Runaways # 13 - Homeschooling, Part Three: Academic Biology

Oh, Runaways, I knew you well.
 
I have always had a massive soft spot for the apparently 'Tween' title but I can't help but feel everything has gone horribly, horribly wrong. It's like a great foreshadowing for me; this is what happens when you pull a once near-perfect title out from the warm, protective bossom of its creator, or its definitive writer. (Are you listening Russell T. Davis?) I can't help that feel my enthusiasm is a little bit wasted these days.
 
Runaways has never rang true for me without the original creative team. It was that combination of humour, drama and realistic character development that made it so special and the art was utterly wondeful...everything since has felt like a little bit of a bad imitation.
 
Let's start at the beginning. I am reviewing JUST this issue and I'll attempt to stick to that but this is the last part of this line and in a desperate attempt at clawing continuity together, a lot of old strings have been freyed and stretched. I can criticise Whedon for his run, but atleast this wasn't the case when he was in creative control. Runaways is still such a new title with so much potential that it feels too soon to be giving terrible (but inherently weak) shocks by digging up old information. Chase's violent tendancy's an the theme of him as a killer has dropped in and out of the narrative before but I can't help but feel that this isn't what was intended at all. It seems so half-baked. He was the threat.
 
Though I still grieve for Gert, Chase is my favourite character in the Runaways title. His development under BKV was brilliant and being the fan of hokey love stories as I am, the Cynical girl/Dumbass boy bit was lovely for me, especially the way it developed in to such a private and beautifully presented love story. But he's their threat within; he's the only adult and with the  main theme of Runaways being the destruction of innocence there was something ominous to Chase's background. He suffered more then any of the other children at the hands of his parents, he was sort of comic relief but we've seen it start to change from early on.
 
The last time Chase's mistake, the murder, was brought up Nico attempted to get off with him, too. It left all this bad air that drifted about all the way up to my beloved Gert's last breath. Such is life, though. People make mistakes...But NOBODY kisses quite as many people as Nico. I was reading this with a friend and eactly the same time we both pointed out 'Nico's a bit of a whore' and it was no co-incidence. This is getting out of control. She needs to stop kissing things, Jesus. Someone organise an intervention because this girl could put a Glaswegian hooker to shame. I mean I shouldn't get so stuck on something so trvial but there is no member of the adult cast remaining that she hasn't had a romantic subplot with and what's worse is it's so openly and distastefully sexual whenever she's involved.
 
None of this issue rings true to me. This isn't what Runaways is about. These are the children of supervillians and I could have coped with something a little more then a hit and run. Killing a hobo on a tip? Now that's what its about. The blurring line between adult and child is the entire point of Runaways. This is the ultimate tween title, something Marvel has struggled to achieve for an extremely long time. It was never hokey, it was never condecending and it was never like some God awful Skins rip-off like every teenage character in X-Men at the moment. It was about friendship, fear and running. Sexual tension, not sex.
 
Two stars because the art is lovely and it is nice to see some well represented ethnic diverstity; it can be told in the image themselves an not with cliches such as exaggerated religious or ethnic practise. Wonderful. The story however, is as flat as a pancake and whatever excitement old storylines could have blown in to this are knocked back by some desperate attempts at realism. Yes, the children were represented with an element of realism in their reactions but that's not what comics is about. It is taken to a new extreme in the recent issues that sucks any remaining element of fun out of it.
 
No. No, no, no. Sort it out before its too late. Work out how old Molly is, please...And bring the effin' dinosaur back!