Gerard Way on original concept for the 'Fabulous Killjoys' comics: "It was really different back then"

Gerard Way has revealed how the storyline shaping My Chemical Romance’s fourth album, ‘Danger Days: The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys’, eventually inspired the Killjoys comic stemming from the record.

In a lengthy new interview on the Cartoonist Kayfabe show, Way explained to hosts Jim Rugg and Ed Piskor that he was initially reluctant to tie in the comic with the MCR record, but the plot changed once he eventually linked the two.

“The comic [Killjoys] was really different back then,” said Way.

“The Killjoys project is an interesting thing, because it really evolved and grew into this other thing. It was the thing I was most obsessed with, creatively, so it bled into the music. And then it became a concept album and a comic. And I was hesitant to marry the two things because I felt like I had done such a good job of separating the two things.

“But this one was just so a part of my brain that I wanted to make this concept album that connected with the comic,” he continues. “But because of that, I had changed some things about it for the sake of being part of MCR, and I made things a little more dystopian, a little more like a colourful punk-rock post-Mad Max thing. There was an evil corporation, because a lot of the album Killjoys is like art vs. commerce so I wanted to show that: these free and colourful people vs. like the stark white, sterile kinda corporate society.”

He added: “So the story changed a lot and it really started out about a bunch of teenagers that could bend reality by tapping into their trauma. That’s how Killjoys really started, and that’s something that I think we’ll revisit one day.”

As well as ‘Danger Days…’, Way is the author of acclaimed comic book series The Umbrella Academy, which was adapted for Netflix in 2019. A second season has been subsequently confirmed.

Last month, MCR were forced to reschedule their upcoming UK and Ireland reunion shows for 2021 due to coronavirus.

The recently reunited band had been set to make their comeback on these shores in June, with gigs booked at the Eden Project in Cornwall and the Royal Hospital Kilmainham in Dublin to go alongside a trio of sold-out shows at Stadium MK in Milton Keynes.

Way has also been keeping fans entertained by sharing a series of unreleased demos.