Gerard Way Is Launching A New Imprint With DC Comics

US musician and former My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way has been given his own imprint at DC Comics, it has been revealed.

According to Comic Book Resources, Way was present at DC Entertainment's panel at Seattle's Emerald City Comicon, where it was announced that he would be spearheading the new imprint, called Young Animal, as well as writing the first title to be published on the label, a reboot of cult-favourite series Doom Patrol, to be illustrated by artist Nick Derington.

Fittingly, Way promises that his Doom Patrol book will be "really weird", taking expected cues from Grant Morrison's iconic run with the characters, a superhero team of misfits feared and respected for their awesome powers and freakish facades. Think the X-Men but a whole lot stranger (original writer Arnold Drake once even explicitly accused Stan Lee of ripping his mutant flag-bearers from the concept of the Doom Patrol).

Interestingly, this isn't actually Way's first brush with the graphic-fiction medium; he won an Eisner Award (that's a big deal for comics people) for his Dark Horse-published series The Umbrella Academy (2007-08), which is about to be turned into a TV series, as well as Dark Horse mini-series The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys, making his move to DC quite the buzz-worthy event.

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"We do realise that the marketplace is changing; we want to address that change, we want books that cater to emerging audiences, new readers, people who haven't picked up a superhero comic before and want something a little different," DC co-publisher Jim Lee told the panel.

"We really welcome Gerard coming back and becoming more involved with the world of comic books."

Young Animal already has a slew of books lined up for the calendar following Doom Patrol's re-emergence, with Cecil Castellucci and Marley Zarcone contributing to Shade, The Changing Girl, Way returning to the author's chair with fellow scribe Jon Rivera to pen Cave Carson Has A Cybernetic Eye, to be drawn by Michael Avon Oeming, and Jody Houser and Tommy Lee Edwards joining the party with the Gotham City-set Mother Panic.