The Umbrella Academy: Will Hollywood Rain on its Parade?

Umbrella Academy was the first comic book I ever read, and I fell in love with it. It began in early 2008. I was on holiday in the city of Perth in Western Australia shopping with my little sister.

Walking down between the narrow buildings, with the buzzing of people out for lunch and the smell of coffee beans being grind for a business worker on their hour break, my sister and I noticed a sign that if you weren't looking you would completely miss (which we had in fact done a few times).

Looking to our left we saw a stair case that lead up to the store. Entering the small building we had found a new haven. Action figures, DVDs of loved shows, morbid but adorable toys, books and a wall full of comics. Never in our life had we seen such a place for where we lived there were no comics, DVD's of shows you could only see on cartoon network and the comedy channel, not even morbid fluffy toys. All this seemed a dream, a wonderful, wonderful dream.

Looking threw the comic section something caught my eye, on this book was a female that seemed to be painted white with a design of a violin going down her body as she too played the romantic instrument. But there written across it was the title I had been searching for - 'The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite'. It was love at first site. Paying $25.00 for it I began to read, and I couldn't stop.

Now it's the end of the year and news has been spreading that the infamous comic written by Gerard Way and beautifully illustrated by Gabriel Ba will be hitting the silver screens in 2011.

My first reaction was that excitement, it rushed threw my veins, the world that Gerard had created will hit new viewers that dare not open a comic but also to the fans that loved the book from its first random beginning.

Then a darkening thought loomed over me; could this comic be another victim to the slaughter house of films adapted by the comic book world?

Some of the greatest comic book heroes have been destroyed by Hollywood - Spiderman, Catwoman, The Hulk, a few if not all of Batman, Superman, even Hellboy. Could The Umbrella Academy be its next victim? I hope for all viewers that it will not be so. Grant Morrision (All star Superman, The Doom Patrol) stated that Umbrella Academy was "...An ultraviolet psychedelic sherbet bomb of wit and ideas. The superheros of the 21st century are here at last..."

And they are. This story has a chance to be one of the greatest films of the year for 2011.
The poetry of artwork that Gabriel did already gives you the wonderful scenes and the written wording by Gerard gives you a fantastic script. It's all there! And I hope that the screen writers use it. I hope that Gerard would be part of the script writing.

Like the hardship of a mother saying goodbye to her child on their first day of school is the same of a writer saying goodbye to its baby as it becomes a motion picture, but I hope that in this case Gerard will be holding his hand as the film is made to make sure that it can become the best it can be.

But only time will tell. They have a lot of work cut out for them, so, until I watch the film for myself in three years I'll just go and make a sandwich.