Here is the latest in our year-long look at one cool comic (whether it be a self-contained work, an ongoing comic or a run on a long-running title that featured multiple creative teams on it over the years) a day (in no particular order whatsoever)! Here's the archive of the moments posted so far!
Today we look at the first volume of Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona's Runaways...
Enjoy!
It's interesting - as good as Runaways was (and it was quite good), it really is defined by two twists (I'll be explaining them right now, for those of you who did not read the comic)...
The first is that a group of teenagers discover that their parents (who meet together once a year, pretty much the only time these teens see each other) are actually super-villains.
This inspires the teens to run away from home (and eventually fight their parents' evil plans).
The second is that late into the first volume, we discover that the leader of the group, Alex Wilder, is actually working FOR his parents...
When you have a twist as big as Alex being a bad guy, then it tends to overshadow the rest of the volume a bit (not in a bad way, necessarily).
Still, the rest of the series was an excellent blend of adventure, fun and, most of all, character development.
Look as the various members of the team take on their "new" names...
The breakout star of the series, though, was the youngest member, the mutant superstrong Molly Hayes, otherwise known as Bruiser (or Princess Powerful). In one storyline (guest-drawn by Takeshi Miyazawa), superheroes hunt down the teens because Molly is reported kidnapped...
Vaughan did such a wonderful job creating consistent and interesting "voices" for each of the characters. Meanwhile, as you can see from the first snippet I posted above and then the scene with Alex betraying everybody, the book's art took a significant step for the better as the book continued. Alphona got better, but perhaps more importantly, Christina Strain joined the creative team - her colors were a major part of the book's look, artistically.
The complete 18-issue first volume is available in a hardcover (I dunno if it is still in print, though)!!!