the umbrella academy is actually kind of awesome

it bugs me a little that today i bought comics by a novelist i find occasionally brilliant and the singer of a rock band i find occasionally kind of alright and i find the latter's brilliant and the former kind of alright.

kind of eh, really.

although i suppose being able to make something that succeeds in its own terms for three minutes as well as 'teenagers' is more likely to indicate the chops to make an exciting 20-page comic than writing a five hundred page novel about race relations. and his short stories were never all that, anyway, except when they were.

his short stories were never all that = men and cartoons

anyway, except when they were. = the wall of the eye, the wall of the sky

Neither of which includes my favorite Lethem story, the giddy kafka homage he did with Carter Scholz.

But really, he tends to shine on his essays and on three-fourths of the novels.

yeah, the umbrella academy is nice, tho i think it'll read better collected, what w/the huge jumps & whatnot - it's a bit grant morrison doom patrol meets the nightmare before christmas in a post a series of unfortunate events world. or something.

lethem's eclipso = depressingly indie, just like his career-low new novel! nooooo!

(what i really want is a pete wentz-penned comic, haha)

um, make that lethem's omega - that's what i get for trying to figure out what's happening in countdown via wikipedia at work, gah.

you don't love me yet really <i>is</i> a career low, isn't it? i gave it away and i only regret that because the cover was real nice.

i prefer the men and cartoons stories to the wall of the eye ones really, i'm not sure his talent was for straight SF ever. i didn't really need a cyberpunk version of 'they shoot horses, don't they'.

but - the umbrella academy! space squids! alien inventors disguised as monocled gentleman! the first ape-boy in space, protector of the earth's moon!

(the continual jumps/compressed nature of it are what are making me most giddy about it, really - i think it'll be EXHAUSTING in trade, tho maybe in a good way. if it weren't so bang-bang-bang i'd be kind of okay-nice-effort-b-plus.)

this month's ish: slightly less awesome. (too 'emo'.)

I am still a bit undecided about this comic. I like the art and generally tend to like this kind of comic storyline, but think maybe that it is lacking a little something. But I will probably keep buying it.

Kindasorta Royal Tannenbaumy, no?

this has gotten so disappointing. sadfaces :(

I feel like I am the only person reading this who had never previously heard of My Chemical Romance.

I'd heard of them, but I didn't know Gerard Way was their lead singer until someone in my local comic shop told me. It actually put me off buying it. And, in retrospect, I should have gone with that: issues #1 & #2 were fun but #3 & #4 have kinda sucked.

He should really have resisted that urge to play to his emo audience...

Shame, I was looking forward to trying this...

the little kid on the latest cover looks oddly like Rick Santorum's son (the star of Santorum.jpg). SRSLY.

best issue since #1 but i am refusing to be heartened by this since my comic shop closed down

sniff

I just read the collected series and was pretty underwhelmed by it. It started out okay, looked like it might've turned into a relatively fun superhero variant, but then it just got more and more melodramatic and gothy and boring. Plus they killed the chimpanzee, who was easily the most interesting character in the whole story. I thought that was like a cardinal rule or something, you never kill the monkey! Also, the artist was totally bíting Mike Mignola. Why has this comic gotten so much praise anyway?

low expectations - "hey the comic written by that emo singer dude doesn't TOTALLY suck, it must RULE!"

I found the lettercol for it really strange, as it made me feel like I was the only non-MCR fan reading it.

In the end I found myself agreeing with the ILC position, that it was all a load of emo twaddle. Nice art, though, even if it was knocking off Mike Mignola.

Bá's art was pretty wonderful (Dave Stewart's presence doesn't hurt), but it ultimately plays out like Doom Patrol Lite meets the Addams Family. If Gerard Way wants to keep working on comics, more power to him; if Bá keeps drawing 'em, I'll keep buying the collections.

the chimpanzee narrates the recap page of the new series from beyond the grave.

I couldn't face buying this... even if it started well, I knew what would happen.

having just reread apocalypse suite, my opinion of it has gone up: before my issue with it — that it was emo — i suppose meant it made emotional requests of the reader that it didn't really back up with anything. which i'd still go by: just, i think what it asks for is totally justified in terms of narrative and/or structure — it's just that the most sincere moments are those where the tone of the writing comes nearest to artlessness. this is kind of how i feel about his records too, to be honest. (admittedly, yes, even if it still worked they'd be a bunch of seriously whiny fux0rs: but they're not MEANT to be any more sympathetic than they are, i think)

for someone's first published comics work, though, this is seriously fucking good.

and ba's art is seriously fucking good with no reservations: there's not a bad design in it, and there's just little details i love — the way people's faces look when they drink coffee, the way the design of the statue of number five is prettied up from whenever you actually see him ...

btw i call this throwaway line from issue six:

" ... Hargreeve's monocle ... IT SHOWS YOU THINGS ... shows you what someone REALLY is ..."

— totally going to be the resolution to the plot about number five, innit

the art is really good. I will give you that.

i imagine i'll be reviving this again in a month when the second issue convinces me i'm wrong again, yes.