Gerard Way Announces New Comic Project at Comic Con!
As I’m writing this, it’s Wednesday. Which means it’s new comic book day. And having just torn through the new issues of Wonder Woman and Detective Comics, it seems to be an ideal time to talk about some other new comics.
This past weekend at the San Diego Comic Con, Gerard Way, frontman of My Chemical Romance and author of the Eisner Award Winning series The Umbrella Academy, announced the details for another project he’s working on for Dark Horse comics.
Titled The Fabulous Killjoys Gerard describes the plot jokingly as “It’s about this guy who just wants his Ramones records back.” He mentioned that the whole thing was inspired during My Chemical Romance’s early days, traveling around in their beat up van. As he told Rolling Stone “…the notion of driving by a children’s playground off to the side of the desert and realizing that it’s a cemetery because it’s where childhood dies — stuff that we’d say to each other, driving around. But it’s from the perspective of a gang, because that’s basically what a young band is. You stop being a gang at a certain point, but you always chase that feeling. You want to get that feeling back.”
Gerard will be co-authoring the comic with friend Shaun Simon who played keyboard in Pencey Prep (MCR rhythm guitarist Frank Iero‘s first band) and acted as the band’s merch guy in their early days. The art will be done by Becky Cloonan, who’s manga-inspired art has also appeared in titles such as Demo and East Coast Rising. You can actually check out her Deviant Art page for a look at her work!
But this doesn’t mean that Gerard is done with The Umbrella Academy. In fact, the other project he discussed is the upcoming third TUA story, titled Hotel Oblivion. The title reffers to the Umbrella Academy’s version of Arkham Asylum. “It’s the place where the rogue’s gallery of the Academy are kept,” Gerard explained, “these are all their villains that have never been seen before.” We’ll also get more of Hargreeves/The Monocle in the upcoming series.
He also touched a little bit on that band he’s in. He says the upcoming album is coming together nicely and adds that “The songs are all wildly different, but the one I’m really excited about is called ‘Death Before Disco.’ It’s a completely different sound for the band — it’s like an anti-party song that you can party to. I can’t wait for people to hear it. It brings back, lyrically, some of that wonderful fiction from the first album.”
Just how good does he think this song is? Good enough to be compared to New Jersey legend Bruce Springsteen. “I think we wrote our ‘Born to Run,’ and I’m so amped about that. To me, it’s the greatest song we’ve ever written — it’s my favorite MCR song.”
