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The Umbrella Academy has to stop one of their own from altering history on the day that President Kennedy is supposed to be assassinated.

In The Umbrella Academy V1: Apocalypse Suite, writer Gerard Way and artist Gabriel Ba quickly built a world equal parts Teen Titans and Bugs Bunny, where super hero and intelligent monkeys work side by side to defend the world against…  well, honestly, the biggest threat to the Umbrella Academy is the Umbrella Academy themselves.  The catalyst driving the action in that first book was the reunion of the Umbrella Academy and in Way and Ba’s second outing, The Umbrella Academy V2: Dallas, the catalyst is the time traveling of the Umbrella Academy’s own No. 5, a grown man trapped in the body of a 10 year old who has been to the end of the world, back and to all points in between.  Recruited by a temporal agency, No. 5 was their deadliest agent at one point and was present at all the pivotal moments of the 20th century, including Dallas, TX on a pleasant 1963 morning when President Kennedy was also visiting the city.  Because of his actions, the rest of the Umbrella Academy is sucked into the events with the purpose of setting time right, even if they’re not too sure what that means.  Are they supposed to make sure President Kennedy is shot that day or are they there to rescue him, sending America and the world on some other and greater path in the last half of the 20th century.

It would probably help their mission to succeed if any of the members of the Umbrella Academy actually liked each other.  Raised together, they’re only true connection is that they were all born at the same moment and then abandoned or put up for adoption.  They are family with no one left but one another but they can’t be together.  Past wrongs and betrayals still plague them to this day.  At one point, their leader Space Boy (who has the body of a giant ape) goes off on his own to hide in the Vietnamese jungle for two years rather than spend that time with two of his “brothers.”  While superhero morose can be found in almost any comic, Way and Ba have created fully formed characters here rather than cardboard cut-outs.  The Umbrella Academy: Dallas is a family story, hidden beneath the veneer of a super hero adventure.

The versatility of The Umbrella Academy has been its best strength.  Built around a dysfunctional family story, Way and Ba have put together the framework to tell almost any kind of story that they want and we get about 3 or 4 of those stories in Dallas.  You’ve got a story about Kennedy’s assassination, a Vietnam story, a Morrison-esque flight-of-fancy killer story, a story of the Lincoln Monument on a rampage, a meeting with God and No 5’s story of how he journeyed back to our time.  With so much going on, Way and Ba never lose track of the family as the heart of their story.

The Umbrella Academy: Dallas is a larger, more convoluted and faster story than Apocalypse Suite was.  If the first book was Way and Ba feeling their own way through this new world they were creating, Dallas jumps head on into the story.  Way and Ba have quickly grown as creators since the first story; their confidence and skill make The Umbrella Academy: Dallas a rare feat; a sequel that is easily better than the original story.

The Umbrella Academy: Dallas
Written by: Gerard Way
Drawn by: Gabriel Ba
Colored by: Dave Stewart
Lettered by: Nate Piekos

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