It’s perhaps an exaggeration to say that comic books saved Gerard Way’s life, but they certainly played their part. “I was often quite a depressed teenager,” says the former My Chemical Romance frontman. “I didn’t even know there was such a thing as group therapy until I read about it in a Doom Patrol comic.”
As a teen, New Jersey-born Way worked in a comic shop, and that particular DC comic was just finishing up its four-year run under the stewardship of writer Grant Morrison. It embodied the quirky, often grotesque feeling that a lot of early 90s comic books embraced, especially those under the “mature readers” Vertigo imprint later published by DC. Morrison’s Doom Patrol – and the run written after him by Rachel Pollack made such an impression on Way that 25 years later, when offered the opportunity to write his first comic for DC, it was a no-brainer which title he would choose.
Way’s move into comics marks a significant shift – his battles with drugs and alcohol are well-documented and now firmly behind him. As, it seems, is My Chemical Romance; after four albums the band broke up in 2013. Way followed with a solo album, Hesitant Alien, the following year. But for the past two years, he’s been all about the comics.
Way curates his own imprint for DC, Young Animal, for which he writes two titles: Doom Patrol and the fabulously named Cave Carson Has A Cybernetic Eye. There are three other books and a clutch of further highly anticipated titles are set to be announced at this weekend’s New York Comic Con.
Way is now firmly established in the comics world, and by no means just as some kind of slumming celebrity who fancied trying his hand at something different – he had his first pro work published at the age of 15. That was under the byline Garry Way, but difficulties with the art team meant it lasted just two issues. Then in 2007 Way began a new series, Umbrella Academy, published by the big independent company Dark Horse, a superhero book set in an alternate 1970s. The series is being adapted into a TV series by Netflix, due to be released next year.
“I guess I’ve been a comics reader all my life,” says Way at the Thought Bubble comic convention in Leeds. “Certainly since I was eight years old, and I always made my own comics as a kid. I didn’t know how to write comics, I just made it up, but then if you went to comic conventions back in the day you could buy these scripts, things like Watchmen, and I learned how to write properly from them.”
Way studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York, and as his band My Chemical Romance was climbing in popularity he was building his comic career at the same time.
“The good thing about the Umbrella Academy period was that I was a lot younger and had lots of energy,” says Way. “And when you’re touring with a band, when you’re on the road, the downtime is insane. I like touring but one of the things I didn’t like was that it felt there was so much wasted time, so I used that time to write comic books.”
Didn’t anyone say to him that he should be concentrating on being a rock star rather than building a comics career during those days? “No one ever said that,” says Way. “And my record label could have said, yeah, great, make comics and we’ll capitalise on that, we’ll publish them, but they didn’t and I was delighted to get published properly, by a company like Dark Horse, because it meant this wasn’t just a vanity project.”
Umbrella Academy earned Way two of the comic industry’s biggest awards, the Eisner and the Harvey. “All those awards we won for the music …” he says. “The Eisner and the Harvey are the only ones I have out on display.”
After touring his 2014 solo album, Way found himself with a burning desire to get into comics again, and at a convention in South America he met DC co-publishers Dan Didio and Jim Lee. “They said, what comic would you love to write, and straight away I said Doom Patrol,” remembers Way. “I said I wanted to tell strange stories, stories that had heart.”
What Way was less keen on was getting embroiled in the finely tuned continuity that weighs down a comics universe such as DC’s, so Lee suggested Way curate his own imprint, using DC characters but apart from the usual line. Young Animal was born from that, and Way assembled a team of creators to work on characters often at the margins of DC’s output, weird and edgy ones such as Doom Patrol (Way and Nick Derington), super-spelunker Cave Carson (Way, John Rivera and Michael Oeming) and Shade (by Cecil Castellucci and Marley Zarcone), together with brand-new properties such as Jody Houser and Tommy Lee Edwards’ Mother Panic.
Young Animal launched last year, and Way’s been head down on it ever since, as well as throwing around ideas for a second solo album. Inevitably, a question must be asked about My Chemical Romance. Almost five years since they split, is a reunion in the offing? “I don’t think we’re getting back together,” he says. “Everyone’s in a great place at the moment, we’re all doing our own things and we have amazing families. But no one knows what the future holds.”
Not even for Young Animal. Way has been writing comics and running the imprint for two years now, with his own unique stamp on the books. The characters are the property of DC, of course, but Young Animal was always envisaged as a “pop-up imprint”, says Way, and if he decides not to apply his particular vision to the line in the future, it’s likely that DC would end the imprint.
The road is perhaps clear for Way to take on the major DC properties, except he doesn’t want to (“I think I’d feel a bit intimidated to write Batman or Superman”). In fact, though, Way did once get a Batman pitch greenlit by DC, which circumstances meant he never wrote and probably never will.
“I don’t feel I’m in a dark enough place to write Batman,” he says. He breaks out into a wide grin. “My life is pretty awesome right now, and I don’t particularly want to access the darkness.”
Way is married to Scottish-born Lindsey (of the band Mindless Self Indulgence) and they live in LA with their eight-year-old daughter, Bandit. “I feel super-lucky right now,” he says. “I love feeling healthy and happy.” So while comics might not necessarily have saved the life of Gerard Way, they’ve certainly helped to get him to a pretty nice place.
