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ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: So we're here looking at pages 11-13 of Umbrella Academy's first issue. Let's start from the beginning: Tell me about the art, and where the idea came from.
GERARD WAY: I had adopted this style that was a little mixture of modern superhero meets Tin-Tin or European comics. I wanted something completely bizarre, that felt like you got the chaos of an early superhero comic, but didn't look like one. So I said, What if Genet directed X-Men? What would it look like? That's really the birthplace. It made finding the artists a really tough process. [Cover artist] James Jean was easy. We had become friends, we worked together on Black Parade. So then finding the interior artist was very tough. You needed somebody who captured a little bit of my art without having ever really seen it, and a little bit of that foreign-film feel. So Scott [Allie, managing editor of Dark Horse Comics] said, ''There's this guy named Gabriel Bá. He's got a twin brother, Fabio, they live in Brazil. They're both amazing, they're both different. Why don't you check out Casanova?'' So I went to the comic store while we were making Black Parade, I picked up Casanova, and I was like, Wow, I'm really intrigued by this; I think this guy could work. He showed me this story he'd done online called ''Firemen,'' and I was like, This is the guy, for sure.
Did you do sketches to give him a sense of what you wanted, or did you just give him the text and structure and let him run?
I actually did a ton of drawings. The comic really started on the Take the Chaos tour, when I finally started to get my footing after being clean and realized I had nine hours of free time a day. I was up when everybody was still passed out, and I was drawing in the catering room. So fast forward to when I'm about to leave New York to do Black Parade: I completely designed every character, plotted it out, and sent it to Scott. And then when Gabriel decided to do the book, it was totally based off the artwork in that proposal, and he managed to create this whole thing.
Explain that relationship. Are you saying, ''Okay, I've already drawn this, now just re-draw it in your style''?
By nature, I'm the kind of person who wants to be surprised, and I love collaboration. Anybody I ask to work on this book with me, I do it with their understanding that I'm gonna draw stuff, but I want you to draw stuff. You don't have to agree with me. I love interpretation. Spaceboy, the main character — he went through a lot of changes. Gabriel completely put this giant gorilla-like body on him. And there was a moment where I was like, ''All right, how about we kind of compromise on this? You can beef him up, and he can walk like an ape sometimes.'' There's back and forth, and I invite it. I'd rather have that. I don't want to just be telling people what to do all the time.
Has my old high school buddy Matt Fraction — who writes Casanova — forgiven you for stealing his artist?
Well, he got Gabriel's brother, so I think he's fine. [Laughs] They're both so amazingly talented. And while their styles are completely different, there's something about them being brothers that carries through. I've never met Matt Fraction. I want to pick up the Casanova trade and read the whole thing, but it's in hardcover, and those are hard to lug around, so I'm waiting for the paperback.
And you're back out lugging stuff on the road again right now. How come every time I talk to you you're in Europe? What's that about?
The band does really well in the U.K., so it seems like we're going to the U.K. every few months. And then every summer there's the festival run. We opened up for Muse at Wembley Stadium yesterday. That was something. I hadn't been that scared since we were a band for three months and opened up for Jimmy Eat World at the Allentown Fairgrounds.
That's a little smaller than Wembley Stadium.
A lot. But to a band that just played a basement? We saw 10,000 people and we were like, Whoa. So last night was terrifying. Oh my God that is a lot of people, and they're all here to see Muse. [Laughs] It was humbling.
You're in France today?
Yeah, we're in Paris. We just got here. We're in this really weird hotel that looks like it was designed by Stanley Kubrick or something.
I find it interesting that you're in Paris, since the pages they sent me from your comic actually have to do with the Eiffel Tower. What a brilliant segue I've just created for us here! Let's just talk really specifically about what I'm looking at. These are from when the Umbrella Academy are still kids?
What you're seeing here is a snippet from the middle of the issue, which shows our heroes at age 10 on their first mission, and their first mission just happens to be the day the Eiffel Tower went berserk. The title of the issue is actually The Day the Eiffel Tower Went Berserk. Hargreeves is the older guy on that airplane. He's a space alien, but nobody knows he's a space alien. He's an extremely wealthy entrepreneur and inventor. He's good at everything. He's just a weirdo, an eccentric, rich weirdo, that's actually a space alien with an agenda...
[Snort.]
Okay, it's all over the place. [Laughs] Basically, it starts off with a wrestler. And the wrestler, he knocks out this space squid. And when he does that — and it's completely a matter of coincidence — extraordinary children are born, on Earth, instantly. Now, this wealthy entrepreneur guy, he tries to adopt all of them. He only finds seven of them.
NEXT PAGE: Why Umbrella Academy might offend the French...
