Runaways, Vol. 1: Pride and Joy

I guess many kids dream of having super-powered parents, but Runaways turns that on its head by making the parents members of a bad guy cabal. Sure, there's a little predictability -- the kids resemble a modern version of Scooby-Doo (the pretty one, the frumpy one, the not-so-bright one) -- but it's a mostly fun voyage of discovery of powers and self-awareness (which, not unsurprisingly, occurs during their teenage years). I'm not a big fan of the art -- there's a bit of exaggerated characteristics (almost manga-like) which can throw off the perspective -- but you can always tell the characters apart and the backgrounds aren't distracting.

----------------
LT Haiku:

When parents tell lies,
it's usually for a good
reason. Is it here?

The Kids Are Alright

What would you do if you found out that your parents were evil? Not, like, run of the mill, parents gotta parent evil - putting the entire family on a diet because your younger brother has to make weight for football, for example, or siding with your klepto sister when she steals your favorite pair of shoes and then proceeds to cut you with one of them (both of which happened to yours truly and still burns some twenty years later) - but real life supervillains bent on world domination evil?

When Alex, Nico, Chase, Gert, Karolina, and Molly witness their parents murder a young woman during their annual get-together, they decide on the most reasonable option: report their "psycho 'rents" to the police. Only problem is, show more the LAPD is in The Pride's pocket - along with the rest of the city. As the sextet sets out to procure concrete evidence of their parents' wrongdoing, they also embark on an unexpected journey of self-discovery: among their group hide unwitting aliens, mutants, prodigies, and even a prospective time-traveler with her very own pet velociraptor!

I scooped up the first volume of Runaways for a mere buck at a library book sale; ten pages in, and I was hooked. (Hey, you had me at vegan tempeh fajitas!) Fifteen pages, and I'd already ordered the next nine volumes in the set on eBay. (They can't get here fast enough!) The characters are both believable and relatively diverse; four of the six protagonists are young women, and two are people of color. A little "chubby," Gert is a welcome deviation from conventional beauty standards, and Molly's age (at just eleven years old, she's several years younger than her teenage cohorts) introduces a whole new set of coming of age issues to explore. (Indeed, one plot point hinges upon the confusion caused by Molly's changing body, assumed to be the result of her first period.)

If this first volume is any indication, it also looks as though Runaways will explore such weighty issues as domestic (child) abuse, and the more general problem of reconciling a parent's evil deeds with their outwardly "good" personae.

While the general consensus seems to be that the series takes a nosedive somewhere around Volume 9 (bummer!), I can't wait to see what's in store for the runaways.

http://www.easyvegan.info/2013/11/18/runaways-vol-1-pride-joy-by-brian-k-vaughan... show less

Summary: A lot of teenagers have problems with their parents, but for this group of kids, their problems aren't issues about curfews and allowances. Instead, a group of six teens find out that their parents aren't the socially-conscious do-gooders they'd always imagined; instead, they're a league of supervillans bent on world domination. The kids want to fight back, but a teenager's power is pretty limited, even when their parents don't control the police, city government, and the media. However, these kids are not about to take things laying down... and it turns out they have more than a few powers of their own.

Review: I'm not normally hugely into superhero comics, but this one just charmed my socks off. It's a cool concept, it's show more fast-paced, it's smart, it's slick, and it's funny. I like the artwork, which is a nice blend of clean lines and plenty of detail, and very colorful to boot. The kids are kind of a Breakfast-Club-slash-United-Colors-of-Benetton mix of archetypes, but it feels organic to the league-of-superheros theme, and also has the bonus of making them easy to tell apart right from the beginning. I also really liked that the kids weren't all bestest friends to start with; watching them squabble among themselves is just as much fun as watching them fight their parents. 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: I'm really glad I picked this series up, and I think that most teens and adults who are at least conversant with superhero tropes will get a kick out of it as well. show less

Who hasn't wondered if their parents are secretly super heroes? I know I had a running childhood fantasy that my parents decidedly uncool cars transformed into awesome crime fighting weapons platforms from the cartoon M.A.S.K.

If they could be heroes, why not villains? This series hits some deep, ambiguous feelings almost everyone has and that makes it a great concept.

The art is also top notch and the range of abilities from all characters is imaginative and pretty fresh. I am particularly fond of the genetically bonded velociraptor.

I had grown tired of the two major comic companies due to all the "major events" and eventual ret-cons those events would cause (any DC Crisis, Marvel's Onslaught event, which would lead to the horrible Heroes Reborn storyline), but Runaways was the book that brought me back to Marvel. The idea was different, the writing was excellent, and it made me want to pick up a monthly once more.

Collected here are the first six issues of the first run of the series. We are introduced to the kids who will become the Runaways, a varied group of California teens who learn the disturbing truth about their parents, that they are all part of a secret supervillain cabal called "The Pride." After witnessing an annual sacrifice, the kids freak and head show more out on the run. Looking for clues, they instead find their legacies as children of The Pride.

What I really love about this story is how much the kids still want to believe their parents are good people, even after they are threatened and attacked by several Pride members. They try to do the right thing by calling the police, only to discover that their parents have more control than they ever considered.

Like I said, this is the book that got me excited to pick up a monthly comic again instead of just waiting for the trade. This is also the series that introduced me to Brian K. Vaughan. show less

So… Free Comic Book Day saw some awesome sales at the local comic book store. I’ve read a few volumes of Runaways but have always meant to read much more, so the huge sales were a great opportunity to grab the first few Runaways collections.

It was great to finally go to the beginning of the series and see the origin stories of these characters, to see how they became the Runaways as I know them from later volumes. Suddenly things seem to make so much more sense to me about the group, though there are a few different characters from what I know, so am quite curious about what happens to a few of them.

I love the illustrations in this. Really, it’s amazing how much of the story can be told just in the illustrations of comic books. show more Yes, the dialogue is important, but so much more can be gathered by how the characters appear and what you can see going on. And these illustrations really are beautiful. Love.

One thing I don’t quite follow, however, was how willing these kids’ parents were to kill their own children to save themselves. I just… even with super villains, I don’t know if I’ve come across other parents who were so willing to just eliminate their own children, unless they were completely mad with power… but in that case, would you have to have a child knowing that one day you may have to kill them, and so never get very close to them? Because that didn’t seem how the parents were in this case – at the beginning of the book, they actually really seemed to love and care for their own kids. Were they so drunk with power that everything else was expendable? What kind of people are like that? I just didn’t understand the motivations of The Pride. Bother.

The Bottom Line
Great start to the Runaways series. Love this series, and would highly recommend it. Looking forward to reading the next volume. show less

Runaways, vol. 1: Pride and Joy. Written by Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona. Illustrated by David Newbold and Craig Yeung. Marvel. 2004. 152 pages. $14.99 pbk. 978-0785157328. Grades 7-12.

Almost all teenagers have felt like their parents were “evil” – but what if they really were? Vaughan takes this common adolescent refrain and runs with it: five young adults (ranging in age from seventeen to eleven) realize their parents’ yearly “charity meeting” is actually a front for their supervillain scheming. The motley crew bands together, pledging to right their parents’ wrongs – and discovering along the way that they have some serious powers of their own. The comic’s artwork is vivid and inviting, and the story show more skillfully melds comedy and high-suspense drama. The protagonists’ diversity is a welcome addition to the genre, although the majority of the characters are still white, and each of their personalities is skillfully developed, even in the work’s short span. The all-too-brief first volume of Runaways leaves the reader hungry for more: the good news is there are 10 more volumes and some cross-overs with other Marvel comics (the bad news is that the series has been on hiatus since 2009). The work’s innovative storyline, engaging characters, and relative independence within the Marvel universe make it an excellent “gateway comic” for young adult readers. Recommended. show less