The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys
Gerard Way & Shaun Simon, script; Becky Cloonan, art; Dan Jackson, colors
Dark Horse Books, 2014
I'm a big Becky Cloonan fan, so I've always intended to get to this miniseries. Way had already established himself as a comics writer with The Umbrella Academy, but I hadn't read that either (until recently). I also haven't heard the My Chemical Romance concept album Danger Days or seen its music videos that explore this world, so for me the book has to stand on its own. The setting is a post-apocalyptic California. The Killjoys were a rebel band that are an inspiration for the desert-dwelling punk nonconformists that shelter the Girl, who is the sole survivor of a legendary rescue mission from the tyrannical corporation Better Living Industries. If this sounds like a stereotypical battle between conformity and non-conformity, youthful freedom and elder convention, it should. There's not much subtlety in the storytelling, although there is plenty of extravagant surrealistic visual invention to make up for it. Throughout the story the Girl is treated as someone special, but there is no demonstration of why that should be until the climax, when she pulls out a mystical/super-heroic power. Apparently Gerard Way fans love this, but I can't recommend it to anyone else.
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