When Dark Horse announced, a couple of years ago, that alt-rock stalwarts My Chemical Romance's frontman Gerard Way would be writing a superhero comic, there were a few cocked eyebrows: another pop star jumping on the comics bandwagon? But Way had a long history with comics—he'd even been an intern at DC Comics for a while—and The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite, drawn by Gabriel Bá, was eccentric, ambitious and a solid success. At this year's Comic-Con, Dark Horse announced that Way and Bá would be re-teaming for a second Umbrella Academy miniseries, The Scarecrow Blues, beginning in November. And Way's got plans for the project far beyond that, he told us.
PW Comics Week: What's the concept behind the second Umbrella Academy series?
Gerard Way: It takes place more than a few months after series 1. You're seeing the characters living in the aftermath of what happened. You immediately start seeing the relationship between the characters, and it ends with a very big climax and some violence. I'm really excited about it. Gabriel Bá is drawing not only the interiors but the covers now. In a perfect world, we could have only Gabriel be the artist--I would like him to be the artist from the beginning to the end.
PWCW: Is there an end in sight for the project?
GW: There's an ending I've discussed with Scott [Allie, Dark Horse editor] that he liked very much—it kind of gives a point to the whole series. So it does have an ending; whether that happens in series 8 or series 10 or 12, I'm not sure yet. I do have a lot of Umbrella Academy stories I want to tell. I have the next five years blocked out as far as what's going to happen.
PWCW: Do you do that sort of long-term planning for My Chemical Romance, as well?
GW: I do, actually. "Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge," the title of the second album, was named before we had even come up with a web site. When we were just a basement band, we chose that as a second album title. And that was two years before we were going to track it. If you like an idea, if the idea works over the course of a few years, stick with the idea and develop it, you know? That's kind of how I treat the comic and the band.
PWCW: Is The Umbrella Academy your one and only comic book, or is there other stuff you want to do in comics?
GW: There's definitely other stuff I want to do. I think of The Umbrella Academy as my home, Dark Horse is my home, it's always what I'm going to come back to, and I'm always going to do one of those [miniseries] a year. But I definitely see myself exploring other stuff, trying other publishers or avenues--but anything I do is going to have a very strict vision. If I were working with somebody else's character, it'd have to be something I'd have a lot of freedom with.
PWCW:The Umbrella Academy made a pretty huge splash for someone's first series. What was the experience of doing that like? How did it change as it went along?
GW: It got more structured. The original idea of the comic was to be more open and free--"whatever I'm into this week, that's what the comic is going to be about." There's definitely less of that now. Now it has way more of a purpose. As far as it making a big splash--it was challenging! I had to learn how to be a writer! It was important for me not to cheat; it was important for me not to hand Scott a legal pad full of scribbles and notes and say "make me a comic." And people were skeptical, but skepticism, at this point, has gotten boring to me. I put something out that I love, people respond to it and love it immediately, and they're like "oh, I don't know why I thought this wasn't going to be any good, 'cause it's good!" It's like: yeah, no shit it's good! I knew it was going to be good! We knew it was something so special, it was going to be a system shock to even mainstream comics. That was the point: The Umbrella Academy was supposed to put out something that didn't exist.
PWCW: Have you seen any ripples from it in other people's comics?
GW: You know, I've just started to think about that. I started to wonder if the influence of this book would start to pop up in other spots, because it has a very distinct voice. Now that there's been six issues, I think you can say "that's a very Umbrella Academy thing to do." But I was also plugged into this thing that other guys like Matt Fraction were plugged into—a lot of people who look up to Grant Morrison. I think anyone doing something like Umbrella is a disciple of Grant in a lot of ways. So that kind of similarity might show up, but I haven't seen anything yet. Having dealt with it in music, it's good, because it forces you to change. We have to make a different album every time--we notice it affecting the culture, and we start seeing all these weird copycats. The Umbrella Academy is supposed to keep surprising people, too.