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In the zombie genre the name Umbrella conjures up the shadiest of shadowy biotech megacorporations, whose nefarious business practices would perhaps even cause Carter J. Burke to blanch.
This is not about them but the other Umbrella being talked of lately, first a comic book and now a Netflix adaptation available (as usual) in its streamable entirety.
I had heard of The Umbrella Academy back in its comic days but never knew much more than that it seemed to feature kids in masks and kneepants and was written by that guy from the band 30 Seconds to Mars. Which shows exactly how much I’d been paying attention since in the writing of this I realized the band I actually meant was My Chemical Romance, which has nary a Leto on the roster.
I ran into this problem all the time back when I was podcasting with friends. Ask me about the time I talked about Zoe Saldana for ten minutes before realizing I meant Zoey Deschanel. Or better yet, don’t.
So anyhow, I correctly remembered the writer was a literal rock star, and his name is Gerard Way. Friends who have read the comic give thumbs up to the adaptation although it deviates from its source material in some significant ways. I’m still rather ignorant of the ins-and-outs-and-what-have-yous of that, but having binged through the TV show I would say it stands up fine as a good science fiction/superhero tale. In fact I would posit this version is a better Dark Phoenix saga than 20th Century Fox has ever brought to screen, though perhaps that’s a low bar to clear. I don’t have high hopes for the one currently in the pipe, assuming it survives the Disney/Fox merger at all.
To go into why would be extreme spoiler territory so I won’t. My chief observation I wanted to bring to y’all is that I’m fond of how Umbrella Academy continues in the vein of Zombieland and Into the Spider-Verse in bringing comic book elements to a new medium, and I’m not just talking the characters but the Will Eisner-style stuff where you incorporate visual text into the imagery. Each episode begins with a clever instance of a “title card” which I could totally visualize as being part of a still comics page, and much like the “rules” of Zombieland blends right into a visual hyper-reality for our benefit.
Other times during the series I caught myself declaring out loud, “that has to be a panel or sequence from the comic” — albeit one brought skillfully into the world of full motion.
It makes me curious how many times I might have been right or wrong about that. So I suppose I’ll be cracking open the book after all. Feels weird doing that in reverse. But since we’re living in an era where comics have crossed over to the big time in such fashion–and their particular visual power is being recognized at long last by the mainstream–it also feels good.
How 'bout them spook stories now, Chuck?