The Umbrella Academy comics are so much weirder than the show

polygon.com:

The world of Netflix’s Umbrella Academy is weird. But it could be much, much weirder. The three-season superhero drama is loosely adapted from Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá’s ongoing comic book series of the same name, which is even more maximalist and idiosyncratic than the show.

In the show, sure, there’s still a villainous talking fish and cartoon-masked assassins, but in many ways their world(s) are quite similar to our own. The world of the comics, however, is something else entirely. It’s a world where you can watch a human wrestle a space squid, ranchers ride supersized roosters like horses, teleportation devices are a common form of transportation, and you can buy soda from a vending machine that allows you to speak and understand other languages.

While trying to do a faithful adaptation of the comics would be as disastrous as the Umbrellas trying to save the world, I can’t help but wonder sometimes what it would be like if the show embraced some of the comics’ weirder plots and world-building. Because they get well and truly weird — here’s just a taste:

[Ed. note: The following contains spoilers from the first three volumes of Umbrella Academycomics but doesn’t include any spoilers for The Umbrella Academy season 3. Though Number Seven is named Viktor in the Netflix series, the comics character is named Vanya and referred to as such. ]

The villains in the Umbrella Academy comics are a trip. They may even be my favorite part of the entire series, and this is a perfect example of why.

In Apocalypse Suite, the siblings have their first-ever villain showdown when they travel to Paris after the Eiffel Tower starts throwing visitors off the top. After the young superheroes break into the tower, they discover it’s being