Roughly thirty years ago, eccentric inventor Sir Reginald Hargreeves adopted seven extraordinary children, secluding them in his private estate, where he trained them, honing their unusual powers for ten years until they were ready to emerge as The Umbrella Academy.

Guided only by their loveless father, the children fought crime and fought with each other. One child went missing, another died, and one failed to display any special abilities beyond a certain proficiency on the violin. Over time the team was fractured by strife, the family driven apart.

Thus begins the second story arc for The Umbrella Academy, a brilliant young title published by Dark Horse Comics. This series merges distinctive visuals with a fertile imagination and gives them room to grow and thrive in a world of mad science, mysticism, and supervillainy unfettered by the long-standing continuity straightjackets of more established masked-vigilante comics.

The six-issue Apocalypse Suite introduces the Academy, making good use of flashbacks and dialog to flesh out the setting and give us the right back-story to make the characters human enough to be compelling while remaining detached enough to remain largely mysterious. The current series, Dallas carries forward from what could have been a perfectly-acceptable one-shot mini series, and is holding up well so far, exploring the disappearance and reappearance of 00.05.

Absolutely worth a read. Pick up the trade paperback. Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba do some outstandin work here.