Runaways #1-6

Runaways #1-6

Originally released in 2003

Written by Brian K. Vaughn

Art by Adrian Alphona

Five teenagers - Nico Minoru, Alex Wilder, Gertrude Yorkes, Chase Stein, and Karolina Dean - and an eleven year old girl, Molly Hayes, have very little in common.  Gert is a would-be activist, Chase is a jock, Nico is a goth, Alex is a geek, Karolina is a valley girl... it almost sounds like a modern re-imagining of The Breakfast Club.  The main thing that links them together is that their parents all meet once a year, bringing the kids along but keeping the details of the meeting a secret from them.  This year, the kids decide to see what their parents get up to at these meetings, only to quickly uncover the terrible truth - their parents are a cabal of villains from wildly different backgrounds (mutants, time travelers, etc.) called The Pride, who more or less run Los Angeles.  With the police dismissing them and the media easily manipulated by the Pride, these six are forced to run away and find out how to expose their parents' dark secret.

I've seen the Runaways recommended for people who are getting into comics, and I can see why - the writing is breezy and feels natural, the story moves at a quick pace throughout these six issues, and there aren't any ties to the broader Marvel continuity so you don't necessarily need to know who Doctor Doom, Captain America, or Paste-Pot Pete are to follow what's going on.  A handful of details might not have aged well (topical references might be lost on modern audiences, and there's one or two unfortunate uses of a slur towards people with special needs), but the story as a whole holds up, drawing on themes of teenage rebellion and uncovering details about yourself that you might not have been aware of.

Over these six issues, the characters are well-developed, with both parents and kids getting focus.  The kids get the lion's share of the development, but despite being supervillains and part of a cult, the parents are often treated like people who are legitimately concerned about their children and the world that their kids will grow up in, and (in their own twisted way) they want to give them a better future.

Out of the six Runaways (and a cloned dinosaur with a telepathic connection to Gertrude, who joins them later on in this storyline), Molly gets the least amount of focus, being kept in the dark about their parents' nature for most of the story, though even then, she has moments showing that she's smarter than she appears.  Alex is set up as the main protagonist, being the most "normal" of the bunch (he has no powers, and his parents are ordinary criminals to contrast with the wizards, aliens, and super-scientists that they work with), but the focus is still spread out pretty evenly between the rest of the team.

Despite some occasionally awkward-looking facial expressions, the art is clean, and the characters are easily distinguishable from each other even from a distance.  Even with the amount of characters involved, panels never feel too crowded, and the settings (which are, for the most part, the houses of the various families) do a good job at reflecting the people who live in them.

Runaways is off to a good start, feeling like the first episode of a TV show or the first act of a movie.  The cast is likeable and well-developed, and despite introducing roughly eighteen new characters (nineteen if you count Gertrude's dinosaur Old Lace), it never feels bloated.  By my understanding, the breakout characters of the series are Nico (who develops into more of a leader as the series goes on, and who's armed with the Staff of One, a mystical weapon that can cast seemingly any spell but will only let its wielder use a specific command one time) and Molly (a little girl who develops super strength), so I'm interested to find out more about them and how they tie into the broader Marvel universe.