CBR 15, Picture This
Look at this cover, how gorgeous is she? (Aside from the fact that she appears to have no ankle or foot). That’s Gert, she’s my favorite. This is a review of the final three volumes of Rainbow Rowell’s run of Runaways. So Runaways is Marvel but mostly the characters did their own thing although some of them have been Young Avengers and Molly is a mutant. There are 100 issues of Runaways, then it got cancelled, for now. I have read the Brian K. Vaughn and Adrian Alphona original storyline and maybe some of the Joss Whedon ones and now all of the Rainbow Rowell ones. They are good. It is a shame she wasn’t allowed to continue because she had some very fun ideas in issue 100 that would have been cool to read.
The Runaways are a group of teens who witness their parents murder a young girl in a strange ritual and run away. It turns out their parents plan to live forever and have allied themselves with immortal beings who want to wipe out humanity. This is now the second comic series I have read where people just decide to murder children and yes…this seems realistic to me. Have you seen humanity?
Rainbow Rowell got to revive the series after it had been dormant a while and also bring back to life my most favorite character. (I have her Funkopop on my desk right now) She also sort of revives my least favorite character. Book 4 is a bit of a transition which becomes a race towards the finish. And book 5 sees the crew try their hands at being superheroes again. It goes predictably badly! This one sees Gert left behind because she has no powers. Book 6 ends on a giant cliffhanger, 100th issue, big sparkly cliffhanger for multiple characters!
And it wouldn’t be Rainbow Rowell without some pairings of people who are very cute together! She found a way to put my favorite couple back together with timey-wimey stuff. When I tell you I swooned; I may have closed the book, sighed happily, and then opened it back up again to read more.
So I looked it up, and it appears there is a continuation of Karolina’s story out now called Marvel Voices: Runaways. Someone else gets to take over this story right from where it left off. To be clear, this ended in 2021 so I am late to the party. Rainbow Rowell is already writing She Hulk comics. Still, it must be weird to have your characters written by someone else. But I guess they aren’t your characters, they are just your spin on characters that have been out in the Marvel Universe for a while.
If you are a fan of Rainbow Rowell and YA stories, you’ll probably like this. It’s fun, although there is some angst. Also a telepathic dinosaur! But if you’ve never read the Runaways, I would at least read the first few books to get an idea of what they were about.