COMIC BINGE: Runaways
Welcome back to another Comic Binge, where this week we’ll get back to what we’re all about here… comic books! So I’ve been working my way through my to-read list from the top down, and this week I’m tackling Brian K. Vaughan’s Runaways series for Marvel. I’ve of course chronicled my love for his current work, but I haven’t journeyed back this far nor did I really think that this book was something I would want to read. I’d go through books at the store and at the library and see volumes of this there. I also always saw great reviews for it online and I would continue to neglect the title for fear of yet another teenage superhero romp. Little did I know that this would be one of my favorite Marvel series to read, and probably one of the best runs I’ve read in the original volumes of Runaways. After the first 18 issues, the series was sort of kind of rebooted and retooled a bit to change the landscape of the story and the tone as well. It wasn’t an unwelcome change but at the same time it took a little bit of the power out of the book and I lost some of my investment into the characters. Still though, this book is one of the better that I’ve read in awhile and I’m glad that I’m finally giving it a try.
The first 18 issues start with a group of kids who each get their page to show their disdain for their parents. All in different ways, these parents can be seen as obviously irritating to their offspring. Soon in the first issue, our high school age teenagers and one jr. high school kid become involved in a scandal they won’t soon forget. Every year they’re brought together by their parents to hang out while their parents go into a study and discuss more important matters. The kids figure out that they can spy on their parents, but they then see them kill a young woman in the study when one of them screams. This turns their parents, know known to be The Pride, against their children as they become Runaways. I felt that this first half was much darker, and had a little more of a thriller type of tone. Because the main characters are normal kids who then realize they are bound for much larger things, the revelation of their evil parents and their subsequent running away is just that much more impacting. I also thought it was much more enjoyable to watch the Runaways go up against The Pride, but now in the second half they’ve introduced an entirely new facet to the story.
So far, I’ve read the next 18 issues of the Runaways series after the reset, and I’m still really enjoying the series. The second half has a much lighter appearance to it, as if the first time around was just a bit too much for readers involving younger kids. Though I would argue, there are some characters in these newer issues I’ve read that are actually pretty creepy too on their own. One of the main characters is now dead, and another has left Earth, so the Runaways have a different makeup. The team isn’t really any worse, it’s just kind of sucks that it wasn’t the same as before because it was going well. But what this next set of volumes does really well is incorporate the rest of the Marvel universe. The original go at the Runaways provided little laughter and basically an original universe that didn’t seem to really work outside of itself, if you know what I mean. Now in this second attempt, we have the Runaways hooking up with some of Marvel’s classic characters like Captain America and Spider-Man. What I like about these volumes is that they do put these characters into fantastic stories, even though it’s not quite like the original 18 issue run, it’s still very fun. I can’t wait to read the rest of this series, as so far it has proven to be a 5 star series. This is a highly recommended comic to Binge!