Gerard Way to publish "The Umbrella Academy" in September

My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way has announced the release date for the first issue of his comic book series, The Umbrella Academy. First promised in July of 2006, the series will be published by maverick publisher Dark Horse, home of Hellboy and Conan which became films, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Terminator and Star Wars which took the opposite route.

Gerard described the storyline to MTV:

A closet space alien has adopted seven extraordinary children to save the world. He never tells [them] from what. He's a really bad father, and he dies of a heart attack, and they are all kind of stuck to figure out the rest."

The biggest idea with the comic for me was, number one, writing a comic, I've been wanting to write one. It's fun. I think I can say something I can't necessarily say with my music. But also, I wanted to get people into comic shops, people who normally wouldn't [go], because I love the medium.

Way is no fly-by-night comic book geek either, mentioning an obscure Watchmen reference that appeared on the band's major label debut, Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge.

He also addressed fan speculation about the band's follow up to The Black Parade:

We're not working on a record, We're touring and getting some distance from writing music. We'll finish out touring, take a break and then come back and write. It will be quite awhile before there's another My Chemical Romance album.

Comic news sites Newsarama and Comic Book Resources each spoke with the frontman on the project. The CBR feature displays numerous pages of art from the first issue.