Gerard Way & Gabriel Bá Expand the Family Tree in The Umbrella Academy: Plan B #1

Hello, old friend. It’s been a while. Six years to be exact since the cliffhanger of The Umbrella Academy: Hotel Oblivion #6 when our heroes The Umbrella Academy were saved by a group of seven heroes, their replacements. So much has happened in that time  (like an insurrection in our capitol) but you’d never know it as this new issue, The Umbrella Academy: Plan B #1 picks up only moments after that last issue ended. But that time in between issues isn’t anything new; the very first Umbrella Academy book was the Free Comic Book Day offering back in 2007, 18 years and 19 issues ago (with a side miniseries thrown in there.  Oh, and a Netflix series as well.) That’s all just to say that Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá aren’t rushing anything here. You can’t accuse them of trying to flood the market with Umbrella Academy content. And if they are trying to do that, they’re pretty crappy at it.  

Essentially the last story ended in a giant jailbreak as all of the Umbrella Academy’s deadliest rogues sought revenge on them and the city until the not-the-Umbrella-Academy team, The Sparrows, stepped in to save the day. The cliffhanger was that somehow The Sparrows were related to the Umbrella Academy. Turns out that The Umbrella Academy’s mum and dad had a whole other family. A secret family.  Maybe even a favorite family. A better family.

Way and Bá jump into this issue like it’s only been 30 days since the last issue and shake the team to their core. There’s no trying to remind the reader of what happened last issue.  You just have to remember that The Umbrella Academy has never been the most stable team or family— think of the X-Men at their most emotionally dysfunctional.  That X-Men reference is quite intentional as Way and Bá have been telling one of the best X-Men stories of the 21st Century if you think about the X-Men more as a family than as superheroes. Way has been more Claremontian in these issues than Grant Morrison or Jonathan Hickman ever were. And this issue is the team at their lowest; they are losers and they know it. And they’ve always known it but now they see the Sparrows and see what winners look like. 

Bà draws just a devastating issue as The Umbrella Academy is dismantled physically and emotionally. He’s able to show one team in total control of the situation and another team realizing just how over their heads they are by the whole deal.  As this issue is a giant fight, the writing (which Bà is credited for along with Way) is relatively sparse in terms of what it does. There’s not much characterization through dialogue as The Umbrella Academy are just largely in shock this whole issue and the Sparrows are in control. That gives Bá the room to build the characterization visually and that characterization is “lost.” More than before, these characters are lost as it dawns on them that their parents lied to them and made them think they were special. Their father, Sir Reginald Hargreeves, was an emotionally distant tyrant but he was their emotionally distant tyrant. But it turns out he had another family that he just loved more.

Bá draws the characters as they realize they weren’t their father’s only children during the story. He gets to show their confusion, their hurt, and even their numbness as the shock sets in. Way gets out of the way and let’s Bá carry the weight of this issue. Without Bá’s ability to portray the damaged psyche of the characters, this is just another superhero brouhaha, two teams of heroes mistakenly thinking that the others are the villains— cases of mistaken identity and all that. But this is personal, it’s family and there’s a different kind of pain inflicted by family that Bá has been showing since the beginning of this series and amps it up here. 

The Umbrella Academy has been a family story from the start, using the language of superheroes to explore family dynamics. These characters have been damaged by their upbringing and came together again after Hargreeves’ death.  And since then, they’ve endured one emotional defeat after another.  Way and Bá don’t let up this issue; they don’t give this family a win. It’s the first issue of the latest storyline and they’ve found a new emotional low for the series to sink to and that’s where we start this new story cycle- bottomed out and retreating.  And with where this series has been already, it doesn’t feel like this is the end of the misery for the Umbrella Academy as Way and Bá continue to do a great job of telling a family story with these offbeat characters.  And now, it’s only gotten to be a bigger family to work with.