Netflix Deserves Kudos For Successfully Adapting The 2000s' Most Unfilmable Comic Book

Published Oct 26, 2026, 8:00 PM EDT Craig began contributing to Screen Rant in 2016 and has been ranting ever since, mostly to himself in a darkened room. After previously writing for various outlets, Craig's focus turned to TV and film, where a steady upbringing of science fiction and comic books finally became useful. Craig has previously been published by sites such as Den of Geek. Craig is an approved critic on Rotten Tomatoes. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craig-elvy-5b31a3381/ To broadly paraphrase Harrison Ford, "You can draw this stuff in a comic, but you sure can't film it in live-action." The ink-to-paper medium is, and has always been, an outlet for pure imagination, allowing artists and authors to realize their most outlandish visions of science fiction and fantasy free from practical limitations. Naturally, that means translating some of the more out-there comic books into live-action TV shows or movies is like trying to eat soup with a fork. Alan Moore's Watchmen was considered one such comic for a long time, and depending on who you ask, Zack Snyder's 2009 movie might've proved such concerns valid. Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples' Saga is another of these 'unfilmables' from the comic realm, with its characters and world wholly unsuited for a live-action environment. Whenever one of these awkward comic books does get turned into a live-action production, and then enjoys any degree of success, everyone involved deserves huge credit. That's definitely the case for Netflix with The Umbrella Academy. Originally a 2000s comic book written by Gerard Way and drawn by Gabriel Bá, a live-action TV series eventually came to fruition in 2019, running for four seasons on Netflix thanks to widespread acclaim from critics and fans, and an approach that successfully captured the spirit of the comics. And that's even more impressive when you consider that The Umbrella Academy had absolutely no right to thrive in a live-action medium. The Umbrella Academy Should've Been A Disaster In Live-Action Two words. Chimpanzee. Butler. Somewhere between Gerard Way's spooky surrealism, and Gabriel Bá making Tim Burton look conventional, it appeared that the quirks and weirdness that made The Umbrella Academy such a unique comic book would inevitably become diluted in live-action. This wasn't just Bruce Banner transforming into the Hulk or Doc Ock's steel arms, this was an astronaut with an ape's body and Lovecraftian monsters from another dimension inside a boy's stomach. And don't forget the aliens. The entire chaotic world of The Umbrella Academy refused to make sense. The Eiffel Tower is a rocket. Abraham Lincoln's statue is alive. That goldfish is super-intelligent, and these assassins wear cartoon animal masks. Sure, The Umbrella Academy was a superhero story, but it was a superhero story that landed somewhere between zany Saturday morning cartoons and industrial German expressionism. And Amazon thought adapting The Boys would be tough. This was an ostensibly childish-looking comic dealing with very mature and grown-up themes. A dreamlike world filled with tiny nightmares. Looking back, it's difficult to see exactly which parts of The Umbrella Academy Netflix thought would make for a good live-action series. Perhaps they were hoping Gerard Way's name would market the show regardless, or maybe they envisioned a path that added more realism without unraveling The Umbrella Academy's DNA. How The Umbrella Academy Successfully Adapted Its Wild Source Material There was never any doubt that Netflix, alongside Steve Blackman as The Umbrella Academy's showrunner, would need a way to make the comic book story more grounded. The real question was how far that process could be taken without turning The Umbrella Academy into the Dark Mascara Avengers, and this is where Netflix's version got a little bit clever. Some of the offbeat comic-isms were cut completely, such as the aforementioned Abraham Lincoln boss battle and the Martian monkeys. Others were adapted almost verbatim, with Carmichael the Goldfish and Ben's tentacles remaining more or less unchanged on the trip from page to screen. Pogo was safe too, mercifully, otherwise the series really would've been in trouble. For other oddities, Netflix's The Umbrella Academy landed somewhere in the middle, offering slightly more realistic versions of whatever the comic did. Luther's body, for example, had gorilla-like features rather than the literal appearance of a primate's torso. Number Five returned from his time traveling younger, but not 10-years-old, as in the comics. And while The Umbrella Academy season 2 featured the Kennedy assassination as a plot point, it veered away from Allison being in the car when it happened. The Umbrella Academy's uncanny ability to decide which parts of the comic were non-negotiable, which could be retooled, and which were expendable was ultimately how Netflix managed to deliver a series that still felt like it was taking place in Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá's world, but also felt like it could be taking place in our world. The Umbrella Academy's Weakest Season Is No Surprise The first three seasons of The Umbrella Academy had their foundations in each of the three comic volumes: "Apocalypse Suite," Dallas," and "Hotel Oblivion." It was Netflix's fourth and final season that first struck out alone without any real basis in the original story, and it comes as no surprise that season 4 is by far The Umbrella Academy's weakest. It should be said that The Umbrella Academy season 4 faced numerous issues, in particular a reduced episode count, which left nowhere near enough time to wrap everything up in satisfying fashion. Still, the lack of source material didn't help either. If one of the show's strengths had been its ability to cherry-pick which comic parts to keep, which comic parts to change, and which comic parts to drop, then not having any comic parts to start with certainly proved problematic. Without a North Star to guide it, The Umbrella Academy season 4 made several highly questionable creative choices, such as Number Five's romance with Lila, and ending the show with the Hargreeves siblings all dead. It was the old Game of Thrones problem. Adaptations don't always need to be like-for-like retellings, but it's easier to have source material and alter it than to have no source material at all. Even if The Umbrella Academy had as much success going solo as Posh Spice, that does nothing to dampen the effectiveness of the adaptation itself, nor how brilliantly Netflix turned a seemingly unfilmable comic book into one of the most memorable streaming shows of the late 2010s. Its reputation may have taken a dent at the very end, but the glut of adaptations coming to a streaming platform near you could do worse than look toward The Umbrella Academy as a blueprint for how to make the wacky and wonderful work in live-action. Release Date 2019 - 2024-00-00 Showrunner Steve Blackman Directors Jeremy Webb Writers Steve Blackman Franchise(s) The Umbrella Academy