Review — ‘The Umbrella Academy: Plan B’ #1 Or ‘The Sparrow Academy: Plan B’ #1

Welcome to the table,

The Umbrella Academy is one of those comics that makes total sense if you are willing to suspend disbelief and agree that anything can, and probably will, happen.

Created by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá, The Umbrella Academy has been one of those comics that has been a part of my fandom since the early 2000’s. Something about the absolute unhinged, reality-breaking story, the characters that felt like they had hopped out of a pulp novel, and Ba’s deliciously stylized art  had me so locked in that it was hard to deny it was something special.

There have been a few spin offs and a multi season Netflix adaptation that recently ended, some seriously cool merch, a really rad statue of Luther I have never been able to get my hands on, and a slew of alt covers since those early days. Now the fine folks at Dark Horse Comics and the creative minds behind this series are back at it with the newest chapter of this unconventional superhero story that focuses on a fractured family of orphans.

Titled The Umbrella Academy: Plan B, this newest addition to the unconventional timeline picks up directly after the events of Hotel Oblivion. In a perfect page-turn moment, the team we know and love meets a different set of orphan superheroes. These new characters were raised by Sir Reginald Hargreeves and trained to fight crime, and to root out the oddities that Hargreeves did not deem worthy of being set loose upon the world.

The other group of powered people are known as the Sparrows. Unlike our lovable and chaotic Umbrella Academy, this other crop of kids have much more matching costumes and seem to be more capable of working together to neutralize powerful threats … and the Umbrella Academy themselves.

They even go as far as telling our beloved Umbrella Academy that they were the prototype and the Sparrows are the actual team Hargreeves (who is still, as near as we can all tell, still dead) wanted to form to set the world in order the way he saw fit.

I loved the first two season of the Netflix show. I have loved these characters in their comic form since the first showed up on the shelf in my local shop. All these years later, seeing them again between the pages has really been a delight.

There are eight variant covers to collect crafted by a pretty high profile list of artists including Fabio Moon, Claire Roe, Mike del Mundo, Duncan Fegredo, David Aja, Jill Thompson, Dustin Nguyen, and Tula Lotay.

The color work is being done by Dave Stewart, who is really knocking it out of the park on this one and adding to the fun and funky style of the whole ordeal.

I think this book is really rad, but I know deep down, much like music, The Umbrella Academy is a very niche kind of thing. There are going to be people who dig it and people who leave it on the shelf. If you like weird stories, this is going to check all the boxes. If you are looking for something like the Netflix show, depending on what you liked about the show, you may not find what you are looking for.

I know there are records out there I don’t really enjoy listing to. That does not mean when they are well done they are not beautiful, they are just not going to get as much play in my office as say … The Black Parade.

I’m giving this book a 10/10. It really is the kind of weird strange story I have come to expect from this talented team and it is exactly the kind of thing that I was looking for when I first saw the title announced.

Until next time, I can’t wait to see what happens next!