The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys: California

Gerard Way, Shaun Simon & Becky Cloonan
The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys: California (2013)
Okay, so this is the book I assumed National Anthem would be. National Anthem was a more recent rendering of the original story which became both this and an associated album by My Chemical Romance or, if you prefer, one of them is The Dark Knight Returns where the other is Adam West braining the Joker with a giant inflatable clown shoe. That being said, you can sort of read California as referring to National Anthem a decade or so down the line, with the populace of the latter having become something amounting to urban legends. At least that's how it seemed to me.

Here we have one of those futuristic dystopias of vaguely Orwellian thrust, albeit filtered through Andy Warhol with elements of Mad Max and Walter Hill's Warriors. Society has become a parody of the consumerist present - although as to how much of it is truly a parody is open to debate. The corporation runs everything and the sex robots of Battery City have their own religion predicting the apocalyptic return of the mighty mechanical Destroya. You get the picture.

Naturally we have rebellious outsiders opposed to the status quo, which is where the Killjoys come in, except this one flips the usual script by revealing that life with the idealistic freedom fighters really ain't that great either; unwittingly echoing the current state of internet discourse wherein shitbags occupy the full extent of the political spectrum leaving the rest of us more or less ideologically homeless.

It's massively pessimistic whilst also being a breath of fresh air, and is beautifully told with the narrative sophistication of Philip K. Dick but in a visual medium. Cloonan's art reminds me a little of those horrible Deadline folks of days gone by, except it's much, much better and actually cute where appropriate rather than just turning in twee Hernandez impersonations. I can't quite bring myself to acknowledge it being related to an album by My Chemical Romance, possibly because in terms of mood it seems closer to Bowie's Diamond Dogs to my eyes, or possibly ears. Yet, despite being tied in with the music of a band I honestly can't listen to, this version of the Killjoys is pretty much perfect in every way.

You Look Like Death

Gerard Way, Shaun Simon & I.N.J. Culbard
You Look Like Death (2021)
While it would be a generalisation to suggest that I dislike modern comics - or all comic books published during the last thirty years, to really ramp it up a few notches - there are always exceptions, and it's rarely so much that I actively dislike newer titles as that I just can't get excited about them. I still generally think comics were better when they were cheap, stupid, populist, rarely aimed at anyone with a mortgage, and printed on crappy paper - back before anyone had decided what comics are and replaced weird surprises with collectability, limiting the things to sale in stores into which no-one sane could possibly wish to venture*.

On the other hand, the Umbrella Academy is one of the few things that genuinely ticks my boxes. This one collects six issues of a solo title centred upon Klaus, the guy who communicates with the dead, and is wonderful in pretty much every sense. Here Klaus, ejected from the family home with his allowance discontinued, attempts to get by in Hollywood. This version of Hollywood hasn't quite let go of the glamour of the thirties and forties; some of the characters are talking chimpanzees - thankfully no explanation given; and there's a fairground catering to vampires, specifically the kind who wear black cloaks with a red satin lining. So we have the logic of Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol - the supposed influence of which is looking ever thinner - applied to a version of Los Angeles which is almost the place we saw in Bill Griffith's very first Zippy the Pinhead strips - and all drawn with beautifully expressive yet clean lines suggesting Moebius having a go at Tintin.

I'm sure you saw the television series. It was watchable, but felt like a misreading of the Umbrella Academy as the usual sparkly Tim Burton-Neil Gaiman bollocks. It should have been more like You Look Like Death, except it couldn't because as a comic book, the Umbrella Academy is already where it needs to be, and asking a few pizza-scoffing square-eyed bingemonkeys to fit it in between the all day Babylon 5 marathon and season fifty of Superman's Pool Cleaner in one sitting is hardly an achievement.

It may still be a little too soon to start calling Gerard Way a genius, and I doubt I'll ever see the appeal of My Chemical Romance, but You Look Like Death is a genuinely wonderful thing.

*: I am aware of virtual comics which you download directly onto your GamePornPad and even - ugh - webcomics, but remain generally unconvinced.

The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys: National Anthem

Gerard Way, Shaun Simon & Leonardo Romero
The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys: National Anthem (2021)
I'd been meaning to at least have a look at this since I read Umbrella Academy, although it turns out this isn't even the thing I've been meaning to read. From what I understand, the Killjoys began life in Gerard Way's head as the idea of a comic book which was expanded into an album by My Chemical Romance, and The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, the original Dark Horse title, was either a companion piece or a sequel to the album. National Anthem on the other hand is apparently closer to Way's vision before it was turned into a record, so it isn't book two or even early demos, but something else entirely. My Chemical Romance continue to sound like the Bay City Rollers to me, and I still haven't read the version which was published back in 2013, so I've just had to let this one live or die by its own strengths.

It's fucking phenomenal, as it turns out. I've come to think of Umbrella Academy as wearing the influence of Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol very much on its sleeve - although this may well be a memory forged by the underwhelming TV adaptation more than by Gabriel Bá's comic book - but National Anthem feels like its own thing. The influences feel more akin to points of reference or allusions - as with Umbrella Academy, to be fair - incorporating pop art, surrealism, They Live, European comics, art cinema, Wacky Races and the Banana Splits just for starters. The narrative is so heavily allegorical that that there's not much point trying to root it in anything other than its own somewhat bendy reality, at the heart of which is a thoroughly teenage war against the forces of growing up and turning into your parents. It could have fallen flat on its arse but the telling is so beautifully literate and screwy as to prove irresistible. In fact it's so literate that it's quite difficult to follow in places, which is possibly why it works so well - suggesting glimpses of a fully formed and working, albeit thoroughly peculiar reality rather than explaining everything into tedious oblivion. The worst of the forces of evil, for example, seems to be a gang of smartly dressed young men called Books on Tape, who draw their power from the books they constantly listen to, which is all the explanation you get and, honestly, all you really need.

The art is thoroughly gorgeous, for what it may be worth, like Daniel Clowes illustrating the Dark Knight Returns as someone from Alternative Press observed. This one comes pretty close to perfection in comic book terms.