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Runaways: Pride & Joy (volume 1, collecting issues #1-6 of the 2003 run)Runaways: Teenage Wasteland (volume 2, collecting issues #7-12 of the 2003) run
Written by Brian K. Vaughan, pencilled by Adrian Alphona, inked by David Newbold and Craig Yeung, colored by Brian Reber
Published by Marvel, $7.99 US each volume
I've been reading praise for this series ever since it started, but since I've been in isolation almost all the time since then, I never got around to it until now. I am very glad I have.
The setup is gloriously simple: a group of teens with nothing much in common find out that their parents are actually supervillains, and that they themselves have powers and resources they never suspected. They go on the lam. Complications ensue. What makes it work is just how well executed it is.
As that cover image suggests, the art is beautiful in an ultra-clean line way. I'm fond of highly detailed rendering (like vintage John Byrne or Scott McCloud), but it's easy to badly (cf. most of the Image Comics founders). This style here is hard to do well, but when it succeeds, it makes the whole world it portrays vivid. The coloring helps a lot, adding beauty and clarity and nuance to the work - these volumes have some of the best-nuanced skin tones I can recall ever seeing in a superhero comic.
The writing is warm and friendly, and informed. I don't know how old Vaughan may be, but he clearly knows modern teens. They sound and act right. These are all bright kids raised with a lot of advantages to bring out their potential, and then they're thrown into something for which they're utterly unprepared, against adversaries who...it turns out, don't actually know them nearly as well as they think, either. Their parents underestimate them in just the kinds of ways parents do in these years when adulthood is coming in but childhood hasn't really gone out yet.
The writing is just plain funny, too. When two of the parents find their son gone with his bed stuffed with pillows and a mannequin head at the top, the mother bursts out, "What is our son doing with a male mannequin head in his room?" (The father says, "How the hell can you be concerned about that? Alex is out there somewhere out there, and he knows the truth about us!") And the police officer meeting Cloak and Dagger, lured in on false pretenses, says, "So wait. You're telling me that drugs turned you into super heroes? That can't make you popular with the parent groups." It's these flashes of reality amidst the weirdness that keep things rolling along so engagingly.
I understand that Vaughan and Alfona left after 24 issues, and that others handled it, and that they came back for a while later. I'll sort that out and see what additional volumes I want to check out. I loved these, and they lifted my spirits from a gloomy time.
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Date: 2009-07-09 11:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-09 11:49 pm (UTC)