News

The Members Of My Chemical Romance Inspired The Umbrella Academy's Characters

Gerard Way says that his former bandmates in My Chem partly inspired the characters in his comic book series, The Umbrella Academy.

The Members Of My Chemical Romance Inspired The Umbrella Academy's Characters

Since its release on Netflix on February 15, the world has obsessed over The Umbrella Academy – the brilliant comic book series created by Gerard Way and illustrator Gabriel Bá.

Following its hugely successful adaptation onto our TV and laptop screens, Gerard has spoken about the series' inspirations and where certain characters' traits came from, and admitted that they are partly a reflection of his former bandmates in My Chemical Romance.

"Being in a band is like being in a dysfunctional family and all these personalities are really distinct and really big, not just the people in your band, but the people you meet on the road or the crew that you work with and all this stuff," he tells Rolling Stone. "A band especially is a dysfunctional family, so there’s little bits of me in all the characters, there’s bits of some of the guys in some of those characters and the different roles that we would play in the band and how those roles would change sometimes. We were in a big pressure cooker of fame and notoriety and the characters experience that in the comic and the show."

Given how excited Umbrella Academy fans have been about certain easter eggs in the 10-episode show, we can only imagine how much time the internet will now spend figuring out whose personalities served as inspiration…

Gerard Way's The Umbrella Academy

The Umbrella Academy is out now on Netflix. Here's what we learned from our binge-watch.

Gerard Way is on the cover of this week's Kerrang!, which is on sale until tomorrow – you can order it now.

Now read these

The best of Kerrang! delivered straight to your inbox three times a week. What are you waiting for?