The Way Brothers are busy. Along with Gerard Way’s Young Animal revival of Doom Patrol, Mikey Way’s comic Collapser is coming next month. In a recent interview with Behind The Panel, Mikey discussed his connection with the main character Liam, a DJ with a black hole inside of his chest.
“It’s a twenty-something-year-old kid named Liam James and he’s stuck between real-world responsibility and his dreams and aspirations of becoming a world-renowned DJ,” explained Mikey. “He kinda wakes up one day and his mom leaves him something in her will. He finds out a lot about his mom through the course of a couple of issues, but yeah, he gets otherworldly powers. He opens up his city to become a warscape for an intergalactic arms race that centers around him.”
He also discussed the mental health themes that float around the comic: “I’ve dealt with mental health things my whole life and I felt like I had to put it in the story. I wanted to put a piece of myself in. I know Shaun battles with certain kinds of anxiety as well. It was important to show that in a comic book story.”
In comparison to music, the brothers find comic writing a more difficult process than songwriting. Whereas making music comes more naturally, sitting down to write notoriously comes with hardships such as writer’s block. “Writing is one of the hardest jobs; I’m sure any writer will tell you this,” said Gerard.
You can listen to the interview below.