The Umbrella Academy: Dallas

December 14, 2009 | Trades

umbrella academy - dallas

The Umbrella Academy: Dallas
Gerard Way, Gabriel Ba
Dark Horse Books
$17.95 US (Paperback)
**** ½ (out of five)

It’s the kind of scenario no good and true hero ever wants to face: To save the world, you have to take a life.

Good thing there’s no good and true heroes in the Umbrella Academy.

Dallas, the second collection of this delightfully bizarre and edgy comic by rocker/writer Gerard Way (My Chemical Romance) and artist Gabriel Ba, picks up shortly after the events of the first, Apocalypse Suite. It’s been just long enough for the Kraken to have gotten more paranoid, Rumor to have gotten more bitter, the White Violin to face up to the chaos she caused, Seance to have embraced fame, Spaceboy to have packed on the pounds and the mysterious Number Five to have gotten even more mysterious.

With legions of gun-toting baddies and a pair of psychopaths (who, for some reason, wear theme park cartoon character heads) hot on his trail, Number Five has to come clean about how he was able to return from the future, how he’s become the most ruthless killer on the planet and the job he left unfinished that could lead to the end of the world — unless a member of the Academy can pull the trigger for him.

Not since Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol have there been so many “I can’t believe how freaking odd, yet totally awesome, this is” moments in a comic series as after just 12 issues, the Umbrella Academy has cemented its status as an absolute must-read.

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