By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 5/23/2016
Author, musician and occasional illustrator Gerard Way (The Umbrella Academy) is finally getting a chance to take on comics in a bigger role than ever before with DC’s Young Animal imprint. The line includes the following titles: Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye written by Way and Jon Rivera with art from Michael Avon Oeming (Powers), […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 4/7/2016
Former DC Comics intern Gerard Way has just been given his very own imprint at the publisher. That’s what we call working your way up in the world. Of course, he did make a brief, generation-defining stop as frontman of My Chemical Romance along the way… Way, an Eisner Award winner for his […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 1/26/2016
A collaboration with rockstar and comics writer extraordinare Gerard Way on Killjoys guaranteed that I’d read something written by Shaun Simon, but the stellar quality of his work is what keeps bringing me back. Neverboy, illustrated by Tyler Jenkins and published by Dark Horse, really wowed me. Simon’s follow-up to that is Art Ops, a […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 5/5/2014
Of late, former My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way has been returning to his comics roots, with the final volume of Umbrella Academy, and a proposed comic about punk cats called “All Ages” which he teased earlier this year on Twitter. And now he’s written and drawn a comics about Twitter and twitter abuse. This obviously ties in a bit with an essay on the artists relation to their fan base he wrote earlier this year. And to be fair, when you’re an idolized rock star, the intensity of fan reactions can be…strong.
No wonder Way has been hanging around the more sedate halls of comicdom. Cartoonists don’t get mobbed when they go out in public, that’s for sure.
You can read Way’s entire Twitter comic in the above link, but here at the covers for “All Ages” that he teased a while back. Meanwhile…cats.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 12/18/2012
One of the great comics from the Plane of Limbo, The Fabulous Killjoys is finally coming out this June, with a Free Comic Book Day preview. You may recall this collaboration between My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way, writer Shaun Simon and artist Becky Cloonan is the print component of MCR’s 2010 SF concept album, Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys. Video’s for the album told the story of a bunch of heroic outlaws battling an evil Grant Morrison. Long delayed by Way’s hectic schedule, the book is finally coming out!
UPDATE: Comics Alliance has an interview with Way and editor Scott Allie about Killjoys and the next outing of the Umbrella Academy saga, Hotel Oblivion (Above)
GW: Yeah, that’s the greatest benefit of the break, which another thing about that break is important to point out is that we were recording an album. So it was weird because I guess the extracurricular activities I would do or the other stuff I was doing meant it really wasn’t a break at all. So that was difficult.
SA: And originally Killjoys was just a comic and then it was an album and a comic, but the album had to get done first. And now the comic is a completely different comic than it was going to be. The reason is that the Killjoys that he originally conceived is so different from the Killjoys that’s about to come out, because the album did a certain amount of what the original intent was. So there’s different characters and a whole different arc. The hiatus made it better, but it also transformed it into a whole different thing.
PR from publisher Dark Horse:
In 2009, when Dark Horse first announced a new project from Grammy-nominated frontman turned Eisner-winning comics writer Gerard Way (The Umbrella Academy), the response from music and comics fans alike was overwhelming. Now, Dark Horse is thrilled to announce that Gerard Way, Shaun Simon, and Becky Cloonan’s highly anticipated sci-fi epic will finally see publication in 2013!
Welcome to Battery City, where the disease is the cure!
In My Chemical Romance’s critically acclaimed album Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, the Killjoys fought against the tyrannical megacorporation Better Living Industries. It cost them their lives, save for one—the mysterious Girl. Today, the followers of the original Killjoys languish in the desert while BLI systematically strips citizens of their individuality. As the fight for freedom fades, it’s left to the Girl to take up the mantle and bring down the fearsome BLI or else join the mindless ranks of Bat City!
“The original idea for the comic informed the record,” said Gerard Way. “The record helped refine the idea, and then Becky had done a drawing of the Girl for the single ‘The Only Hope for Me Is You’ and I saw it and thought, this is the comic. It’s basically the last video, it’s the last part of the Killjoys story, while at the same time being totally its own thing.”
“I think we have created a broad range of characters here,” said cowriter Shaun Simon. “A lonely teenage girl hiding from her past in the desert. A couple of android call girls wanting nothing more than to be together. An aging assassin with a secret that could destroy his life . . . Even though these characters are living in a bizarre sci-fi world, their struggles are the same we face in our own.”
“The world of the Killjoys is full of visual opposites—from sprawling deserts to urban junkyards—and a cast of characters to match,” said artist Becky Cloonan. “It’s been a challenge to encompass all of this in my art, but woven into the world building is a human spark that lights this story on fire and gives me so much to draw from.”
As announced at New York Comic Con, an early look into this world will be published as part of Free Comic Book Day 2013, with the first issue hitting stands the following month on June 6!
lost for words on how awesome this is… sad that it means we’ll probably not see Hotel Oblivion for even longer now
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I don’t get it – doesn’t DC already have a mature readers imprint (Vertigo)? So why not tap Way to rejuvenate it instead of a whole new imprint? All the PR for YA right now, you wish it was for Vertigo, that would’ve been amazing, hasn’t been the same since Karen Berger left. Like Berger, Way clearly has a vision for his imprint, feels like a missed op for Vertigo, esp when the YA books to me feel like the vibe of those early Vertigo books.
My initial reaction to this was “Deja-Vurtigo” … which I think is a good argument for not doing this under the Vertigo imprint. Off-beat superheroes for grown-up readers is what Vertigo was, and dragging the imprint back to DC’s superhero universe would undermine what they’re trying to do with it now. It would say that trying to build a library of original stand-alone fiction wasn’t working, and that they had to rewind the clock to 1993 when Vertigo was doing it “right”.
I think the idea of a branch from the DCU written for readers who are ready for something different from the usual spandex punchfests they grew up with is a worthwhile idea. Vertigo was a great stepping stone for me in the mid-1990s. Re-developing a “mature readers” wing for the DCU might also open up a little more freedom in the main line for material that appeals to younger readers (though I realize I’m probably just being pollyanna on that point… it doesn’t seem to be an audience that DC Entertainment is really interested in cultivating).