The Umbrella Academy: Dallas [Paperback]

Gerard Way (Author), Gabriel Ba (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 16, 2009 | Series: Umbrella Academy

The team is despondent following the near apocalypse created by one of their own and the death of their beloved mentor Pogo. So it's a great time for another catastrophic event to rouse the team into action. Trouble is, each member of the team is distracted by some very real problems of their own. The White Violin is bedridden due to an unfortunate blow to the head. Rumor has lost her voice - the source of her power. Spaceboy has eaten himself into a near-catatonic state, while Number Five dives into some shady dealings at the dog track and The Kraken starts looking at his littlest brother as the key to unraveling a mysterious series of massacres... all leading to a blood-drenched face-off with maniacal assassins, and a plot to kill JFK!

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The second installment in this Eisner-winning series, Dallas is even more surreal and darkly quirky than its predecessor. The Umbrella Academy is a group of superheroes who were mysteriously born at the same time, adopted and raised together as a family and a team. Now adults, their heroic and family dynamics are traumatized and dysfunctional, despite their love for one another. In this volume, the bizarrely childlike time-traveling team member Number Five recruits his siblings to right a wrong—to save President Kennedy before he is assassinated, possibly saving the world in the bargain. But in the tradition of dysfunctional families, they overshoot the mark by three years and end up in Vietnam in the middle of the war and opposed by a Machiavellian super-intelligent goldfish. Way's nuanced, complex writing and Bá's magnetic, lush art continue to click together like a finely tuned machine. Dallas hits a sweet spot, appealing to mainstream audiences and hardcore comics fans alike, not to mention a legion of teenagers drawn by Way's other role as lead singer of the popular band My Chemical Romance. (Oct.)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* Apocalypse Suite (2008), written by the front man of the emo-punk outfit My Chemical Romance and drawn by Eisner winner Bá, provided a dizzying refreshment of the superhero group, adding here a dash of severely dysfunctional dynamics and there a glug of gleeful peculiarity. The story line of this follow-up swarms like an electron cloud around a plan to avert the Kennedy assassination—or are they trying to avert the plan to avert the plan? Way has a special affinity for enigmatic plotlines, in which minor details and major occurrences are left unexplained for ages, and he isn’t afraid to literally end the world, which has happened at least twice in Umbrella Academy history. Information gets doled out in morsels and roundhouse kicks as the squabbling squad of super-stepsiblings zips back and forth in time and works to save the world from, well, themselves and their beyond-clever powers. Rumor’s ability to tell a lie and have it come true offs an Abraham Lincoln monument run amok, mirroring the the first book’s opening, in which zombie-robot Gustave Eiffel terrorizes Paris with his tower. Such stuff makes spectacular fodder for Bá’s chunky, irresistibly hooky art, bursting with constellations of weird, exciting, and funny touches. Fresh, bitter, ultraviolent, oddly touching, The Umbrella Academy may be the shrewdest, wildest superhero thing going in mainstream comics. It’s certainly among the finest. --Ian Chipman

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Dark Horse Comics; First Edition edition (September 16, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159582345X
• ISBN-13: 978-1595823458
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 0.4 x 10 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #40,834 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #79 in Books > Comics & Graphic Novels > Publishers > Dark Horse

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Amazing World & Characters, Story Still Lacking April 9, 2010

By S. C. Spelman

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

In my review of Vol. 1 of The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite, I stated I thought the world and characters Gerard Way created were fascinating and that the art of Gabriel Ba is great and lends itself to the piece very nicely.

For better or for worse, nothing has changed.

Gerard Way still has trouble as a storyteller. He creates an absolutely amazing world of characters and despite all this family turmoil he presents us, I don't really care about any of the characters. We only get a few snapshots of each relationship, then we are hurried to the next. It's a shame because the world that Way created has got to be up there in my top 5 through all story mediums (movies, games, books, etc.) He has this incredible gift for creating very interesting characters and circumstances (Hazel and Cha Cha being one of the standouts this volume) but if you can't make a story that people care about, you don't really have a story. And killing characters way too quickly (usually comic writers have the exact opposite problem)before we get to know them more, root for them, and enjoy their unique personality.

While there are quite a few gems amongst the dialogue but for the most part the dialogue isn't very good. Many of the lines are very esoteric and self serving, which works for music but not very well in print media.

So all that being said I'm still going to continue with the series since it's one of the freshest stories out there, even if it falls short. Way has some growing to do but considering that The Umbrella Academy is one of his writing ventures published, he's not doing too shabby at all.

___________________________
What needs to stay the same
___________________________

- unique world and characters (this is reason alone to buy it)
- the art and character design
- the mood of the work (macabre and yet amusing)

___________________________
What needs to change
___________________________

- killing off characters way too fast before we get a chance to enjoy them
- story and dialogue need some work
- needs more pathos to keep the reader engaged

I look forward to whenever Vol. 3 comes out and I hope for those of you wanting something a bit different from your graphic novels (or stories in general), I hope you will give The Umbrella Academy a try.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Way and Ba score another hit with "Dallas" October 24, 2009

By HJ Louw

Format:Paperback

After the apocalyptic events chronicled in the first trade paperback, Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba show us another side of the Umbrella Academy that I didn't expect to see. Even though they saved the world in the previous storyline, the second trade starts off with some pretty dysfunctional behavior from most of the principal cast of the book, with almost no one feeling the elation of having prevented Armageddon, save for The Seance, who has become a celebrity. Spaceboy has become indolent, Kraken's working with the police to investigate his mysterious time-travelling brother No.5, The White Violin is bedridden, The Rumor is dealing with the loss of her voice, and the Horror is still dead and only shows up in flashbacks. To make my point, the Hargreaves family seems to be even more discontent than at the beginning of the first volume, even though they banded together against a shared evil that should, ostensibly, have brought them closer together. The writing and the art is as magnificent as ever, and Gerard Way seems to have been born to be a comic book writer rather than a musician (though he does the latter pretty well too. He is, after all, the lead singer of My Chemical Romance, for those of you who didn't know). Gabriel Ba delivers fine pencils reminiscent of his run on Casanova, and it suits the book perfectly. The plot unfolding in "Dallas" is so quirky and twisted that it made my head spin, as it involves time travel, alternate histories, over-the-top superhero violence and jaw-dropping revelations. The bulk of the story revolves around the secret dealings of No.5, who showed us that he is more than just a time-travelling kindergartener in the last volume, and he is sure to surprise readers even more in the second book. The main threat comes from the mysterious Temps Aeternalis, a secret society with time travel capabilities, and two masked psychopaths called Cha Cha and Hazel. I wish I could say more about the story and what exactly it has to do with the JFK assassination, but that would be giving too much away. Reading this book was a fun ride, and it's safe to say that as good as the first volume was, this one is even better. Buy it if you like Grant Morrison craziness mixed with classic Chris Claremont team dynamics.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great quality, great writing, great gift December 20, 2012

By Lirisimah Sorrim

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This was a pretty sweet comic. I wasn't expecting much since I was not a big fan of Gerard Way, but after ordering Vol 1 and this one for my girlfriend for Christmas I had to at least take a look. It was very well done and very interesting, I felt a little bad reading through them both before I even wrapped them for her. Oh well, definitely a nice series, I need to get her more so I can read them...