Image: Dark Horse Comics
If you haven’t had a chance to check out Umbrella Academy, you gotta! Imagine a twisted take on the superhero genre, with a passel of brilliant kids born to mostly single women who had shown no signs of pregnancy. Since then, the kids have (mostly) grown up into relatively confused and extremely dangerous superbeings. One of the kids can travel through time, and another can make rumors true. The White Violin, ostensibly the least powerful sibling, actually possesses apocalyptic powers.
Written by My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way and illustrated by Gabriel Bà, the series is fascinatingly original, darkly comic and filled with surprises and absurdities. It can be unsettling at times, and also hilarious. You’ll have a hard time figuring out what will come next.
Earlier this year the comic concluded its second volume, Dallas after making a huge splash in ’07 with its first volume Apocalypse Suite. Now, as the run continues with another arc, Dark Horse is sweetening the deal — for a limited time, they’re giving away issue 1 of volume 3 as a free iPhone app (download here). Now you can find out what the fuss is about without spending a cent.
