Runaways Vol.1 Pride and Joy

What would you do if you were a teen and found out your parents were evil? No not just assholes, but seriously evil. As in super- villains. That's the premise of Runaways by Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona. Readers probably know Vaughan best for Saga, which is all the rage right now, but Runaways is some of his older work for Marvel. And Hulu just announced a Runaways series is in production, so I wanted to grab the trade paperbacks and see what the deal is. This trade collects the first six issues of the series. Some spoilers follow.

This series shows its age a bit with some of the pop culture references being a bit dated- this came out in 2004-ish - but it mostly works. Turns out the parents of the six kids get together once a year to discuss their "charity work" (they're all rich), but when the kids spy on their meeting they see something they're not supposed to. Their parents are actually part of a group called The Pride, and when they kill a girl in some kind of ritual the teens are shocked. Going to the police doesn't work since the police apparently answer to The Pride, so the kids have to think fast and stay a step ahead.

I liked the characters mostly- Alex, Nico, Karolina, Chase, Gert and Molly- some more than others and after struggling a bit in the first issue keeping track of who was who, I got it down and started to see each one develop their own personality. I mean it's not the greatest thing ever, but for the most part it's a fun, breezy read. The art is okay but not great, but a lot of series have that problem now with the cartoony style that's in vogue. The dialogue between the kids is good and they sound like actual kids, for the most part. Throw in some fun stuff like a genetically engineered velociraptor and the kids manifesting strange powers at the right moments, and this series is off to a pretty fun start.

I'll definitely keep going with Runaways and I'm especially looking forward to seeing how Hulu adapts this project.