In Review: Hazel and Cha Cha Save Christmas: Tales from the Umbrella Academy

Synopsis: Hazel and Cha Cha—the bizarre assassins who first appear in Umbrella Academy: Dallas and blew audiences away in the Netflix series—track down a rogue time agent and cross paths with a plot to discredit Christmas! The first Umbrella Academy spinoff!

Review: Some Christmas fun from The Umbrella Academy.

The Story

This one-off issue begins with Hazel and Cha Cha along with a bunch of other agents getting new orders from their bosses. Among these new orders is a ban on the use of weapons of mass destruction as well as various procedural things, which our two favorite agents will likely ignore anyhow.

The story seems to focus mainly on some fun banter between Hazel and Cha Cha in which Hazel is convinced that various hauntings were the real deal, while Cha Cha is less of a believer. This conversation is ongoing while the two are tracking a rogue time agent.

While Hazel and Cha Cha’s story is moving along. We also get a side story involving a kid and his stepdad. The stepdad who was once an unpopular kid in school is working to spill the truth about the existence of Santa Claus in that he is about to spill the beans on a conspiracy and a deal that Santa made with parents a very long time ago.  Will Christmas ever be the same again?

The Artwork

Tommy Lee Edwards, who happens to be one of my favorite comic book artists provides the art for this book and I can’t really fault it. The book is kind of light on the action because most of it is dialogue-driven. But the various set pieces that happen within the pages are really well-drawn and I particularly loved the panels concerning Pete and Santa, who actually looked like the real deal. I also liked the sequence where Pete was playing on the arcade machine and Joey was trying to get more quarters so he could play on something too.

Overall

Scott Allie and Gerard Way have come up with a fun little Christmas story, which makes clever use of the two popular assassins from The Umbrella Academy comic book. The ongoing conversation between Cha Cha and Hazel about ghosts was a lot of fun as was the side story involving Pete and Joey and the plot to reveal Santa’s true plans to the world.