The Umbrella Academy: Dallas
Hot on the heels of Apocalypse Suite, Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá ride the success of their first limited series with The Umbrella Academy: Dallas, where the plot thickens to even weirder levels and we are made aware of how hard things can get when all the “good” guys want to pull strings their own way.
This article was originally published in Astromono on April 1st, 2010. Some images and text elements may not align with Medium’s current layout design.
Star Wars, The Matrix, Fight Club; all great stories where a predominant factor determines our enjoyment: the character we knew when the story began turned out completely different by the time the story ended. If this was Gerard Way’s intention when he began writing Dallas, then that’s exactly what he managed to pull off. It seems his only objective with this book was to create random events and then figuring out how to tie them together in the most chaotic way his mind could devise.
Just like its predecessor, Dallas runs for six issues that were published between November 2008 and April 2009, but this time around the cover art came from Tony Ong and Gabriel Bá instead of James Jean.
Dallas begins by showing us the sad state in which the Hargreeves Family is living after the ending of Apocalypse Suite: Séance is now a hipster celebrity; Spaceboy is overweight and spends his days eating, watching TV or both; The Rumor lost her voice and hates Vanya, The White Violin, who lays in a vegetative state, barely holding on to her conscience. This leads us to Diego The Kraken, still investigating the massacre outside the diner in the first book, and №5, who caused said massacre and is now being hunted by a time police agency, the Temps Aeternalis, because of it.
I could elaborate about what the Temps Aeternalis is, but that would fall beyond the realm of a mild spoiler, dear reader.
№5’s super power is time travel and in the first volume we learned that when he traveled to the future at age 10 he got a front row seat to witness the end of the world . The second volume fills in the gap between that moment and his journey back in time to warn his siblings and prevent the apocalypse. What happens when a moment in history needs to be “corrected”? How is a 10-year-old capable of ending an entire task force armed with AK-47s without wasting a single bullet?
Although the plot in part two focuses heavily on their fifth brother, all other members of the Umbrella Academy definitely get their share of the spotlight and even the big villains get better representation in the form of Hazel and Cha-Cha, two extremely efficient and brutal psychos sent through time to murder №5.
Dallas skips between the past, present and an alternate reality in such a way it’s almost incoherent, all with the purpose of showing us other facets of the characters we know so that maybe we’ll better understand why they act the way they do. Sadly, this is a story that relies heavily on the reader’s fresh memory of the first volume, which can make the callbacks and references muddy if you’ve waited a long time between the two books. If it’s been that long or if you’ve never read the first one, you could go the interesting route and read part 2 first before going back to volume one and rocking your world.
Perhaps what got me the most after finishing my Dallas read was staying with the notion that book two entirely flips the script on almost everything I learned during the previous volume. There’s more than enough for a third part (like, what ever happened to The Beast?) and I feel this uneasy assurance that Way is leaving many loose ends to flip the story in even more twisted ways. It’s the sort of thing you want more of, but won’t keep you from screaming out loud and sometimes throwing the book across the room.
I miss James Jean’s cover artwork. That’s all. If there something I have to nitpick about, let it be that. His covers were captivating and beautiful, showcasing key plot moments in that detailed and dreamy way he’s known for, revealing everything and nothing at the same time until you finish a chapter and go back to its cover just to realize the reveal was looking at you point blank all along. Tony Ong’s work is nothing short of brilliant, but I prefer when the books have a certain consistency.
Speaking of consistency, Bá came back in full swing and his art delivers in every climactic scene like never before. Dallas is full of so much more action and epic fights with hundreds of characters in a single panel and it all just looks clear and easy to follow.
While the Umbrella Academy may not be diverse (especially for kids who came from all around the world), I did find diversity in the scenery and attention to detail, especially near the end of the book where the dramatic angles kick in hard. It’s a great book to study shot composition on the second or third read.
The Umbrella Academy: Dallas is really just a cat and mouse game when it comes to figuring out Way’s moves ahead. I feel safe in saying you want to read this book for the same reasons as the previous one with the added joy of already being a fan of these creators and their fucked up family of supes. I can also confirm that I wasn’t able to anticipate a single move and in my opinion that’s all a writer should attempt to do.
Highly recommended to all who needs a good surprise in their life. The world blows up in this one.
