In 2007, the comic book world was introduced to the dysfunctional family of heroes known as The Umbrella Academy. Written by Gerard Way (from the band My Chemical Romance) and Brazilian artist Gabriel Bá, it follows the story of seven powered children who were adopted and trained to save the world. The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite, the first six-issue volume, won the 2008 Eisner Award for Best Limited Series. And now Netflix has brought us that story in a new live action series. 

Without giving away spoilers, the basic story involves Sir Reginald Hargreeves adopting seven children born on the same day and establishing the crime fighting team of The Umbrella Academy. One of the children, Number Seven (aka Vanya), apparently has no powers and is an outcast within her own family. This plays a significant part in her life and the story as a whole. Also, the time jumper, Number Five, disappears as a child, but returns after Sir Reginald’s death to let his siblings know the apocalypse is eminent and they need to stop it.

The first season follows the comic pretty closely, with some adjustments to the characters and adding elements of the second volume of the comic (The Umbrella Academy: Dallas) to the Apocalypse Suite main storyline. As for those characters, they did a good job with casting, especially considering two actors were needed for each academy member (as kids and as adults). It’s cool to see the “real life” versions of Sir Reginald, Luther, Diego, Allison, Klaus, Number Five, Ben and Vanya, as well as Hazel and Cha-Cha, temporal assassins from the Dallas comic.

This is not a show to go into expecting a lot of superhero action. The best way to describe it is as a dysfunctional family drama where most of the family happens to have powers and the end of the word is coming. That’s not to say there’s no action – there are gun, knife and fist fights in every episode. But the plot has a slow pace, which picks up after mid-season (there are 10 episodes). However, the payoff in the final couple of episodes is absolutely worth it.