book review -- The Runaways, volume 1

I first encountered the Runaways in the cruelly addictive turn-based combat game Avengers Alliance on Facebook, which is just slow enough to appeal to my totally un-twitchy hands, whose thumbs go mostly unused at the computer except for hitting the space bar. It's unusual for a new superhero team to have no crossover members, but I didn't think much about it at the time. I was much more interested in playing my old favorites, like the various X-Men, and optimizing power combinations and team-ups. In that game's story, they were slightly bratty SHIELD operatives who could infiltrate the Kingpin's syndicate by posing as a mercenary street-gang type group because noone in New York City had ever seen them before. Whatever.   

When my brother-in-law downsized his various collectible holdings and I inherited the first series, it turned out that Brian K. Vaughn had a specific marketing strategy in mind when he created the Runaways. They were designed as a gateway drug, an all-ages storyline with essentially zero connection to what comic geeks in the 1980s called “continuity.” Thus there would be no barrier to entry for new readers. The characters are all teens, except Molly, who is eleven when the story opens (and a really sheltered eleven, at that).    

The character origins and “classes” are likewise a buffet of superhero tropes, just as if they had been randomly rolled up as PCs in the classic Marvel Superheroes roleplaying game from TSR. Alex is the unpowered idea guy leader (in the AA game he would be a Tactician). Niko is a sorceress. Gert is a time-traveling techie. Chase is also a techie, but more in the mold of DC's Booster Gold, an athlete who happens to luck into some tech. Carolina Dean is a willowy glowing alien, reminiscent of DC's Halo from Batman's Outsiders team. (Hey, just because Vaughn had a marketing strategy for newbies doesn't mean that I have to read in a vacuum.) Oh, and little Molly is a mutant with superhuman strength and durability.

What brings the team together? No, it's not a swanky private school, as you might expect from the evidence of Xavier's School for the Gifted, or Harry Potter's Hogwarts, or whatever the hell the Vampire Academy is. Remember, this is all-new and improved. Their joint origin concerns something worse, more sinister – their parents, who all know each other, and who meet once a year to talk about their stupid investment club, or something. The story starts at one of these meetings, when the teens sneak downstairs to spy on the 'rents. And we're off!   

I won't say anything further about the plot, which is pretty standard stuff, overall. I will say that I read the first six issues in two consecutive evenings before bed. My 14-year-old son stayed up until 1:30am to finish it in one sitting. He is a manga nerd, not a dedicated superhero comic book reader, so this was unusual. The book was indeed a nice stand-alone read, with a few references to Marvel's flagship characters, and one quick crossover, but it didn't require “the knowledge” to enjoy it. My son already knows the Marvel Universe through other media (movies, cartoons, games), but whether Vaughn's strategy will lure him further into the comics I don't know. He can claim at least a partial success already, since my son has stated, on the record, that wants to find the second series. So do I, kind of.

This review was originally posted (by me) on Tsu.co on 2/9/16.

PS. There's also a series in development for Hulu, but I don't know anything about that.