I'm not normally much of a comics person, but this was AWESOME. Great art, great twisty plot, and the characters are just wonderful. I am definitely into this. ( )

Wow, okay, this was a lot of fun! Definitely a new series I'll have to keep reading: the overall feel and storyline was intriguing and fresh, and the characters felt fully realized and it was enjoyable seeing their ragtag crew come together. And that big twist near the end? THAT took me by surprise.
The only thing that didn't quite work for me was the fact that you could tell this was written by a man. There's a handful of moments where characters (both men and women) call women "sluts" or "skanks" because of how they're dressed or acting; there just seems to be this weird undercurrent of snarky attitudes towards women. Also, the issue with the, uh, vampire felt strangely random - it didn't fit in at all with the overall arc. ( )

I always wanted to run away as a kid, just for the adventure, so naturally, this graphic novel about a group of teenagers who run away from evil parents was right up my alley.

Some of the dialogue was unrealistic (11-year-old Molly, for example, uses some baby-talk, including calling her parents "mommy" and "daddy" - something no self-respecting 11-year-old I know would do!), the kids didn't seem terribly fazed for too long that their parents were evil, and some of the outfits are on the skanky side - but I suppose in a book about teenage superheroes, all of that is somewhat expected.

I really liked that 4 of the 6 main characters were female, since the norm is the other way around. ( )

1194 ( )

Man, it's been so long since I read Runaways. The premise (teens discover their parents are actually supervillains and they have superpowers/incredible hidden inheritances of their own, they run away from home) is still as rock-solid as ever. My biggest problem is the art - you can definitely tell that this is still the early days of the series as it seems like most of the characters have a case of the uglies, and to a lesser degree, the writing (there's a trap that Vaughan falls into like a lot of other people writing sassy characters where everyone is sassy in the same way, all the time). This is still a modern classic, though, for lack of a better term. ( )