The Umbrella Academy Volume 1: The Apocalypse Suite by Gerard Way, Gabriel Ba, Dave Stewart, Nate Piekos, and Tony Ong

I became interested in reading this series after watching the trailer for the upcoming Netflix series. It looks very fun and Wes Anderson-esquely quirky. So, I figured it was a good excuse to read the graphic novels first.

In a mysterious worldwide event, forty-seven women, most of whom had not shown signs of pregnancy, gave birth. Of these children, millionaire inventor Reginald Hargreeves, AKA the Monocle, managed to track down and adopt seven. His reason for collecting the children? "To save the world." The children are gifted with powers that they use to fight villains and save the day, though it seems that their upbringing leaves something to be desired. Twenty years after saving the world from a murderous Eiffel Tower controlled by zombie robot Gustave Eiffel, the Umbrella Academy returns home for their father's funeral.

The Academy consists of:
Number 1, Spaceboy, AKA Luther, is basically the leader and has powers of strength. He spends most of his time in outer space with his robots. The Monocle forced him to have his head attached to the body of a gorilla after an accident (I'm not sure when that happened- it wasn't in the books, I read it online). He has a thing for Allison, but thinks she wouldn't love him because of the gorilla body.

Number 2, the Kraken, AKA Diego, tends to fight with Number 1 and is sort of abrasive in general. He spends his time underwater and can hold his breath a long time. He does have a thing for Vanya.

Number 3, the Rumor, AKA Allison has powers of manipulation. We learn that she was married and has a daughter.

Number 4, the Séance, AKA Klaus can communicate with the dead, possess people, levitate, and move objects with his mind. He is very goth and kind of dramatic.

Number 5, AKA the Boy, disappeared after the Eiffel Tower incident. He emerges at the funeral looking the same age he was back then, claiming to have travelled through time and seen the end of the world. He took a very long time to figure out how to make his way to the past to warn them, and though he aged normally in the future, when he returned to the past he was ten years old again. He is very fast and very violent.

Number 6, the Horror, AKA Ben, passed away at some point...or did he?

Number 7, AKA Vanya, is the only child without powers. Because of this, she was treated differently from her siblings, not special. As an adult, she wrote a memoir about growing up like this, My Life as 00.007. She is a talented violinist and is asked to play with a Orchestra Verdammtem. At first she turns them down, but after a disastrous meeting with her siblings, she changes her mind. Vanya is turned into the White Violin, who can kill with a single note, and will be used to bring about the end of the world.

I liked The Umbrella Academy, but I can't help feeling as though I'm missing parts of the story. It feels a little like this was an established series that expects you to have some prior knowledge coming in, but it's actually a new thing. There's still a third volume coming out later this year that might improve things, and I'm definitely going to check out the show next month.

Doom Patrol Vol. 1: Brick by Brick by Gerard Way, Nick Derington, and Tamra Bonvillain

"The world is hard and unforgiving, it can change you. Because we're made up of all the things that happen to us. The good things fill your heart. But the bad things, and what we choose to do with them, really make us who we are..."

Okay, so this was a weird one and I'm not sure I grasped everything that went down. I'm not at all familiar with Doom Patrol, so I don't have any prior knowledge coming into this. I liked My Chemical Romance, so the Gerard Way factor was a positive, and it did look intriguingly weird.

Casey is a semi-weird ambulance driver. She lives with her cat Lotion (Which is like both the best and worst name at the same time somehow). Then, one night, a strange new dispatcher sends Casey and her partner to help someone. The person isn't there, but they witness a robot man getting run over by a truck. Casey takes the robot parts back to her apartment. Soon after, her roommate gets exploded by a singing telegraph girl, who becomes Casey's new roommate. Then things get weirder...

The new dispatcher is actually not a dispatcher, but Danny. Who is Danny? Well, Danny is technically a where. Dannyland is this place where a bunch of people live who are also Danny and Danny is also technically in the back of Casey's ambulance. It's complicated. Also, Casey is a comic book character in Dannyland and Danny brought her to life and sent her into the real world. Now, it needs her help because these creepy dudes, the Vectra, want to use Danny to generate more people so they can turn them into meat for their alien/robot/whatever fast food restaurants. (I know, so cliche, right?) Danny needs Casey to gather the Doom Patrol!

The other members of Doom Patrol are the robot man, who is called...Robot Man, Pilot Larry Trainor, who is possessed by a negative spirit and turns into Negative Man, Flex Mentallo, a strongman who Casey meets in Dannyland, and Jane, who is busy forming a cult because one of her personalities has taken over. Oh, there are also these little asides featuring Niles Caulder, AKA the Chief, who originally founded the Doom Patrol. Thank you to the DC Wiki for filling in some of my blanks. Anyways, from what I understood, it was pretty good.