Wanted to make sure I hit all the points for this arc.
Last week I managed to pick up Umbrella Academy: Dallas, the second volume. Despite Apocalypse Suite being a limited series, I knew another one needed to be made. There was just too much mystery left open. According to Gerard Way's afterword, there'll be eight or nine. So yay.
My thoughts on it? It was pretty good. A similar plot to the last one, where one of the lesser known kids gets swept up into an organisation and sort of becomes the made villian. This time it was The Boy, Number Five, and we managed to get a deeper look into his life when he was away from the academy. We also get to see how the others are coping and what year the series is set in (Turns out it's 1980).
*Spoilers*
The story is about starts about a couple of months after Apocalypse Suite. Number Five is down at the track when a bunch of guys dressed like the ones in Issue Four attack him. Despite there being fifty or so, he mercilessly tears through them, enjoying himself, when one calls in the favours of two special agents, which scares Five shitless. Turns out these two are psychos in weird masks. They kidnap Seance, torture him and eventually, he manages to possess them and make the two kill themselves.
Meanwhile, The Rumour, who is still mute after Vanya cut her throat, gets Five's story from him. Before he came back, he was part of an agency that specialised in preserving the status quo. He broke off when he was ordered to kill Kennedy (Yes, that Kennedy) when his old boss shows up. Five and Rumour are threatened into finishing the job. They go back in time to Dallas, while Seance, Kraken and Space follow. The latter three end up trying to stop Five from completing the mission, but Rumour, who was given her voice back, manages to make it look like the shot hit. They go home, where everything's normal. Five kills his boss and everyone goes off to think about what's happened while he gets himself some ice cream.
It was a good story, got a little deeper into this dysfunctional family and answered a lot of open quesions, although it opened a couple with this weird board meeting. My only problem was Space. In the last volume he was trying to be heroic, although he wasn't too good at it. This time, he just sat around, getting fat, and he contributed nothing to the story, really. This worked, since we got a better look at the characters who weren't seen much last time, but it seemed like he was too useless. And Kraken seems to be slowly inching towards being Gerard Way's own little Mary Sue, but it was so well written you can't really tell until you read both books back to back.
My thoughts? Go have a look at it if you were a fan of Apocalypse Suite. If you haven't read that yet, take a look. Trust me, it won those awards for a reason. Dallas is a pretty good sequel, one that seems to set up the potential for a longer series, and yet works well as an ending. If Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba just decided to not bother with making another, they would have left it with a pretty good wrap up.
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