What with its cast of a gifted and dysfunctional faux-family raised by an eccentric millionaire and his manservant, you’d think The Umbrella Academy was created by Wes Anderson, he of The Royal Tenenbaums and other films about emotionally distant cod-aristos. But no, this collection of the first six issues of the comic is scripted by none other than Gerard Way, driving force behind the band My Chemical Romance.

It’s a handsome volume, published by Dark Horse, beautifully illustrated by Gabriel Ba. His elegant Mike Mignola-influenced linework is what impressed me most about Casanova, the Matt Fraction-written series about a superspy which has so far failed to make an emotional connection with me, and I’m not sure is much more than the sum of its very apparent influences. Colours are by Dave Stewart, who once again demonstrates that modern colouring has come into its own thanks to digital technology.

The Umbrella Academy is a fine piece of work, one I’d been recommended by Laurence Campbell, a superb illustrator doing a fine job of bringing a noirish vision to The Punisher for Marvel. Laurence knows my tastes in comics, and this particular recommendation was spot-on.

To get the obvious comparison out of the way, Gerard Way’s writing most resembles that of Grant Morrison, who provides the introduction to the collection. That is, it veers into some pretty leftfield territory in terms of concepts and execution, but is grounded by credible and touching relationships. Thus, the first installment features an attack by an animated Eiffel Tower, and the overall story arc is about a piece of music that, when performed, will bring about the end of the world.

It’s a highly accomplished piece of work that manages to include some comicbook staples - talking monkeys, weird powers, sinister plots - with credible stuff about families and relationships. The story centres on the children of the titular academy, a bunch of them adopted by eccentric inventor Reginald Hargreeves after a series of spontaneous births by women who were unaware that they were even pregnant. The emotionally distant Hargreeves raises the kids to standards that they cannot but fail, even with their uncanny powers. After saving Paris from the menace of a zombie-robot Gustav Eiffel the Academy disbands for a decade until their mentor’s death brings them together again.

The sense of loss and need for connection between the disparate Academy members is palpable, and brings real emotion to what could otherwise be mere spectacle. There’s heart as well as fizzbang at work here, and some very smart touches in the writing, such as the way that each chapter ends on a tangential coda taken from some statistics or a quotation. You can trace some of the devices back to Michael Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius stories, the big influence on Casanova, but Way handles them with an authority that I don’t personally find in Fraction’s work there, all the more powerful for using them occasionally and not throughout the story.

The Daily Mail complained about what it felt was the pernicious influence of emo bands such as My Chemical Romance, and fans responded by picketing their offices. Maybe someone should tell them that Gerard Way is writing comics too, and they’ll start a new moral backlash against them that we can all picket them for.