This year was meant to see the long-awaited reunion tour for novel coronavirus pandemic, which put a stop to MCR’s tour. But… at least we’re getting a new comic?
Revealed by Alt Press this morning, Dark Horse will publish The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys: National Anthem, a six-part miniseries written by Gerard Way and Shaun Simon and featuring art, colours, and lettering from Leonardo Romero, Jordie Bellaire, and Nate Piekos, respectively.
It’s not the first time that the Killjoys ” the brightly-costumed outlaws of a post-apocalyptic 2019 California that were the stars of MCR’s 2010 concept album Danger Days ” have come to comics. Back in 2013, Way continued the story of the Killjoys (or what little of them and their followers were left standing after the fight against evil megacorp Better Living Industries that climaxed the album) in True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys alongside Simon and artist Becky Cloonan. National Anthem will instead serve as a prequel to the events of Danger Days and focus on the previously unseen ringleader of the Killjoys, Mike Milligram.
Milligram was one of the original characters created for Danger Days when it was being conceived but never made it into the final version of the story ” True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys was meant to include him, with Cloonan designing a look for the character, but changes there likewise saw Milligram’s story go untold until now. National Anthem will follow Milligram and the original Killjoys in the decades before Danger Days‘ apocalypse, as they “operate in the Unseen where they bend reality to keep the real world’s status quo safe.” But when the Killjoys are locked out of the reality-bending confines of the Unseen and forced back into the humdrum banality of the real world, Mike begins to uncover a coverup that threatens to reveal the true string-pullers behind society.
Sure, maybe it’s not the My Chemical Romance content we all really wanted out of 2020. But given Way’s excellent track history in comics, from The Umbrella Academy to Doom Patrol, we can’t wait to see him return to the world of Danger Days again. National Anthem‘s first issue is currently expected to hit shelves this October.