Tag: Gerard Way

Tom Morello, a man with searing musical ability and scorching political passions, is famous as the guitarist in Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave and increasingly for his solo folk project The Nightwatchman. Now, like his friend Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance, the amplifier auteur is moving into a new career as a storyteller in the comics world.  Morello introduced those plans down at Comic -Con International but we caught up with him for a more in-depth conversation about “Orchid,” which arrives in October from Dark Horse Comics and will feature art by Scott Hepburn, who previously worked on the Oregon publisher’s “Star Wars: Nights of the Republic.” G.B.: Are comics a new passion for you? T.M.: I was an avid comic book collector as a kid. At the time my comic book tastes and my music tastes coincided, they were escapist in nature. It ...

Super friends and cosmic dreamers Grant Morrison and Gerard Way will appear together Thursday at Meltdown Comics (7522 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles) for a discussion of Morrison’s acclaimed new book “Supergods,” which is a sort of meditation on meta-humanity. The two are among the elite creators in comics these days with Morrison writing key Superman and Batman arcs in recent years and Way chronicling the surreal adventures of “The Umbrella Academy.” Way also has a day job as lead singer and art director of My Chemical Romance (the band is now preparing to tour with Blink-182) and Morrison portrayed a memorable bad-guy in their music video for the hit “Sing.” I’ll be there Thursday for sure. Hope to see you there as well. – Geoff Boucher RECENT AND RELATED ‘Superman’: Grant Morrison’s new Man of Steel Morrison gets evil ...

Here’s a lengthy excerpt from my Sunday Calendar story on My Chemical Romance and their new career direction… High in his ridgeline home, sitting on a porch that feels like a ledge, Gerard Way peered through cigarette smoke and the late-afternoon Pasadena haze as he searched his memory for the moment when his band, My Chemical Romance, shed its skin. “I think,” he said with a world-weary chuckle, “the liberating moment is when we decided that we were allowed to make a dance record.” These are strange seasons for Way and his band, who deliver their fourth studio album, “Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys,” on Nov. 22 and have just announced a world tour that finds them back from the brink of despair and bitter breakup. What was their salvation? Comic books, old sci-fi films and ...

EXCLUSIVE: ON THE SET It was a gray Sunday morning in Los Angeles — almost Scottish with its gloom factor, in fact – when I headed to downtown to watch My Chemical Romance film a music video for “Sing,” a single off of its new album, “Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys.” The album and tie-in videos are based on a dystopian vision of the future that was hatched in the mind of lead singer Gerard Way, who is also well-known to comics fans for his work on the award-winning Dark Horse series The Umbrella Academy. As I watched from a corner, Way and his band mates — portraying an armed band of mysterious misfits called the Killjoys – staged a nasty gun battle with the minions of a sinister-looking  fellow with a shaved head and ruffled shirt. When the bad guy ...

It’s an exciting time here at Hero Complex as we approach our five-month anniversary. We’re getting a lot of new contributors. One of them is Nathan Olivarez-Giles, who has this dispatch… It’s time to put your monocle on: “The Umbrella Academy” is in Los Angeles in a big way. Dark Horse Comics is celebrating the quirky and compelling “Academy” here to mark the release of “The Umbrella Academy: Dallas,” the second installment of the critically acclaimed series. The first issue of the “Dallas” book hits stores Wednesday (Nov. 26), and at 8 p.m. on Friday (Nov. 28), Gerard Way, author of “Academy” and lead singer of My Chemical Romance, will be signing autographs at Southern California’s famous comics landmark Golden Apple (7018 Melrose Ave). Meanwhile, Secret Headquarters (3817 W. Sunset Blvd.), the great comics store and gallery in Silver Lake, ...

EXCLUSIVE I ran into one of my favorite people in comics and music, Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance fame, backstage at the Spike TV Scream 2008 Awards. We wandered around a bit, and I was fortunate enough to introduce him to both Frank Miller and Tim Burton (I do love my job). Way was in such a good mood that he gave me the major lowdown on “The Umbrella Academy” ramping up as a film project at Universal. He talked about his hopes to bring in people such as “Children of Men” director Alfonso Cuarón, Oscar-winning costume designer Colleen Atwood (“Chicago,” “Sweeney Todd“) and perhaps screenwriter Diablo Cody, who picked up an Academy Award for “Juno.” GB: So what’s the good word on “The Umbrella Academy”? Way: “We just had our first meeting at Universal, and it went great. ...

I went to the Spike TV Scream 2008 Awards and have plenty of things to report back from it. First off, here’s a story I wrote that was published on the front page of the Los Angeles Times this morning. The Oscars present Hollywood as it wishes to be — refined, glamorous and high-minded — but on Saturday night at the Greek Theatre, the Spike TV Scream 2008 Awards showed the movie industry as it truly is in 2008: obsessed with superheroes, overflowing with fake blood and relentless in its pursuit to sell popcorn to teenagers. And despite a name that sounds like a B-movie convention, the Scream Awards turned out to be so of-the-moment in their target audience that top studio executives, major stars and A-list directors not only attended, they talked backstage about the show as a sign ...

Gerard Way, the lead singer of My Chemical Romance and the author of "The Umbrella Academy," is our featured contributor on The Essential Shelf, and this is the final installment of his Top 10 all-time graphic novels. You can find the first installment here and the second one here. Below are Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4 on his list: "Watchmen" by Alan Moore and Dave GibbonsThis is the first graphic novel I tell people to read if they are slightly unfamiliar with comics, and it is the graphic novel that changed the way I thought about superheroes and mainstream comics.  I often refer to ‘Watchmen’ as a gateway drug because that’s exactly what I think about it. It’s the one graphic novel that leads you to more cerebral, “outside-thinking” works. In suggesting this first to people, I realized that ...

Gerard Way, the lead singer of My Chemical Romance and the author of “The Umbrella Academy,” is our featured contributor on The Essential Shelf, and this is the second installment of his Top 10 all-time graphic novels. You can find the first installment here. Below are Nos. 5, 6 and 7 on his list: “The Invisibles: Say You Want A Revolution,” by Grant Morrison:I could make a Top 10 list of graphic novels of Grant Morrison’s work on its own, telling you to read “We3,” “The Filth,” “Seaguy” and others, but I realize I need to make this list more broad. I am including “The Invisibles” because of its volume, ambition and scope. Drawing upon everything from “The Prisoner” (the old British sci-fi/spy show) to the Beatles, this series contained some of the craziest concepts ever put into a comic. ...

Mike Richardson’s Dark Horse Comics empire has put the sleepy town of 21,000 on the map. MILWAUKIE, ORE. — IT’S A three-block stroll from the leafy banks of the Willamette to Main Street here, but on most lazy afternoons, it’s so quiet you can hear the river’s lulling drone the whole way. As one local said the other day as he walked toward the malt shop on Main: “It’s like this town got to about 1959 and said, ‘This seems good, we’ll stay here.’ “ Unless there’s a remake of “Stand by Me” in the works, it’s hard to imagine this town grabbing the attention of distant Hollywood and its Bluetooth brigades of executives and agents. But it has managed to do that very thing because mild-mannered Milwaukie has a secret identity. The “Dogwood City of the West,” it turns ...