The chaos of the first two issues of Umbrella Academy: Hotel Oblivion begins to find stability in issue #3, and it is a dreadfully pulpy good time. That’s the difference in tone with this story arc and what’s come before. Previously, the stories were very anti-superhero centric, spinning archetypes into mirror versions of themselves. In Hotel Oblivion, Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá leave the superhero pretenses behind and take these scarred characters with super powers and drop them into pulp genre decadence. Gracing these pages are smatterings of crime pulp, sci-fi pulp, and espionage pulp, and it makes perfect sense.

These siblings with powers were raised by an alien who disguised himself as a billionaire named Hargreeves to fight against evils of the world. The siblings were also deeply scarred by that same father figure who in no way showed them love; it was more like military discipline. When Hargreeves met an untimely death, the bond between the siblings became unstable, and they scattered into their own separate genre-fueled storylines.

What is the Hotel Oblivion? It was sort of an off-dimension prison on an inescapable planet where Hargreeves sent supervillains without a fair trial. One of its residents, The Murder Magician, has found a potential way off the planet, which has been essentially forgotten about since Hargreeves died. The Séance has teamed up with a group of dangerous, drug-dealing bikers to track down some buried money. Their mother continues to play strange mind games with the once-villainous sibling The White Violin. The Rumor sets off to help Number Five with a little espionage. Meanwhile, Spaceboy and The Kraken are shooting through space to other dimensions, seeking out answers to a deep-seated mystery, and
I’m sitting in my desk chair anxiously awaiting issue #4.

Creative Team: Gerard Way (writer), Gabriel Bá (artist), Nick Filardi (colors), Nate Piekos from Blambot (letters), Scott Allie (editor)
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
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