USA TODAY International Edition
‘Umbrella’ unleashes storm of oddball comic-book TV
Netflix’s new series “The Umbrella Academy” takes a proudly strange and unusual comic book and gives it the TV treatment. And if you like that, there’s plenty more coming to a network or streaming service near you.
From oddball superhero tales to the story of a lone dude surrounded by a post-apocalypse full of women, here are some coming comic adaptations that are much different than your average “Avengers” film:
❚ “Deadly Class” (Syfy, Wednesdays, 10 EST/PST): Go back to the Reagan years – with a kid who’d like to take out the Gipper – for this 1980s-set coming-of-age series about a secret school that recruits and trains world-class assassins.
❚ “Doom Patrol” (DC Universe, Friday): Brendan Fraser, Matt Bomer and Timothy Dalton star in the “Titans” spinoff, which centers on a group of superheroes left scarred – physically or emotionally – by an accident that gave them extraordinary abilities.
❚ “The Boys” (Amazon, summer): Karl Urban and Elisabeth Shue lead this dark and twisted drama about a band of vigilantes whose mission is to monitor corrupt superpowered folks who are drunk on power and celebrity.
❚ “Pennyworth” (Epix, June): Batman’s faithful butler gets his own 1960s-set origin story with an alternate-history take on old London town starring Jack Bannon as young Alfred and Ben Aldridge as the future Dark Knight’s dad, Thomas Wayne.
❚ “Watchmen” (HBO, fall): The seminal and deconstructive superhero series from the 1980s gets an eagerly anticipated modern-day reimagining courtesy of executive producer Damon Lindelof (“Lost,” “The Leftovers”) that stars Regina King and Jeremy Irons.
❚ “Invincible” (Amazon, 2020): The animated series follows 17-yearold Mark Grayson (voiced by Steven Yeun) who develops superpowers while learning his do-gooder dad (J.K. Simmons) may not be all that heroic.
❚ “Y” (FX, 2020): The adaptation of “Y: The Last Man” focuses on a world that, following a cataclysmic event, leaves a lone man (Barry Keoghan) and his monkey to survive in a new allfemale landscape full of gender, class and race challenges.