You Keep Eternity: What The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys means to me

Today, I want to talk about the Killjoys.

I’m sure some of you are rolling your eyes, expecting this to be another blog post about My Chemical Romance breaking up.

No, it’s not just that. The Killjoys were never just My Chemical Romance to me. They were so much more than that.

When Danger Days was announced in 2010, I had fallen out with pop punk a bit. I still listened to my old standbys, but I was so bored with it. I hadn’t even listened to My Chemical Romance in ages at that point. Not out of not being a fan anymore. The darkness of their previous records just wasn’t appealing to me at the time.

And then, Art is the Weapon came out.

This was unlike anything I had seen from MCR before. It was bright and colorful. It was a punk rock apocalypse inspired by cheesy 80s movies and cartoons. It was a future where the primary weapon was a modified NES light gun.

It was also the quickest I’ve ever started planning for a Dragon*Con costume.

For a year, Envy Green was my baby. It was more than a costume to me. It was creating a character in a universe where creativity was the ultimate form of rebellion. It was the reason I started learning how to sew. It resulted in hot glue burns, needle stabs, and a constant feeling that it wasn’t really done until the night before the convention.

Y’know… like an actual costumer.

I poured my soul into creating Envy. If the costume hadn’t been so freaking hot, I would have slipped into her more, but Georgia humidity doesn’t lend itself to creative costumes with lots of heaviness. Still, it kills me that the jacket has been MIA for about a year. I have an idea of where it is, but that’s truly where her soul resides.

But for nearly three years, the story wasn’t complete. We had Danger Days, there was the Mad Gear and the Missile Kid EP, and there were the videos. But the knowledge of the comic of a similar name had been around since summer of 2009. Meaning that it was all a part of a greater universe. So the fandom waited… and waited… and waited…

Finally, at New York Comic Con 2012, Gerard gave us the information that we were waiting for. That four years after the initial announcement and nearly three after Danger Days had released, The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys comic was coming out. The idea had changed since its original inception, with the story becoming more about The Girl than anything else.

Then, five months later, MCR announced their break up.

Suddenly, that comic wasn’t just closure for Danger Days. It was going to be closure for fans as well.

And really, it has been that so far.

Only two issues have been released at the time of this blog, but the theme of the two issues has definitely been learning to live without. The Girl from the videos is 18 years old now. She’s been living and running by herself in the desert after her protectors died trying to save her. Now she’s learning how to adapt now that she’s been thrown back into the world that she ran from.

It’s very much Way’s letter to his daughter Bandit. A lot of Danger Days was. There are so many themes of survival and fighting back between the two that it does feel like he’s telling her that she’s strong enough to live without him.

And to some extent, it seems like that’s what he’s telling the fans too. A lot of MCR fans are young women. I was either 14 or 15 when I heard ‘I’m Not Okay’ for the first time. Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge was one of the soundtracks of my early teenage angst along with a bunch of Green Day albums and Bleed Like Me by Garbage. I later switched them out for Letters by Butch Walker, but it doesn’t mean that they stopped being important to me. I was sad when MCR broke up. I was sad for my friends who were devastated by it.

But The Girl’s story is a story that could be ours as well. Way has stated that before. She’s special, she’s smart, and she’s stronger than she knows. It’s a great message for the fans who cite MCR as life savers, but also for girls in general. Young women are rarely allowed comic book heroes written for them. The only other one I can think of that is currently running is Princeless by Jeremy Whitley (which is an amazing series and Jeremy and his wife Alicia are super nice). (Also, if there are more comics that are female centric that actually feel female centric, feel free to let me know.) While the Girl is currently nameless, there’s a story building there that looks like it could be an amazing story of a girl finding her own strength.

It’s also worth mentioning the character of Blue. Blue’s a porno droid, which is Battery City’s fancy phrase for “robot prostitute.” Much of the time, sex worker characters are shunted to the side for jokes or cautionary tales, but Blue is given a lot of sympathy. She’s working twice as hard to try and help her fellow droid (sister? lover? bff?) Red and even went through of ton of bureaucracy to do so. And it looks like as of issue #3, she’s going to be fighting back as well.

I’m cosplaying Blue at Dragon Con this year. While it has been nowhere near as much work as Envy, this is the most excited I’ve been about a costume since Envy. I guess that’s appropriate to how the Killjoys initially made me feel. It was about art, creativity, and radical self-expression. Where I am in my life now makes me feel empowered to dress as her and I look forward to doing so, whether anyone else is or not. I’m powerful, and no one else will be allowed to tell me otherwise as soon as I put on those boots and slide my new ray gun into my stocking.

I mean, wasn’t that what being a Killjoy was all about?

When all six issues are out in November, I’m going to have a more coherent review of the story. I just wanted my readers to better understand my connection to the world of the Killjoys.

Why I nearly cried when I received the FCBD story “Dead Satellites” though? Well, maybe that’s a story worth keeping a secret from the internet at large for the time being. Maybe some other time, Dust Angels…

 

Famous Last Words: Reflecting on the life of My Chemical Romance

Two weeks in and I’m already messing up my own schedule. I’m going forward with the MCR post though. Which begins now:

Much to the embarrassment to some of my friends in this dimension, I’m still a fan of many pop punk bands that initially came to popularity in the mid-2000s. Not all, but bands like Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco, Cobra Starship, and The Hush Sound are among my favorite bands in the world. And it makes me happy that two of those bands have gotten back together and are making music again.

However, that’s not the case for one of the bigger bands from that era.

On March 22, My Chemical Romance announced that they had officially called it quits after 12 years of being a band.

My initially reaction was very chill. With some of the drama the band had right at the very end, it wasn’t that surprising that they called it quits (even though it was all unrelated to the band breaking up). But as it really sunk in that the band was done, I got surprisingly emotional. I had become less connected with the band over the years (I still haven’t heard Conventional Weapons), but it doesn’t mean that they stopped meaning anything to me. My second ever rock concert was them. I still have and occasionally wear the gorgeous shirt designed by Heather Gabel from that tour. One of my few attempts at visual art was trying to draw up a t-shirt design for a contest they had with Fuse way back in the day. I attempted to write a very terrible stage version of The Black Parade many, many years ago. One of my earliest memories of Hellblinki was seeing them back up Voltaire on a cover of ‘Blood’. I spent countless hours working on a Killjoy costume and forming Zone 42 at Dragon*Con. Hell, one of my greatest regrets involves not saying hello to Gerard Way at Dragon*Con even though he was 10 feet in front of me because I didn’t think it was him!

This band drove so much love and creativity in me, and now they’re gone and I never really got to say goodbye.

Except as Gerard said in a very, very long tweet two days after the announcement, they’re never really gone. Because you can’t kill an idea.

This really sunk in when I had listen thrus of Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, The Black Parade, and Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys. The band was often labeled as emo because of the way their lyrics focused on death, but I don’t think people realized that Gerard came from a comic book artist background. (If you don’t believe me, just listen to him scream a quote by Death herself from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman at the beginning of ‘It’s Not A Fashion Statement, It’s A Deathwish.’) A lot of My Chemical Romance’s songs told stories about lives that existed outside of this plane. They were about a man with cancer being lead through a journey of his life and the afterlife. They were about a man trying to reunite with his lover by killing 1,000 evil men. They were about rebels in the desert trying to survive the apocalypse. They weren’t just about death and wanting to be dead.

And because these songs about death were told in a story, there were songs about being alive and living without someone you lost. Songs like ‘Cemetery Drive’ and ‘Famous Last Words’ are big examples, but they’re all over Danger Days. ‘Sing’ is about not being silenced by fear. ‘Save Yourself, I’ll Hold Them Back’ is about being ready to fight on without someone. And ‘The Kids From Yesterday’… well, I’ll let that one speak for itself.

I have seen so many fans of musicians claim that the musician and their work saved their lives, but not as many as with My Chemical Romance. So many MCR fans were inspired to keep on living by the band and their work. Right now, it seems like hard times, but the band gave us all the tools we needed to survive and live on without them. And as long as fans keep living on and creating in their name, My Chemical Romance can never really die. As Frank Iero said when Danger Days came out:

Fear is the eternal enemy. If they can keep you scared, they can keep you controlled. We too came face to face with this saboteur, and found the strength to break through and carry on. We are here as a reminder that the world is not better off without you…these are dangerous days we live in and you, the artists, are our last defense.

Art is the Weapon.

Your Imagination is the Ammunition.
Stay Dirty, and Stay Dangerous.
Create and Destroy as you see fit.
Embrace your Originality.
The Aftermath is Secondary.
You can and should do Anything.

In conclusion friends, if you take anything away from this record, please let it be the strength to be passionate.

Love what you do and who you truly are. Be willing to die for it. If you are true to yourself, you can never go wrong. And remember when life gives you lemons, MCR says start a fucking band.

You’re never truly alone, Killjoys. Don’t be afraid to keep on living.

Plus, the Killjoys comic is FINALLY coming out this summer. Talk about never being able to kill an idea. I guess it’s true what Dr. Death Defying says. “Even if you’re dusted, you may be gone. But out here in the desert, your shadow lives on without you.”