I feel like we're never going to get Umbrella Academy Volume Three; it's like the Chinese Democracy of comics, ever dangling out of reach and sure to disappoint us once it drops, due to the inflated expectations of hopeless fandom. That's not to say we won't be getting more of Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba. Way is rebooting DC's Doom Patrol soon and Ba and his brother Fabio Moon are always churning out new material like their recent graphic novel Two Brothers. But this magic collaboration--this Uncanny X-Men meets Madeline meets Wes Anderson take on superheroes--is forever frozen at the twelve issue mark.
It's a real shame because I think the confidence and mania of The Umbrella Academy inspired a lot of up and coming creators. I'm probably reaching here, but I see shades of their fast and loose, take no prisoners style in many current books. At the time I felt Gerard Way was the successor to Grant Morrison, a comics rock star who wasn't ashamed to love this shit, but also not so beholden to it that the work suffers.
(And in Way's case, the rock star thing is quite literal.)
There's one issue in particular I wanted to shine a light on for today's back issue dive: the third chapter of the second series, Dallas. While the first series a bit more straightforward, Dallas plunges into time travel, existentialism, hyper violence, and daddy issues. This comic dares you to keep up and if you're willing to--God forbid--pay attention, there's a lot to enjoy. Don't get me wrong, it's still saccharine funnybook entertainment, but it's just so goddamn stylish you can't help but admire it.
In issue three, the spirit medium member of the Umbrella family, Seance, gets capped in the head by two Pulp Fiction rejects wearing mascot helmets named Hazel and Cha-Cha and finds himself in the afterlife, or as the caption says simply, "Heaven".
And who else is there to greet him but . . . The Marlboro Man!
Well, not really. It's God, portrayed as a grizzled cowboy on that "last long ride into town" as he puts it. God baffles Seance with his frankness and drops some good ol' boy witticisms that sound like they could have come right from my late father's mouth. Basically, he tells Seance to sack up, get back to life and kick the asses of the those who have wronged him and his family. It's my favorite "pep talk" scene in recent memory and I can feel myself smiling every time I read it.
Without diving too deep into Umbrella Academy's lore and turning this into a Wikipedia entry, I'll try and simplify by saying that Seance is their Doctor Strange equivalent. He astral projects, he has weird conditions that hamper his magic, etc. He sums up his own character in the original series with one line: "Everything I own is black." He's that guy. In Dallas, he tries to freshen up his look a little bit and lighten up, and it gets him killed.
Like the stern faced cowboy-themed avatar of God, Seance is a figure set in his ways. And that's how it be sometimes. Some people are what they are, and trying to change or mold them is like asking a fish to come up out of the water and breathe air. That's why we don't just exist, we coexist.
Thanks for reading! Hit me up on Twitter: @ChrisBComics or drop me a line at backissuechris@gmail.com.
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