Umbrella Academy returning in 2014!!!

[JewishHobbit]

WOOT WOOT!!!

I LOVED the first two volumes of this and have been eagerly anticipating the next. It sounds like they're planning on doing the next two volumes, not just the 3rd, so that's awesome. I'll be trade waiting this one since I sold the floppies recently and picked up the first trade (I'll get the second eventually).

I'm stoked.

 

[Gabe99]

Gerard Way's 'Umbrella Academy' to Return in 2014

Comics Alliance:

Gerard Way Unveils Previously Unseen ‘Umbrella Academy’ Sketchbook Images

 

[Gabe99]

Gerard Way: "I don't have much of a social life."

I wanna talk about the comics work you're doing. I thought you did a phenomenal job on Umbrella Academy and the Killjoys comic was fantastic for the way it blew open that world a little more visually. Now you're working on this new cats-in-high-school comic All Ages. What's the status of that at the moment?

That comic changed a lot. Moving forward, I have to be really cautious with my time. I've committed to doing Umbrella Academy series three, which I'm currently writing, and I really would like that to come out. As well I'd like a lot more music to come out, I'd like to be sharing a lot more often. I don't wanna go back into a cave. The status of that currently is I can't do anything with it, I just don't have the time. As much as I wanna do this epic monthly comic about punk rock and capital punishment there's just no way to fit that in and be a musician. If the only thing I did was write comics it'd be fine, but I'm choosing to focus on Umbrella Academy, because I only have to worry about six issues at a time, and my music. Music is the main focus.

What can you tell me about the new Umbrella Academy volume?

It shows this other side of what happened to all the supervillains. You get to see the Murder Magician again, he plays a really big part in this one. It's a completely different take on the universe and I think that's what makes it a great third part. It's going to be a different experience for people. It does focus on the other side, the other characters, these villains and what became of them.

Is there any more news on the movie front?

I'm pretty removed from the movie side of things. I like to focus on the comics. I did spend some time in Hollywood putting my energy into the film and after a while I found that to be a large time drain and energy drain that I wanted to put into other things. But the rights finally came back to Dark Horse and I from Universal, so after years of going through the paces and doing rewrites and trying to find directors they finally decided the project wasn't for them. Which works out in the end. If the film gets made that's really cool., I've never really banked on it or thought about it too much. I think about the world and I think about the characters, but I think about how I can create that with Gabriel [Bá].

You also did the Edge of Spider-verse stint coming out in October. One thing that struck me was certain similarities between some of the artwork and visual elements used in some of the My Chem stuff. How much input did you have on the art direction?

I feel like I had a lot of input. I like to visually conceptualise things as I'm writing the story or as I'm coming up with it. I did it with Umbrella Academy 2. I based the story around the concept of a young teenage girl co-piloting this machine with a radioactive spider whom she shares a psychic link with. I designed the machine. Then Nick Lowe, the editor for Marvel, had an artist who I thought could really capture it and make it his own, so he found Jake Wyatt. I even went as far as to redesign Daredevil 'cos I knew Daredevil was gonna be in it. And Mysterio, and things like that. I visually brought a lot to it and then Jake completely made it his own and ran with it. He's done some amazing things with it.

Based on some of the details of your Edge of Spider-verse plot, can I venture that you're a little bit of a Neon Genesis Evangelion fan?

It's funny, I saw a little bit of it and I guess it had a lasting impression on me. I think the end result through Jake's lens, I know he's a big anime fan, so I think he injected a little bit of that in there. I was really going for was kind of a little bit of a Paul Pope thing. I was going for THB. Paul Pope did this comic called THB that's about this young teenage girl who lives on Mars and she has this magical friend that comes out of a capsule called THB and he's like this large creature. Even the scale of the machine I created was the same size as THB. I think my way in was through this kind of Paul Pope thing and I think on Jake's end came this video game, anime thing. And I'm happy with that, I think it's really cool.

I'm really excited to read it.

It's cool. It came out great, I'm really happy with it.

You've also said that world-building is one of your favourite things to do. Now your outlet for that seems primarily in comics but there were conceptual ties in several of the My Chem records. Do you think you'll bring that world-building aspect to your music again in the future?

I might! I look up to musicians like Damon Albarn quite a bit. One of the things he's done quite a bit is he's gotten to express himself quite a bit and create worlds and he's gotten to have a part in musicals and things like that and I think that's really interesting to me. I'm sure there'll come a time when I'm working on an album and it becomes a conceptual piece.

 

[Gabe99]

Screen Rant 01.16.2018:
Netflix’s Umbrella Academy TV Show Has Begun Filming

Filming is firmly underway on the Netflix adaptation of The Umbrella Academy. Written and created by My Chemical Romance singer Gerard Way and illustrated by Gabriel Bá, The Umbrella Academy is a comic book series about a group of super-powered youngsters who are born to women that showed no previous signs of pregnancy and are later brought together and adopted by Sir Reginald Hargreeves to form the titular Academy. The crime-fighting team eventually disband but are reunited by the death of their mentor and the threat of a common foe. The series currently stands at two volumes – “Apocalypse Suite” and “Dallas” – but Way has frequently claimed that a third is in development.

The Umbrella Academy started as a cult hit but steadily grew in popularity and a movie adaptation was soon optioned by Universal Studios. Mark Bomback (The Wolverine, War For The Planet Of The Apes) was originally hired to write the script but was eventually replaced by Rawson Marshall Thurber (Dodgeball, Central Intelligence), however the project ultimately failed to get off the ground. In 2015, Universal announced that The Umbrella Academy would instead be adapted for television but in July last year, Netflix revealed that they would be producing the live-action series.

After all of the false starts and re-writes, it now appears that The Umbrella Academy TV series is finally making progress, a Tweet from comic artist Gabriel Bá confirms. Bá posted a photo of himself alongside Gerard Way on the set of The Umbrella Academy with the caption “Lights! Camera! ACTION! This has officially begun” and the hashtag “UmbrellaAcademy.”

The start of filming on The Umbrella Academy must surely come as a relief both to fans of the comic book series and the creators themselves, as a live action version has been in the cards in some form or another for around eight years now. Although the project is finally underway proper, Gerard Way has no time to rest on his laurels, however, as he will be acting as executive producer on the Netflix series.

It may be early days on the production of The Umbrella Academy but the early signs suggest plenty of promise for the series. Not only does Way’s involvement ensure that the adaptation won’t stray unnecessarily away from its source material, but Netflix have a track record in delivering when it comes to stories with a dark and macabre tone, as proven with A Series Of Unfortunate Events. Of course, the streaming giant is also very much at home with superhero fare thanks to their Marvel output, and the thought of Netflix bringing those two themes together is bound to excite both newcomers and fans of the original comic books.