Civil War: Young Avengers and Runaways

I love the Runaways, Young Avengers are okay. This was better than a team up with an older group of superheroes because then it would seem like the Runaways were pushed to the background. Fun but short.

Summary: The plot of the Marvel "Civil War" series is essentially that of the third X-Men movie: all super-humans are being required to register with the government, and while some are complying, many are actively opposed. The twist in the comic books is that the registered superheroes are being sent to hunt down the non-compliant ones - hence, a civil war. The Runaways have largely stayed under the radar, but when they get involved in a scrape with the government that makes the national news, the Young Avengers figure that super-teens of all stripes should stick together... but before they can work together to save some of their own, each team will have to convince the other that they're friendly.

Review: This book highlighted two main show more reasons that I am not more into superhero comics. 1) There are so many intertwining characters and storylines and history and do-overs and cross-overs and general shenanigans that I don't know where to start, and jumping in mid-stream is utterly confounding; and 2) there is suspension of disbelief and toleration of narrative silliness, and then there's "Years ago, married Avengers teammates Scarlet Witch (Wanda Maximoff) and the android Vision conceived and bore twin sons, Thomas and William, via Wanda's magic. Unwittingly created from two lost souls, the twins were actually born from fragmented energies of the hell-lord Mephisto." That's from the character bios at the back of this volume, and it goes on for pages like that. No thanks.

To be fair, this book did a pretty good job of summing up the civil war and dropping me in the middle of that, so at least I understood the context of what was going on. But I didn't know who the Young Avengers were, what their powers were, and what their backstories were, so I missed the significance of at least half of what was said and done. The art wasn't helping me out much, either - it was sort of sketchy and distorted, and it didn't provide many additional clues to help me tell the characters apart. In short, not a terrible read, but not one I got much out of, either. 2.5 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: This might be best for someone well-versed in the Marvel universe as an introduction to the Runaways series (albeit with MAJOR spoilers for preceding books in the series), but readers who are only interested in the Runaways' side of things can pretty safely skip this one. show less

A solid crossover; usually when you have someone besides the regular writer working on characters from two different teambooks in the middle of a mega-crossover, the results aren't pretty. However, these four issues look and read pretty much like a regular adventure of either team.

Not as good as the Runaways stories by Vaughan and Whedon, but still a good story. I wasn't at all familiar with the Young Avengers, so their introduction was somewhat confusing. Some of it gets explained gradually (especially future-Vision), but the character art could have been more solid, to help tell apart the characters.

Overall, it doesn't have too much impact on the rest of the Runaways story (or the Civil War story, I expect), but it's worth reading.

As a previous reviewer said, this is everything that a comic should be. The action was good, the dialogue was good, and the art was good too.

This was my first introduction to the Runaways, and they seem like an interesting bunch, although it was a little difficult at times determining who was who. And I've always liked the Young Avengers, who really need more face-time in the Marvel Universe. Zeb Wells does, in my opinion, a great job with both groups.

Although this is a tie-in to the Civil War event, it's really not necessary to have knowledge of that event to enjoy the story.

I liked the art for this - it was crisp and clean. Noh-Varr and Speed were a little hard to tell apart at times since they're both white-haired guys in green show more uniforms, but other than that, it was great. Noh-Varr resembled Quicksilver quite a bit with the silver hair hanging down in his face, but I'm not sure if that was deliberate or not (since Quicksilver is likely Speed's uncle, thanks to yet another convoluted storyline in the Marvel Universe). show less

Decent story added a little bit to the Runaways/Young Avengers/Civil War continuation, but probably safe to skip if you're only interested in one of the story lines.

Not my favourite crossover mostly because of the art style and also because it is often so confusing. Also seeing Xavin constantly as male was a cop-out of the highest order.