CW: Blood, Torture, Fatphobia

What can I say? I'm absolutely loving this series!

I had mixed feelings about the show, but reading this has made me appreciate the changes they made and doing something different with the characters in a different medium.

I pretty much said everything I have to say in my review of the first volume, and can only really add that this is a lot more of everything and getting extra specially weird and wibbly wobbly timey wimey. It you enjoyed the first comics, I can't see you having a bad time, and if you didn't, would you expect to enjoy this?

It's utter glorious ridiculous chaos and I'm glad there's still more for me to dive into! ( )

Spring 2019;

Reread 2019, entry for Volume #1: Suite/Volume #2: Dallas (& 1st half of Volume #3: Hotel)

I was just post watching Netflix's Umbrella Academy. I still find these books rough around the ears, on the edges, with a good dose of kid needing to be lightly (and even in places not so lightly) thumped on the head. Which doesn't change that I still read it eons ago, and that I'd been excited since the moment the announcement for the show got made, even though I drug my feet for a week or so before watching after it was released.

I still love the utter zany comic-book-ness of the comics that the show doesn't have. More robots, and belts that let you fly, and statues that come to life and are your villains. This team of superheroes that are basically a team of superhero rejects in some ways, who we know so little about the childhood and adulthood of, only why they were suddenly brought back together.

The art is still rough, but I still have so much more association with the art than I expected. Even for their being drastically more in the show, I still felt more at home seeing the Umbrella universe through its original vantage point it was created for.

(I'm definitely still far more attached to the trio of brothers being stuck in the past together. I'm painfully glad Allison complicated relationship turned unswerving devotion to Vanya from the books stayed in. I'm glad the whole of Luther & Allison is still there. I'm glad they gave Klaus a bit more life, though I still go back and forth on the calming of Diego for the show. I'm still wondering if they actually nerfed Allison's powers, because that would be sad.

For Hotel Specifically - I still am dying to see what the comics do with the implications of Five & Vanya, too. And with what looks like it is leading toward the reveal of what happened to the other children who were not bought and collected by Reginald Hargreeves, which I'm both excited and hugely wary of having in my hands.) ( )

I enjoyed this one more than the introductory volume to this series. Much more nuanced, a little less gimmicky, and the characters are becoming far more interesting.

The supporting characters are simply a blast as well.

I mean, sugar-loving hitmen, whacked-out time travel, conspiring against one's self, JFK, nuclear annihilation, and a cute puppy...what more do you want? ( )

The TV show deviates a lot, for obvious reasons, and fleshes out the academy members more. ( )

Onwards and weirdwards!

When we last saw the Umbrella Academy, we were just getting to know all of the siblings for better or for worse and following them through saving the word one time.

This time around? We really get into time travel. If you're going to go all in on the craziness... well then let's go a few levels even more complicated!

Through that lens, we get even more about how disfunctional all of these people are.

There is the one who is an old man stuck in the body of a child:



The one who's weird and paranoid:



The one who dies... and gets over it:



And the one that can't talk:



(I hadn't caught that's why she was called Rumor before...)

And that doesn't even mention the violin one (she's paralyzed back in the first issues) or the giant space ape. Man these stories are weird and wonderful.

Speaking of, I think the thing I love the most are the crazy overblow 'comic booky' scenes:



And backstory:



In the end, it's wonderfully mad. And they realize that.



If you can't tell, I enjoyed this story. :D



( )