, a Storm Giant, and his father Odin. It's more than a five minute read--like some of the Wolverine one-shots--making the $3.99 price point worth it.

Incredible Hercules continues to be my favorite monthly comic, even more so after the World War Hulk story lines have ended. Hercules, Namora, and Namor save Poseidon from the Amazons, but not the world, since they seek axis mundi, which will put them at rule of the planet. Marvel implants it's mythology-based characters into their own universe using their original tales as a basis, and then, building the story lines and current lives of those characters around that.

Secret Invasion: Inhumans has come to an end, but it's been left open for a new series, War Of Kings. Medusa and Crystal settle their differences and find the location of Black Bolt, who no longer needs their help. His connection with his son grows, Black Bolt's able to communicate with his child the same way he does to his wife. Escaping from his restraints, he blows a super skrull away with a fucking whisper and returns to his family. Crystal marries Ronan and the Royal Family realigns itself with the Kree, meaning that hopefully we'll be getting some more Marvel space comics. Great ending to a great mini-series. Here's some promo art to get you pumped UP:

Umbrella Academy: Dallas #1

Umbrella Academy's already proven itself to be way more than a silly rock star vanity project, and Gerard Way's gone to great lengths to separate his musical career from his comics career, but there's undeniable rock star bravado to the whole project that ties it to to Mr. Way's lead-singer for My Chemical Romance day job.

It's interesting that a new issue of UA would come out in the same week as big, dumb, brilliant, musical statements from arty pop stars The Killers (Day & Age) and Kanye West (808s & Heartbreaks). Like those albums--and like My Chemical Romance's own work-- Umbrella Academy: Dallas is interested in big, sweeping statements that mix, match, and merge the personal, iconic, historical, political and everything else into a crazy statement that's not only okay with maybe falling apart, but gains power and brilliance precisely because it might just go up in flames.

"Dallas" kicks-off with John F. Kennedy consulting with The Monocle, the U.A's Professor X--the way rock stars riff on their influences and icons, Way does with legendary comics characters and creators--while the young UA battles a fire-breathing Lincoln Memorial who is ultimately killed by a marble John Wilkes Booth manifested by Rumor (or Number Three as she's known in her youth). Flash-forward to modern times, the colors are 50s bowling alley blue and a throwback Milk Man's shown delivering glass bottles of milk to the academy, which is in ruins. Even Bono or Madonna might wince at the amount of loaded innocence lost imagery being farted all around with there. But that's why it's so great.

Way's got a knowing--but not ironic--wink about the whole thing. Judging by the title of this series ("Dallas") this'll all somehow funnel back into the Kennedy assassination and all of the emotions and references that the historic tragedy entails. The same way Kanye or the Killers are making ego albums in quotes, is Way doing it big and important, but not because he can't control himself but because he's putting his foot down and being like, "Look, I know this all a bit too much, but hey man, sometimes too much works and when it works, it works real big, so get fucking ready..".

But before readers are ready, we have to be reminded of the slow, sad-ass burn that is the Umbrella Academy in their current state. Dazed, confused, grieving and happy to not have to deal with one another again, they've all split up after the White Violin fiasco: Spaceboy's watching dumb reality TV, the Seance is back to being a vain prick, The Rumor's grieving over Pogo, The Kraken's playing tough-guy superhero, Number Five's betting on horses, the White Violin doesn't remember anything. It's an interesting way to restart the series as both everything's changed and nothing's changed.

While not a whole lot happens in the issue, all of the set-up feels subliminal and so it's not one of those "this'll all pay-off soon enough and that should be enough to get you through this" issues either. Instead, it's Way's universe and Gabriel Ba's illustration of that universe that are engaging enough. The characters already have caves of history and personality behind them and it turns a couple pages of Spaceboy dumbly eating chocolate chip cookies into a scene of pathos. And that's what UA's about, that weird sad nothing when you're not fighting Abe Lincoln Memorials.