Tuesday, April 23, 2019

Homeschooling the Teen Years - Books to Movies: The Umbrella Academy

I (along with 45 million other people) binge watched the Netflix original series, The Umbrella Academy, back in February, when it first came out...


… but I had no idea it was based on a graphic novel by Gerard Way (the former lead singer of "My Chemical Romance" - or so I'm told)…



… until A(age18)'s Film and Literature class voted to read and view them both for their final project this week (it could be my imagination, but I think college might be getting easier as time goes by).  Naturally, I had to download the graphic novel to "read" today (you can borrow for free with a 30 day, Comixology Unlimited trial through Amazon) .  It's about as strange, and intriguingly disturbing as the series.

Netflix did an excellent job fleshing out the story and keeping the quirky, 1960s, British television series tone.  I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have enjoyed the graphic novel nearly as much if I hadn't seen the series first, but them I'm not gigantic fan of the genre in general.

Both the Netflix series and the graphic novel are probably too dark and violent for my youngest two (ages 12 and 14), but as soon as my oldest makes it through his university finals, next week, we absolutely have to binge it together.  I'm pretty sure he's going to love it.  Though I have to say I was surprised at how much A is enjoying it (she has to wait until tomorrow to finish the series with her class, and it's been  a real act of discipline not to watch ahead).

In the meantime, I've got to check out whatever else we might be able to glean from the Comixology Unlimited menu.  I have to say browsing through their offerings today left me feeling like a stranger in a strange land, but I'm sure my teens will find a title or two they'd like to peruse before our trial period runs out.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

1 comment:

Ticia said...

Oh man, that would be a very tempting thing for me to get...

I'm with you on thoroughly enjoying the show, but figured out it would be way too dark for my kids. The boys are on the verge, and for the first few episodes I thought they could watch it, but then it got very dark.