Gabriel Bá

Elegant, both in words and drawing. This story examines the value of a life, told through time bending the date of death of a newspaper obituary writer. Emotional on many levels, the piece that strikes me the hardest is how obituaries are for the living, as if we put a stationery seal on the envelope at the end of a loved one's life.

Last summer, someone I once loved very much died. Here is his obituary:

"*** was born on April 5, 1970 and passed away on Saturday, July 2, 2011.
*** was a show more resident of San Francisco, California."

What does that mean? I want a nice little bow. I want to know if he had children? Did he like his work? Did he find beauty in each day? Did he suffer, or pass peacefully at home surrounded by friends? What where his joys and personal demons?

Did he ever think of me?

Bá and Moon know you can't summarize a person's life in a tiny newspaper column, and they show us in each frame, through word and color and nuance, capturing the emotion of the life (and sometimes the detachment from emotion,) and reminding us that, no matter how gracefully written, you cannot distill the essence of living into a paragraph or two starting: "He was..."

But it helps the living. show less

I think I enjoyed this even more than the first volume. I've always been a sucker for JFK stories, and if you told me Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba had found an ingenious time travel twist on that infamous assassination, this is exactly the sort of plot I'd have imagined. Not to say it's predictable - I'm just surprised nobody's ever written this particular story before. Basically, in Umbrella Academy world, JFK survived that fateful journey through Dallas... but as a result, the whole world is show more about to die in a nuclear explosion. Which it does, at the end of issue #4. Fortunately, the UA are already on the case, heading back in time to prevent this eradication event ever happening... by ensuring a more familiar outcome to November 22nd 1963.

Of course, there's much more going on than just that. Along the way we meet some genuinely frightened cartoon-headed hitmen, a villain who takes Mysterio's goldfish bowl helmet to its illogical conclusion (there's a fish swimming round in there), God (an aged cowboy), and a bunch of other memorably freaky characters. It's extremely fast-paced and though there isn't much space for quiet character moments, the creators still manage to give their creations both individuality and depth. The tone is sometimes comic, sometimes frightening, occasionally mind-boggling. Once again I'm reminded of Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol, and I don't compliment much higher than that.

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A bunch of babies are inexplicably born - odd given baby births are fairly explicable - and a gentleman adventurer adopts seven of them to save the world. It turns out they have freaky powers and they fight monsters and villains as The Umbrella Academy, then they grow up, split up and generally fall apart. Reunited at the death of their adoptive father, about whom they had mixed feelings at best, they have to deal with an impending apocalypse brought about by one of their own.

This is a mad, show more sharp, acerbic, inventive, pulpish, modernist, surreal superhero tale that owes much in tone to Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol. Gabriel Ba's visuals are astonishing. show less

I hated this book because it's not fair that Gerard Way is not only both an excellent comic book writer and artist, but he's the lead singer of a very popular band. That's just me being jealous though.

The truth is that I thought this was a great read. The art was phenomenal. The story was unique and intriguing. I cared about the characters. I wish I could hate it, but I loved it.