Gerard Way is best known as the co-founder and lead vocalist of the band My Chemical Romance, which after four studio albums announced it was breaking up earlier this year. Way is also the writer of the Eisner Award-winning series The Umbrella Academy, with artist Gabriel Ba. Theyve created two miniseries Apocalypse Suite and Dallas, with a third planned.



Ways new project is the six issue comic miniseries The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys. Co-written by Shaun Simon and illustrated by Becky Cloonan with colors by Dan Jackson, the book relates to the music videos from the last My Chemical Romance album Danger Days, but they designed the comic to be understood and enjoyed without any previous knowledge, picking up years after the events depicted in the videos. Way took time out to talk with about the project.





ALEX DUEBEN: In 2009 you mentioned The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys and in the interim there was the album Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys and the two music videos from the album and now were seeing the comic. Talk a little about how this idea has changed over the years.



GERARD WAY: Shaun, my co-creator and co-writer, basically was our first friend/companion that came with us on the road. He sold merch for us for free, helped us out, loaded gear with us. It was our first time seeing America and he and I started to develop what would become our world views together, our feelings about America, our feelings about sterilization and ugly stuff being pretty, some pretty stuff being ugly. We had lots of really weird thoughts, but we shared them. After Black Parade, I wasnt lost, I was just searching. I was very open and receptive to the universe and I was like, what do I want to do right now? I started to develop this comic idea and Shaun was really interested in becoming a comic author. Immediately from seeing his work I realized this guy is totally going to do it, hes great, he should be writing comics. Its strange, too, because hes a person that I never would have guessed would have wanted to do that years ago. I said, I really like your idea and I have this idea and theyre kind of similar and I bet if we put them together wed have a really interesting comic. So we did that and developed some really amazing ideas and basically got the book greenlit right away, so we announced it.



As I started to explore the album that I then had to makethe second album cause one got scrappedI found myself really gravitating towards the book Shaun and I were working on. I was like, this probably should be the album. We knew what it meant. Even if the record was a big deal or not, it still meant that it was going to be out there on a larger scale than a simply a comic. So it was a sacrificein a positive way at leastthat we made to share this idea visually with people on giant stages and music videos and albums. We found that the comic then started to change. We ran out of money to shoot the third video. There was somebody not keeping an eye on that stuff and so we couldnt shoot it so it was like, I guess this is done. I had Becky Cloonan draw an image for the single that wouldnt have a video and it ended up what I believe is the cover for issue six of Killjoys. Its the girl from the video at fifteen years old. I saw the image and I called Shaun and said, I think this is the book. He said, I totally agree, lets do it. We got really excited and then another year of work went by and then here we are.



AD: The first issue picks up years after the events that take place in the two videos. Is the miniseries the idea of the third video done differently or what exactly?



GW: Lets say the video is the last issue, so to speak. In order to tell that properly and to really set that upbecause we wanted people to enjoy the book without having seen the videosit was very important for both of us that that was the case. It would be foolish to simply write comics for my music audience because the two arent exactly the same all the time. I meet guys in Superman shirts and theyre awesome and they dont listen to my music. I dont want them to have to sit on youtube and do homework to read a comic. We also realized we can have more fun and really explore stuff like the draculoids and Grants character gets fully explored.



AD: I wanted to ask about that. Grant Morrison acted in the video and it seems like The Invisibles and a lot of those nineties Vertigo Comics are key to your aesthetic and sensibility.



GW: Completely. Especially when I reconnected with comics. That one period, which I guess ended up being my formative years, that golden age era of Vertigo which was Gaiman, Morrison and Milligan, Invisibles, Doom Patrol, Sandman, Death, all that stuff. Those comics were as important to me as my first Helium 7 or my first Sleater-Kinney record. Those things were equally as important in shaping who I became.



AD: One of the things that was so important about those is that they were about young people vs old people, new order vs established ideas, chaos vs order, but it wasnt that the young people were right and they often subverted what you expected.



GW: What you just said, I think, is a great assessment of not only nineties post-modern comics but also a lot of British work in all forms. I remember watching The Prisoner as a kid and I found out years later that was one of Grants main influences. It was all those ideas. Even the first issue of Sandman, the first time you see him youre not sure if this guy is supposed to be a good guy or a bad guy. Is he some kind of demon? You realize pretty quickly through these guys work that it doesnt matter. Theres no such thing as good guys and bad guys.



AD: When you were talking about you and Shaun and thinking about America, the first issue of Killjoys is split between the big city and desert and when you were talking about beauty and ugliness I kept thinking about those two settings. One huge and human and the other bare and natural.



GW: Right. And either of those two locations, depending on who you ask, they could say thats ones ugly or that ones pretty. It would change depending on who you ask. I want this beautiful Californian radiation sunshine and all this color and I love the desert while somebody else will say the city is gorgeous and beautiful and clean.



AD: Talk a little about what its been like working with Becky Cloonan. How did you two connect?



GW: Its been awesome. We connected pretty easy. The first issue of Umbrella came out and Gabriel and Fabioeverybody loves themthey have this small network of artists friends that were doing like-minded stuff. They were indie but they werent the kind of indie youd expect. It wasnt autobiographical and they were doing their own horror comics and one of these people was Becky Cloonan. She had done a book with them and so when the first issue of Umbrella came out, to support Gabe she came to the signing just to say hi and pickup a copy of the book. I had always been a fan of her work for a long time. Scott Allie had turned me onto her work very early. When were writing Killjoys, I knew right away that she was perfect. Even though the comic has been through two and a half incarnations, she always fit, no matter what the book changed into. I know people always say this, but I have no doubt in my mind that its the best work Ive ever seen her do. She has to constantly change between the two locations, the hyper-dense draftsmanship and then big open Miyazaki spaces and completely different types of characters. I mean just for that alone, its obviously her best work.



AD: I think by now everyone knows that My Chemical Romance is no more. Now that you have more free time, are you going to make more comics?



GW: Im trying to be really economical and really purposeful about how I use my free time. Trying not to scatter and try not to do too many things. I wake up in the morning with a head full of noise. Most of that noise is music, but the other bits are comic book stories and characters and Ive learned to say, pick one that you really want to do, which is make music, and reconnect with that. I can always do comics. Thats not to say that somebody will always publish me. Lets just say that anybody can make a comic if they sit and draw it and write it. I can print it myself if I wanted. I can always do that. Even though it was one of my first passions, its not the thing that I wake up and want. Ill be sitting there scripting [a comic]and this happens all the timeand Ill look over at my instruments. I realize that you need to be honest with yourself. This is really what you do. You also do comics, but its different.



AD: Youve announced that you and Gabriel are working on a third Umbrella Academy series, Hotel Oblivion. Can you say anything about where you are?



GW: I went for a really amazing writing trip to Portland right around ChristmasI like to go to Portland around Christmas and spend a week at the Benson and then Scott Allie and I will basically tool around town. We had a really great writing trip, but at the same time I dont want to say its a lost book but I genuinely dont know when Im going to write it. Id hate to give fans of the original two any kinds of false hope. Believe me, if I had a clone machine it would get writtenactually it probably wouldnt. The clone would probably want to make music too and fuck around on other things. [laughs] I really want that out there. I think the fans deserve it. Its plotted out, I know what happens, Gabes excited about it, I just dont know when itll get done.



AD: As a last question, any favorite comics youre reading right now?



GW: I fell out for a little bit because I was focused on work but I do enjoy everything again. Thats not to say everythings great and I like it, but I enjoy going to the comics store. Having said that in my limited time, Ive been reading Prison Pit. Theyre such great reads, Ill reread them every couple months. I just started Love and Rockets. When Love and Rockets came out I was too young to really grasp it. I also wasnt ready for indie comics. I was reading X-Men at the time. Love and Rockets comes out and a friends older sister, who was a heavy metal drummer and a photographer, she said you need to read Love and Rockets and I tried but I couldnt get it. Anyway I started from Maggie the Mechanic and trying to read through all of Love and Rockets and now obviously not only do I get it, Im kicking my own ass for not reading it at sixteen.