Runaways

At its core, Runaways is a story about a group of would-be kid heroes with a chip on their shoulders and a world of insecurities. It catches my attention, though, because it feels a little more emotional, a little more chaotic than the average kid-turns-hero tale.

The first volume covers the the original arc of the series before it was canceled (and later renewed) and covers a journey in and of itself. Left alone, it makes for a good story, and yet it does leave you wanting more, by the end.

The beginning is unassuming enough. Alex Wilder, a lover of superheroes and the like (this is a world where the heroes are a real presence, though apparently prominently on the east coast as opposed to the west coast where this story takes place) who is interrupted by his parents mid-game as guests arrive. His family is wealthy, as are the guests, and each year his family and a handful of others meet to discuss charity, while their children keep each other company. Some reluctantly, some not. Despite the piqued interests of a few (some have grown quite a bit since the last year’s meeting), the group of kids  retreats to a game room to wait out the meeting, falling into a group dynamic that is easy, if tense, though you can assume it’s because the majority of these kids are teenagers prone to their bouts of drama, save for Molly who is the youngest and most childlike.

Things don’t stay this way for long, though. Alex suggests they take a secret passage he’d found earlier to spy on their parents (our first hint at something more than normal, even if his family has money) and things quickly degrade from there. Gert, Alex, Nico, and Chase leave Karolina to watch Molly, and so they are the four who witness their parents enact a horrifying ritual in which they sacrifice a young girl for reasons they can’t ascertain. A muffled cry from one of their number alerts the adults to a spy in the midst, suspected either someone has snuck into the Wilder’s home and secret passages, or the children had stumbled upon something they were never meant to see. Before they can get to the children, though, the kids scramble back to the game room and pretend to be playing a game, managing to look innocent when the parents come looking. 

However, it is not a matter easily dropped. Alex’s parents remain suspicious, and the kids arrange to sneak out and meet up that night to discuss what they saw, and what to do next. Things go horribly awry, though, when the parents become aware that their children are gone, and things escalate into a full on struggle between parent and child as each kid in succession uncovers their family secrets. Nico’s parents are sorcerers, Gert’s are time travellers, Chase’s are inventors, Molly’s are mutants, Karolina’s are aliens, and Alex’s parents are perhaps the most ‘normal’ of them group with no actually powers or abilities beyond the grip they have on the city at large, and the vast net of influence they have over the law and crime, essentially running the city. By Alex’s suggestion, the kids raid each of their homes to try and find clues as to who their parents are, effectively uncovering their parent’s true identities as well as their own inheritances. In a scuffle at Chase’s home, Nico’s body absorbs her mother’s Staff of One, giving her a temperamental control over the same sorceries as her parents. Gert discovers a safe her parents had left her upon their eventual death, which holds a genetically modified velociraptor created to be her companion and protector that not only holds a psychic connection with her, but obeys her every command. Also in this safe is a tome with all the information on the Pride (their parents’ group) and its history, though it is written in code. At Chase’s house, before the parents find them snooping around, Chase picks up a  pair of gauntlets with an array of offensive abilities as well as tech goggles, while later Karolina discovers that as an alien, she is a sun-dependant creature that glows a rainbow of colors and flies with the greatest ease. 

Of course, before they can go and spring Molly from her home (being so young, she was excluded from the secret meeting), the adults catch up with them and act a little truer to their evil tendencies, threatening them with Molly’s life if they do not come quietly. However, they come together as a team and manage to surprise the adults and snatch the girl, retreating to a submerged hotel Chase had once found, now serving as their hideout and home. Of course, in an ironic twist of events, Alex’s father puts out a story sure to get the children snatched, pinning him for the murder of the girl his own parents killed with the other children as accomplices, as well as claiming that the gang had also kidnapped Molly from her home.

It is a chaotic, if inauspicious beginning for the ‘runaways’, but they have no choice any longer than to escape their families and find a way to bring the deeds of the Pride to light, and have their parents put away.

The rest of volume one follows the children as they try to get a handle on their situation and find a way forward. At first, they try to be heroes: coming up with codenames, trying to apprehend criminals and form secret identities. Even Molly comes up with her own superhero outfit. 

However, what I find particularly interesting is that this comic doesn’t pretend like they’re anything more than teenagers on the run. Their attempts are fumbles at best, and halfway through the first volume they drop the pretense of codenames. After a single attempt at arresting a robbery, they don’t even bother with crime-fighting and instead focus on getting by, and decoding the book of their parent’s secrets. The story plays with the volatile personalities that a group of teenagers is bound to have, and emphasizes the strife and stress built into a situation where everything you knew and understood turns out to be a lie. I enjoyed how the story itself wasn’t idealistic. Certainly it wasn’t wrought with realism, but the touch of sincerity certainly made it something else. The Pride eventually finds that they have a mole among the children, and this for me becomes one of the most interesting plot points, if anything because of the mentality that would go behind it. It’s not something as simple as a teammate gone bad: this is a child that can’t detach from their parents, a struggle that each of the children go through. Despite what they’ve seen and experienced, those people are still their parents. As horrifying as the murder was, it doesn’t exactly erase years of love and protection, or memories and more.

This doesn’t make it any less of a betrayal to the rest of the team when they find out, though, since the group of teens has become something of a patchwork family. It couldn’t be any more surprising when later we find that the betrayer has been Alex all along: his talent being strategy, and mind games. After all, when he did decode the book, he and the others found exactly what their parents had been up to: a ritual to appease a group of god-like creatures who would remake the world, promising wealth and success to all six families, and immortality as well as a place in the new world for the six most deserving. It is at one of these final rituals, the Rite of Thunder, that the runaways attempt to ambush their parents and are ultimately betrayed by Alex, who would go on to reveal that he had actually discovered his parents months earlier, and that he had been working against the runaways from the start. I think for me, that was a substantial turning point. As clever, and clear-minded as Alex was, I think the story was built in such a way that the readers, like members of his own team, accepted his guidance and his leadership without question. He was the superhero fan, the one with all the plans and ideas, with the clear vision of what they needed to do, where they needed to go. The very foundation of the unreliable narrator is built right into the story, because he’s a teenager that we treat as an adult with unquestionable direction, as if his very word is law. And yet, when his betrayal is revealed, it’s just as jarring as it is perfect. After all, of all the children, who better the enact a plot behind their teammates’ backs? To lead them in the right direction and string them along?

In addition to these elements, there is a sense of quickly passing time. Rather than settling into a long-standing role as righteous children in hiding, the runaways are really just that... runaway children with no jobs, limited funds, and no homes. That first time they tried to be heroes? It only happened because the convenience store to get their ‘groceries’ at (read: cheap, affordable junk food) just happened to be in the process of getting robbed. Their hideout is no secure fortress, either. Before half the volume is through, the underground hotel is destroyed and the kids are rooted out by the Pride’s subordinates. Its not at if they have a network of friends to reach out to. Besides, when they try to get some real heroes in to help them, they’re completely ignored. In another ironic twist, when two heroes (Cloak and Dagger) do arrive, it’s to apprehend them on the word of their parents! You can really get the sense of a child-like world at play. The kind of world where the adults never quite believe you, and you have no real means of getting along on your own. The kind of world where people make assumptions about you, and don’t listen to you no matter what you do or say. It is a helplessness that we can only grow out of, and yet these kids don’t have time to grow out of it: that's the only reason why they took things into their own hands, anyway; because otherwise, they were utterly alone.

I found this series to be a fascinating read, if anything because in a lot of ways it felt so real. The way that the kids’ story was handled felt more organic than I had expected. In fact, I expected a lot more wish-fulfillment and idealism, with the teens becoming full-fledged crime fighters with a mission to save the world. Instead, I got a story that made me actually feel for these kids, and understand them on a level. It is my honest opinion that any work, written or drawn or created in any way that can get someone on the outside to connect with it on some personal level is a successful one, and one worth remembering.