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Killjoys: a Review (nothing to tell, everything to sell)

Hi!!! Given popular demand (once again lmao), I figured I should finally sit down and do a proper review of The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys🫩😋🤪.

For context: this was Gerard Way’s third published comic, and is particularly relevant to My Chemical Romance lore, since two of the band’s last music videos—Na Na Na and SING—take place within this universe.

I want to be clear from the start: I read these comics at least three times before writing this. Not because they’re dense or complex, but because I was deeply, genuinely confused. And no—that confusion is not a skill issue on my part, I swear!!!

This comic is hard to read because the story is poorly told.

Narrative Entry Point: Vibes Over Clarity

We’re introduced to the world through Dr. Death Defying’s radio show (yes, that’s Steve Righ from Mindless Self Indulgence 🤢), which acts as our main expositional device. Through him, we’re supposed to understand the current state of this universe.

Our protagonist—referred to only as the girl—tells us it’s been 12 years since “the four men” died fighting BLI. That’s… basically all the information we get.

She then says something genuinely interesting—something I would’ve normally ignored, but which became central to my critique:

“Today the guns don’t sound the same. The colors we buy now, the clothes, they’re the wrong size. Yet we still call ourselves the Killjoys.”

Please remember this. It matters🥴.

She later goes to a motel and meets a group of rebels. They talk about clothes. They discover she’s carrying the original Party Poison mask, and suddenly we’re told those Killjoys were legends (MCR).

Another character, Val Velocity, guilt-trips her by implying she’s responsible for their deaths.

Then: laser fight. Visually loud, narratively empty. We’re shown two sides—Draculoids vs. Killjoys—but we’re never told who these people actually are, what they want, or why they’re fighting.

And that’s a problem.

The book relies heavily on an already initiated audience so people who watched the music videos, read interviews, and listened to Gerard Way talk endlessly about how huge Grant Morrison’s dick is (lol sorry I had to) and lore.

In my opinion, that’s a fundamental storytelling failure. What if I don’t know MCR? What if I just want to read the comic?

The story feels incomplete, while simultaneously teasing information it never delivers. We’re constantly told the OG Killjoys mattered, but we’re never shown why🤷🏽‍♀️.

Red and Blue: How to be racist and sexist 101

Then the comic does a full 180 and introduces Red and Blue.

These characters are literally pornographic droids, explicitly called pornodroids, whose sole purpose is sexual exploitation. The text makes it clear they are sentient!! self-aware and pretty much emotionally complex.

Notably: there are no male pornodroids. Not in the story, not in the in-universe advertisements (which, to be fair, is a clever narrative device). But if you’re going to critique capitalism, overconsumption, the pharmaceutical industry, environmental destruction, and corporate homogenization, you actually have to take a stance🫩.

This book doesn’t. It flirts with critique, then immediately indulges in the spectacle. Surprised?? I warned y’all 😭😭😭

And this is where orientalism becomes unavoidable.

Red and Blue are Asian-coded bodies, hypersexualized, fetishized, and framed as disposable. This directly aligns with what Edward Said defines as orientalism:

the use of “Eastern” bodies as exotic, erotic, passive objects existing for Western consumption.

These characters are not individuals first: they are aesthetic concepts: Sexual availability is baked into their design. Their suffering is aestheticized. Their queerness is aestheticized. Their deaths are aestheticized. Everything about them is aestheticized🫩.

And this trope isn’t isolated, because it’s repeated again later with another Asian-coded female antagonist who remains nameless. Yeah lmao, It gets worse, not better.

And yes everybody: THIS IS RACIST AF 🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️ ahhh

And all official BLI material is written in Japanese. Why?

Not for worldbuilding. Not for narrative necessity.

For aesthetic fetishization. Bc you can find a translation right next to it, so what’s the purpose? 🤷🏽‍♀️

Japan is used as shorthand for “futuristic,” “corporate,” and “cool”? I guess?? But lemme be clear that is stripped of cultural specificity. Meanwhile, the Asian-coded women are hypersexualized and disposable, which is fetichistic, it’s plain exoticism y’all🫩, let’s not pretend it isn’t.

(Also this lowkey vital information is not in the actual comic, you had to check this online before reading the comic, otherwise you wouldn’t understand what BLI even is. And that’s a NARRATION FLAW. That’s bad writing!! Bc this isn’t extra lore. This is crucial information to understand the book!!) That page also included a merch section🫩

Better Living Industries, Inc.

Queerness as shock value

Red and Blue are in a relationship. One of them is dying because her battery is failing. There’s a brief moment where the comic almost critiques prostitution. Almost. (When Red says: our bodies will belong to each other, you can see the panel in image 3)

Then two pages later, Blue is prostituting herself again, with a man.

And also: they don’t organize. They don’t resist structurally. They don’t care about the thousands of other pornodroids still enslaved.

Their queerness exists as transgression and fetish/novelty for the reader. And that pisses me off.

I have mentioned it before and this is a recurring issue with Gerard’s writing (within MCR) or representation; because homosexuality is treated as an edgy hypersexual performance, not as something commonly human(? or even political.

He doesn’t sing about kissing a man he likes or loving them with dignity. He sings about getting fucked in the ass in prison and that’s very taboo, so he tops it with fan service, and ends up in the tabloids. And he does it bc (according to him!!!) he wants to piss people off 🤷🏽‍♀️.

And sure: at one time, using homosexuality as transgression did mean something. When visibility was radical on itself, (specially in the mainstream rock scene) but… let’s not forget this book came out in 2013. Those days were long past gone.

By then, queerness didn’t need to exist only as provocation. It could have been ordinary. It could have even been political!! in a structural sense (considering the droids we see are only women and their consumers seem to be only men??). There’s no reason to use gayness a narrative accessory (a way to complicate villains, hypersexualize characters, or idk, play woke cards?).

Korse (the fascist/ “cleanser of the desert”, “exterminator” / BLI higher cop / Grant Morrison) survives a fight that frankly makes no sense. But in the next issue, he’s revealed to have a boyfriend. Surprise! He’s gay!

I’m being sarcastic when I say this is framed as a big reveal. Why is this relevant? Oh because it’s used to humanize him.

We are expected to empathize with Korse because:

He says he’s tired of killing

He has a boyfriend

This is the “redeemable fascist” narrative (that he seems to loooove), and it’s gross. If you’ve seen the music videos, and read those Japanese articles🫩 and listen to his own words!!!: you know Korse is complicit in a fascist regime, he has killed thousand!!! Giving him a twink does not absolve him!!! Ahhh!!!

Meanwhile, Val Velocity—who represents rage, grief, after losing a friend (who btw is the first victim and, yes he’s a black character), and the desire to become a hero after all heroes are gone—is framed as dangerous or “morally corrupted” because he shoots a cop/draculoid.

Misogyny: the villain and “the girl”

Let’s talk about the villain. First of all she doesn’t have a name 🤪🥴🫩.

We are never properly introduced to her. She arrives already coded as evil: leather, dominatrix aesthetics, hypersexualized presentation, cruelty framed as personal pathology rather than ideological position.

She is not a political figure, not a corporate strategist, not a symbolic embodiment of BLI, she doesn’t have a purpose other than keeping BLI alive??? Nope. she is a fetishized evil woman.

That’s all she is. There’s no need to over explain, bc there’s nothing to say about her character.

And this matters because the only prominent women in this story fall into three categories:

1. Prostituted bodies (pornodroids),

2. A hypersexualized female villain,

3. “The girl.”

That’s it.

She kills Korse’s boyfriend not because of ideology or storyline logic?? but “because love has weakened him”.

This reduces her role to a jealous, punitive force, not a political agent.

She exists to be defeated, aged (yeah she turns old at the end?? That’s never explained btw!!), stripped of power and left alone to die and rot. So… in other words: she exists to be punished.

Compare her to Korse.

Why is he allowed interiority, doubt, redemption and humanity, but not her? Isn’t she supposed to be the main antagonist? Also according to Gerard if BLI weren’t necessarily the “bad guys”: why is she such a flat character that doesn’t even get a name or a backstory?

Now let’s talk about the girl— because the problem isn’t just that she’s the chosen one. It’s how she’s chosen.

She is the only girl in the group, surrounded exclusively by older men, unnamed!!! narratively passive until the plot needs her not to be.

This is textbook Smurfette Principle: a single female character inserted into a male ensemble, defined not by her relationships with other women (there are none), but by how she moves among men.

And yes: THIS IS MISOGYNISTIC 🫩.

She doesn’t get a name: which is framed as symbolic, but in practice just makes her less human. She is a vessel. The boys have names, histories, costumes, quirks. She only has destiny.

So I have to ask the natural questions:

why is she the only girl?

Why there are no characters with her age?

Why is her community exclusively older—if not adult— men?

Because this is not about representation even when Gerard so desperately wants you to believe that, nananana girl lock tf in bc this is a tale as oooold as time, it’s a fantasy: the exceptional girl who is “cool enough” to run with the boys. And idk about y’all, but for me the “precocious little girl who can hang with robots and men” trope always feels off. And sexist 🫩.

This trope repeats almost every time Gerard creates a female protagonist, imo (Penny Parker, Paradise Gardens, Casey in Doom Patrol and I’m pretty sure it happens in TUA), and it always carries the same implication: femininity/womanhood is isolating!! and irrelevant!!! and the only way to matter is to be singular, desexualized-but-special, and chosen, chosen by a bunch of guys.

And crucially: her rejection of violence at the end doesn’t come from political consciousness, PLOT or character development😭😭. It comes from being special enough to transcend the conflict.

Which is a messianic take on the character!!

(And it’s funny bc Val Velocity mentions this!!!)

Identity: how to buy your inner-self

I’ve said it before, and that’s why it was important to remember that quote from the beginning, because this comic is obsessed with looks. Hair. Makeup. Clothes. Weight. Bodies.

There’s literally a character sheet that lists the girl’s weight😐, and reassures us she’s white—Because if y’all thought that was a poc child? Oh no no no no, she’s CANONICALLY FAIR SKINNED AND HAS AUBURN STRAIGHT HAIR NOW. Lmao😭😭😭 fucking unnecessary😂😂 bc I remember back in the days we used to headcanon her as black or Latin, but whatever. That was a moment to add inclusivity, my guy!! But nope, even when she looks like she could be a poc: we’re reminded she’s not, lmao.

Also the cat being the spy 🥴🥴 ehh 🤨 bro, Scabbers much? Yeah, that’s the big reveal in Harry Potter 3 😂🥴. You’re not gagging anyone, sir 😭😩. And trust me: I WANNA BE GAGGED. I wanna be SURPRISED FOR GOOD. But this is just so disappointing for so many different reasons.

Anyways, back to the story AND THIS IS IMPORTANT BC that’s what ultimately breaks this story forme and it’s its understanding of identity.

In Killjoys, clothing is treated as the primary language of individuality: hair, makeup, color, silhouettes, all that? That’s WHO YOU ARE. Not just an extra, noooo, the way you dress? That’s your whole identity, babes🤨.

And I’ve noticed this logic echoes again and again in Gerard Way’s fandom: the idea that who you are is somewhat inseparable from what you wear. That selfhood is legible through fashion choices. That if you change your look, you’ve changed yourself.

Maybe this hits harder for me because I grew up very aware of what authoritarian regimes actually look like. And that’s why I call bullshit, lmao 🥴.

idk if this is gonna be news to some but dictatorships don’t just regulate clothes— they regulate speech, movement, memory, family, labor, fear.

So the idea that identity could be reduced to color palettes or outfits feels not only shallow, but insulting. If someone tried to define me by my clothes, I’d punch them in the face. Genuinely.

And beyond being politically flimsy, it’s also cruel.

Bc appearance is not permanent: Bodies change. People age. Illness happens. Poverty happens. Violence happens. Transphobic laws happen.

To suggest that identity lives primarily in how you look is to build selfhood on something fragile and disposable.

It turns identity into something you can lose😔— something that can be taken or priced out of reach. And that’s a horrible message to send.

Which brings me back to BLI.

The story implies that BLI strips people of color, fashion, and style as a form of control— but it never explains why.

What does BLI gain from desaturation? From homogenized clothing? From aesthetic repression? How is it related to energy? (That’s seems to be the currency or their main ambition).

The comic doesn’t answer this, because it doesn’t want to interrogate power— it wants the visuals. Sounds familiar? *cough* LLTBP *cough*.

A more meaningful, genuinely anti-capitalist message would have been this:

institutions can strip you of your “colors,” yes— your culture, your language, your creativity— but that identity doesn’t die there.

It lives in memory, ethics, relationships, resistance, and collective action. It persists even when the aesthetics are gone.

That would have been humanist. That would have been political.

Yes, free Palestine 🇵🇸 free Congo 🇨🇩 free Sudan 🇸🇩 🗣️and free everybody who is a victim of these regimes and politics🗣️protect the dolls, protect the people who are protesting🗣️.

Instead, we get slogans like “follow the path, you’ll find the way”— empty mysticism that replaces structural critique with ✨vibes✨. A message that’s easy to merch. And this worldbuilding is cemented in merch.

Bc it turns out that this is what the story was actually about: finding your path even when you feel lost. Self discovery. Ehh 🤨??? huh🤔 what 😮.

The fact that this framework comes from a 30-year-old man makes it even harder to ignore. At some point, reducing identity to fashion, empathizing with fascists and including two pedophiles in a music video that has a little girl as a protagonist? stops being youthful rebellion and starts feeling like arrested development, a refusal to engage with what power actually does to people.

And I, for real was expecting some heartfelt life lesson, since he lowkey talks about that in the promo interviews.

I wanna let y’all with my message: real resistance isn’t cute. Identity doesn’t disappear when the clothes do and just like Harry Potter—and I’m gonna quote Ursula Le Guin— this comic was stylistically ordinary (and confusing), imaginatively derivative, and ethically rather mean-spirited.

Bad writing meets questionable ideals and beautiful aesthetics

Not long ago, this fragment of an old interview started circulating again. A lot of people reacted with a collective ehh… yikes 😬, because there is simply no universe in which those two forces operate on the same moral level.

The immediate defense was predictable: that was a long time ago, the comic wasn’t finished yet, things evolved, BLI are obviously the bad guys now. But after re-reading the comic carefully, I don’t think that idea evolved at all. If he was making that on the go, he for sure kept it🤷🏽‍♀️.

Gerard has also said that the Killjoys aren’t rebels — they’re survivalists. And honestly? He’s right.

but!!! That has far more to do with Gerard’s stated intentions and personal opinions than with what the story actually develops on the page.

Within the narrative itself, the Killjoys consistently label themselves as rebels and are presented through the aesthetics/symbolism of rebellion. The text wants us to read them that way. The problem is that they’re not… Bc they’re not organizing, unionizing, they are not building networks, they’re not trying to dismantle BLI structurally. They kill a few draculoids, they glamorize violence, then go play video games, body-shame each other, argue about clothes, and drift from set piece to set piece.

In that sense, Gerard is technically right— they function as survivalists. But that truth only becomes visible when the reader does the analytical work the narrative itself refuses to do.

if the Killjoys were always meant to be survivalists, then the story fails to dramatize that distinction. And if they were meant to be rebels, then the story fails to show rebellion. Either way, the result is the same: a disconnect between authorial intent and textual execution, where meaning has to be retroactively explained in interviews instead of being earned through character development.

I wanna add that punk is framed here as a collection of angry, hedonistic people who celebrate violence for catharsis or pleasure. When historically, music (and punk as a subculture) has been one of the most powerful tools of protest, community-building, and political articulation. Gerard knows this.

And yet here, punk is used to promote and Easter Egg the Mad Gear and Missile Kid EP.

Almost every element of this world is tied back to consumption, and that it’s not a critique on Gerard’s behalf, nope, that’s the structural foundation of the comic. The substance.

The clothes, the masks, the guns, the animal heads, the music itself. The worldbuilding feels like it was designed merchandise-first.

Anyways, back to that original moral framing;

BLI aren’t evil, the Killjoys aren’t good.

First of all: I don’t buy it. And more importantly, the text doesn’t support it.

BLI are a fascistic corporate regime that drugs the population, enforces aesthetic conformity, commodifies bodies, and exploits sentient beings under a sex economy. The Killjoys are sloppy, unserious, and ethically inconsistent — but the idea that these two forces exist on equal moral footing is absurd.

The problem is that the story wants moral ambiguity without doing the political work required to earn it. So instead, we get empathy extended toward obvious bad actors, while structural violence is aestheticized or waved away.

Bc the writers take a remarkable amount of time trying to convince us that Korse is “not actually a bad guy”, simply bc he doesn’t want to kill anymore, he has a twink boyfriend by his side, he spares a pornodroid from death.

We’re meant to read these moments as proof of humanity, as moral depth. Then, to really hammer it in, he’s positioned as a victim: about to be brainwashed by the hypersexualized dominatrix antagonist, whose motivation is apparently that she wants him to stop loving and go back to killing 🤧😈. Because she’s actually evil !!! 😈

The narrative retroactively softens the violence of the regime by revealing that draculoids were once human— their souls removed, their agency stripped. They’re not really responsible: they were forced to kill, to drug people, and, apparently, to participate in the sexual economy of Battery City as well.

There’s also a higher-ranking police force called the scarecrows, and those are the “real” bad guys. Why? Because they still have “agency” aka they’re not brainwashed.

But wait— so does Korse.

The difference is that Korse gets interiority. Korse gets a boyfriend, bc he’s suddenly complex?? and we’re meant to feel sorry for him??

I think it reveals something uncomfortable about how morality works in this universe: redemption is not tied to accountability, or to the harm caused, or to dismantling the system you upheld. It’s tied to relatability. To whether the audience can see themselves in you.

And once you notice it, it starts to feel like a pattern rather than a one-off choice. I don’t even want to bring up Long Live the Black Parade here, but if you’ve read my review, the resemblance in storytelling is impossible to ignore: the same tendency to appropriate real historical violence, real systems of oppression— only to ultimately say nothing meaningful about them.

Which is why none of this feels accidental. It feels like a foretelling of how Gerard conceptualizes the world: systems aren’t the problem, individuals are; violence is tragic but abstract; fascism is bad… except when the soldiers are sad or in love.

The death of MCR: DANGER DAYS, Conventional Weapons and the future.

I’m going to get a little speculative here, and this is entirely my personal opinion, but I think I finally understand why this record inevitably killed the band.

Back then, people used to say that all the time, and I agreed for all the wrong reasons. I was twelve. I believed this record killed the band because it was colorful, because it didn’t look like what My Chemical Romance had done before, because it felt “too different.”

Almost fifteen years later, I still think this record assassinated the band: but for the opposite reason.

It didn’t break away from anything. It trapped them inside yet another Gerard-curated world.

There’s a fundamental contradiction at the heart of Danger Days: on one hand, it’s supposedly fighting against the way the world tries to label My Chemical Romance, against being boxed in/categorized. On the other, it forces everyone involved (band and audience alike) to wear costumes, adopt personas, and participate in a tightly controlled narrative universe.

And to be clear: Gerard performing in character isn’t the problem. That’s always been part of his artistry, and there’s nothing wrong with needing a persona to perform. But when that persona becomes the entire project, something gets lost.

You can actually see this tension play out in that long 40-minute interview about the Killjoys. Gerard is deeply invested in the lore— explaining it, defending it, expanding it. Meanwhile, whenever Frank or Ray chime in, you can feel the distance. They ride with Gerard, they trust the vision, they like the project, yes, but they don’t treat the worldbuilding as sacred. They keep reminding us this is theme-based, not a rigid concept.

And every time they loosen the grip, Gerard tightens it again.

That’s when it becomes clear: this isn’t really a My Chemical Romance record. It’s a Killjoys soundtrack.

Just like The Black Parade is slowly becoming the soundtrack to DRAAG.

Every song there is tethered— either to the comic, to Gerard’s personal life, and therefore: a strong link to MSI🤢. Not necessarily bc of Summertime, but due to Gerard including Jimmy in the video and Steve Righ as an important character: “Doctor Death Defying.”

I think Conventional Weapons is such an interesting counterpoint— even when I don’t like all of the songs— bc it allegedly didn’t have this strict overarching storyline. And you can feel that freedom immediately. That’s how we got songs like Boy Division— which feels like a more mature, sharpened evolution of something that could’ve existed on Bullets.

The World Is Ugly could’ve fit seamlessly into The Black Parade. The Light Behind Your Eyes works beautifully as a bridge between Three Cheers and TBP.

And I know that Frank and Ray have expressed disdain towards albums that feel “kinda lost” and experimental like Bullets, but I think bullets wasn’t lost in direction or concept: it was their all or nothing moment, and yes: it had experimentation in the sound but bc it was their first big recording. They were literally testing out guitars, pedals, vocals, drums. They didn’t have the freedom that comes with financial stability, a big ass studio, an experienced producer and budget to buy expensive equipment.

Still, Danger Days, by contrast, is something entirely new— and that’s not a bad thing. Not at all. I like Danger Days. But it’s also incredibly limited.

There are barely any full songs. The intro isn’t a song. There are two interludes. And I say this as someone who loves a high-concept album: I genuinely think I loved this record more before I ever read the comics, lmao 😂.

I think the album is too good for that comic.

Given the talent of everyone in MCR, the way they perform these songs gives us far richer emotional textures and more interesting interpretations than anything found on the page.

Which is why I find The Foundations of Decay so exciting. It feels like old MCR— not in the sense that everything needs to sound like Bullets, but in the sense that the band once again sounds like it has something to say. Together.

It’s MCR with a bigger budget, yes— but also with fewer constraints. Less lore. Less costume. More meaning, and yes: experimentation and FUN.

And that, to me, was always the heart of the band.

If you made it so far: THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING😂😂 Hopefully y’all liked this review (it was a bit all over the place at one point), remember to please keep the comment section respectful and you can absolutely share your opinions on the comic or the music!

Have a great day!! ✨✨🫶🏽🫶🏽

#my chemical romance #gerard way #shaun simon #the true lives of the fabulous killjoys #killjoys #frank iero #ray toro #mikey way #comic review #review #media criticism #grant morrison #mindless self indulgence #mcr #danger days #tw racism #misoginy #orientalism