1 out of 5

That’s right, I quit before the end of this 6-issue mini.  And normally I’ll add some kind of caveat to one-star reviews, warning up front that it’s not so horrible BUT or some kind of mini reprieve before a storm of hatred, but I can’t offer that here.  ‘Killjoys’ isn’t particularly bad, I’m happy to report, else I’d have to start questioning my enjoyment of The Umbrella Academy, it’s just not rewarding at all.  Cloonan’s art is good but not grabbing, and Way’s and Simon’s story and writing has some okay concepts but doesn’t do a damned new thing with them.  I think three issues is a fair enough amount of story-space to give a team to chance to work out some hiccups.  Within the three – that I reread a couple times, back to back, after reading the ‘history’ of the concept of series (which is perhaps part of the problem) – I can’t find a single panel or page that truly tweaks my interest.

So point made that there’s nothing new under the sun, yes?

I balked on ‘Umbrella’ because of Way being in My Chemical Romance, and me not really diggin’ that groups whole emo-cheese scene.  I’m sure it was something dumb like a Grant Morrison quote or something that got me to glance again, but I’m glad I did.  ‘Umbrella’ showed that Gerard could step out – womp womp – from ‘neath the shade of his group and deliver a story that felt fully realized, fun, and not tainted with the emo concepts I’d associate with his scene.  Compare this to a recent trend of some rocker dudes working on comics – I think the guy from Coldplay has one? – that, like ‘Killjoys,’ are either based on concept albums or just mine a super predictable vein of comic pap, riding the coattails of their writer or co-writer’s associations.  UA seemed to actually try and avoid the MCR stamp, since the series could (and did) stand on its own.  Indeed, Gerard’s interest in putting out a comic stretches back a ways (according to wiki), so regardless of the output, or my negative opinion of it here, the form of expression feels legit.  And if there’s anything positive I’ll say about Killjoys, it’s that it again does feel committed; though it is a second ‘chapter’ to a tale started on a music album, the book in no way feels like an afterthought.

The first part of the Killjoys story was told through song a couple albums ago by My Chemical Romance.  It’s a post-something yadda yadda world run by corporations and The Killjoys – masked, superhero named, color-coded Robin Hood sounding transgressors – are fighting back for the people.  At some point prior to our comic, the original Killjoys have been mostly offed during some ultimate battle where they were protecting a young girl, and the main running-it-all corporation – stupidly obviously named Better Living Industries which is abbreviated BL/ind (chuckle, I guess) – emerges, dusts off its control techniques, and continues running-it-all.  We pick up with this same young girl, a few years later, wandering about outside of the main city, running into some Killjoys fanboys as well as a disgraced once KJ who’s now a radio DJ.  Subplots include some porno droids who wanna run away from their job and a BL/ind ‘Scarecrow’ – an assassin, it would seem – who’s lately been questioning his job, at the risk of being turned into a ‘Draculoid,’ which is a term I know as much about as you but, yes, just seems like another dumb portmanteau to re-present a typical dystopic concept of the mindless corporate drone.

To call the setting unoriginal isn’t a fair complaint on its own.  With Blade Runner setups, we’re quick to point out how often its been done, but if we can swallow the theme as just a springboard trope – like most fantasy has the same general structure, and a billion fiction books are set in the real world, we just seem to give that a pass – then we allow the creators the leniency to use the framework to bring us interesting characters, or fun tweaks.  But.  KJ seems to think that the setting is original, and that putting a cool design and name on old concepts is automatically interesting, and that fight-the-power and the-man-sucks stories are inherently empowering and appealing.  This is, unfortunately, the caliber of creativity I would’ve expected from a teen-geared emo band, so while I suppose its fitting that this is a work linked to Way’s group, I’ll admit I was hoping for a little bit more.  And the deft handling of large scale ideas on a small screen as evidenced in ‘Academy’ is just steamrolled over.  Even if we’re to assume that we know the Killjoys’ background, since its only told on an inside-cover paragraph and never discussed elsewhere, the characters have no sense of build, and the various subplots are jumped between for no fucking reason that I can tell except that we want to make sure we have each story in a certain place for when I’m assuming they’ll converge in some way in some later issue.  Yes, sure, this is a general storytelling, but having some type of page-to-page transition or a structural reason for showing a one page interaction with character A and a one page interaction with character B – unrelated, both fairly uninteresting interactions – then… why?  Way and co-writer Simon gave me nothing to go on for these characters, and made the now-classic ‘I wanna be like Morrison’ mistake of tossing out made up terms for world-building pieces that unfortunately just sound made up and not thought out.  Not saying they weren’t, but that love or hate Grant’s nonsense, I generally get the impression he has some wacky explanation for most of the included (and many not included) details.

Story uninvolving with no characters to care about: check.  Now Cloonan.  Again, I have some bias here.  Cloonan has worked frequently with Brian Wood, whom I toss into a pile of ‘appeals to college kids’ writers.  Why?  Who cares.  I’m already boring myself here with too much text.  Let’s just summarize (all of my reviews) by saying to I’m a judgmental bastard.  My first purchased work by Cloonan was ‘American Virgin,’ which didn’t help to change my assumptions.  I also didn’t really… like the style.  But she’s come a long fuckin’ way on Killjoys.  I find it amusing when spotlit talents with a totally notable style – Duncan Fegredo, Cameron Stewart, Sean Phllips – end up cleaning up their work as time goes on.  We’re all supposed to make progress, of course, but it makes their earlier attempts – which brought them attention – seem more amateurish.  Like they wanted to draw the way they would eventually develop, but didn’t have the skill or direction at first.  With all of these artists, they still maintain their identity, absolutely, but the Fegredo of Enigma is a billion miles away from the Fegredo of Hellboy.  And so Cloonan’s clunky, thick, sloppy-inked figures are gone, for something cleaner, and of the Brian Hurtt or Warren Pleece school of cartoonish realism.  What’s not gone is her poor (in my opinion) visualized movement and sense of cohesion with the text.  Action sequences still feel rigid and leave a lot of the beats up to the reader to figure out, often showing motion lines or the after-effect of a movement from a confusing perspective or direction.  Perhaps similarly, the nuance of facial expressions seems some years away still, timing how we look when talking or responding to the actual word bubble rarely feeling in sync.  Generally, unless its explicit from the words Gerard uses, almost all of the dialogue ‘sounds’ (and looks) deadpan.

The design is good, with an appealing palette of bright neon colors, a full spectrum well graded and applied by Dan Jackson, but I still got a disconnect from this.  I’m looking at some of the ‘wasteland’ scenes, and I’m just not sold on it being a sweaty junkyard desert.  I’ll actually put this on Jackson instead of Cloonan; the details are there, but the colors, mostly, look too pretty.  Same goes for the city scenes, which instead of looking cold look fairly pleasant, the wide range of tones all blending well with each other.  And while I’m criticizing everyone, let’s talk about ‘Nate Piekos of Blambot’s’ letters.  Every bubble seems over-crowded.  So there ya go, almost every page is a mish-mash of clunky action, crowded text, pleasantly bland colors, and old writing ideas.  Woot woot.

The best part are the covers, a white background with a closeup of a main character.  Due to designer Tony Ong, or all on Cloonan?  Dunno, but they’re nifty, and would make a good poster stitched together.  FIVE STARS FOR THE COVERS YOU WIN.