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Fund It! – The End Of the Runaways

By | February 23rd, 2011
Posted in Columns | % Comments

This week, your usual Fund It! host is a bit unable to maintain his duties to you in this article. It’s not because he doesn’t love you, but rather that he is an incredibly important man who needs to do a week off to save the multiverse. Yes, you read that absolutely correctly. So in the meantime while we wait for him to return to our universe, I present to you a Fund It! of my own, pulled from the creative recesses of my mind and transcribed into a more readable form.

If you have ever gone to a convention before and have attended a Marvel panel, you’ll notice that there are some things that always get brought up, specifically in regards to the return of specific characters. Everyone has their personal fan favorite characters and teams, but it seems like you can’t get through any given panel or questionairre without someone asking when the Runaways will come back. Originally introduced by Brian K Vaughan, this group of youngsters quickly found a place in many readers hearts as they rebelled against their evil supervillain planets and set themselves up as LA’s new supergroup. Of course, the road to superhero-dom was a long and rocky one, mixed with new friends and the loss of old ones as they did their best to integrate into the Marvel Universe. However, despite a cult following of fans who were both longtime Marvelites and newbies to the Marvel realm, sales of the book never ended up sustaining it beyond Vaughan’s initial run, with the third volume itself featuring shifts between writers and artists before eventually dying just as it got amazing. And if there was ever a reason to resurrect a book, it would be simply to finish a story, wouldn’t it?

Check behind the cut as I regal you into the reasons why Runaways should return, who should write it, and who should illustrate it. As a note, spoilers for Runaways are discussed, if only to illustrate the epic cliffhanger left off with the final issue of the third volume. If you’ve never read Runaways before and planned to, you might want to avert your eyes.

I should start by saying that, for all intents and purposes, I am not really that big of a Runaways fan. I feel like this is an important note to throw out there if only to help create a distinction between why I want to fund this particular book as opposed to why a fan would. To be frank, I came to this title very late in the game. I bought the 3 Runaways Hardcovers that collect BKV’s run at a sale on a recommendation from a fellow writer and made my way through them at a very slow and casual rate. BKV is a fantastic writer, but by the time I had gotten around to reading Runaways, I just wasn’t overtly impressed. It’s a very good read, but based on hype alone I suppose I never really got into the title that heavily. That being said, I also thought everything after BKV’s run was rather decidedly meh. Even Joss Whedon, King Of The Nerds, had a rather sub-par (yet very Whedon-esque run), and the tie-ins between Secret Invasion (my first ever experience with the characters) and Civil War were decidedly throw away (with no offense intended to Zeb Wells or Chris Yost, who are both favorite writers of mine). The subsequent third volume of Runaways was something I had to actively force myself to read, with Terry Moore (God bless him for trying) writing a rather poor follow-up to both Whedon and Vaughan, featuring the characters essentially meandering about in their first directionless ongoing (considering that BKV always had a rather beginning, middle, and end point for his stories with the characters) and essentially doing the same errors he did when he put an “addendum” to Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane (random plot changes, poor follow-up characterization, slow plots and uneven/forced dialogue). For all intents and purposes, when people who read the issues at the time they came out explain to me about Runaways cancellation, I’m generally not that surprised.

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Of course, then came Kathryn Immonen. With the final four issues of the series before it ended, Immonen let out a rapid fire arc that shot the Runaways collectively in the back, kicked them while they were down, and created such a fantastic roller coaster ride of an arc that it quickly shot up in quality to the next best thing to Vaughan himself on the title. Immonen created actual danger for the group while rediscovering their voice that had been lost in between transitions between other writers. Immonen was the only one who was writing BKV’s Runaways, as opposed to just young comic characters put in impossible situations (or, to put it more bluntly, superhero clichés. And when the final issue of her all-too-short run came to a close, revealing one of the Runaways in a hospital bed on the verge of death (name removed for sake of spoilers, considering that in and of itself is a pretty big spoiler), it was the first time that I – through all 69 issues of the collective series – actually was clamoring for more.

If that doesn’t say something about Immonen’s run on it’s own, I don’t know what else could. In fact, in many ways Immonen’s run on Runaways can be summed up in a Torchwood parable: the TV show Torchwood spun out of Doctor Who as a route for Russel T Davies to play with some new ideas he had brought to the ever evolving canon of the show. However, where Torchwood differed greatly from the roots of it’s host was that it tried to bring in a vibe for television audiences that was ridiculous, offering up characters who wanted to do nothing but snog and shag as opposed to trying to telling intriguing science fiction stories. Davies kept kicking ass on Doctor Who, but Torchwood is a show that largely fell flat with it’s storytelling, leaving two seasons worth of rather agonizingly childish sci-fi “drama.” Of course, with the third “season” of Torchwood, the mini-series Children Of Earth made the two seasons worth it, as the only way the emotional pay-off of Children Of Earth mattered was if you stuck with it from the beginning. The same is the case for Runaways. In this scenario, Doctor Who is BKV’s original run, Torchwood is everything that followed, and Children Of Earth is Immonen’s short time on the book, totally giving the title vitality in a few short issues before the axe fell (literally and figuratively).

So why should Runaways come back? If for no other reason than Immonen clearly had a story to tell and didn’t finish telling it. That’s arguably one of the worst things that can happen to a creator in this medium. There are tons of unresolved storylines that end up in the gutter at one company or another due to lack of funds, with Marvel being particularly cancel-happy in the recent market (which, given economic times, is understandable). However, all things considered it wasn’t Immonen’s fault that Runaways ended before she was ready. That would be the fault of everything that came before her. However, with her very clearly pushing towards a larger goal (what with that whole “death/return” angle of the arc), it’s such a huge shame that not only did she not get to tell it, but she left at arguably the worst place to leave the story: the disaster cliffhanger. In fact, where Immonen left off was almost like a dare to Marvel to let her come back and tell the story, given that she – again – put one of the characters on the verge of death, comatose, in a hospital. The fact that Marvel has yet to do so is … well, mind boggling. Since then, the Runaways have really not been seen outside of a brief “How To Break Into Comics: The Marvel Way” story that was a side-canon story if anything.

So here’s the idea: the safest way to get a story out, from beginning to end regardless of sales, is to release it as a mini-series. It’s sort of a time-tested method at this point. In fact, you’d be rather hard pressed to find a mini-series that never released it’s conclusion due to anything besides “operator error.” Minis are also a great way for characters to be tested in the water for the idea of possible ongoings, as many creators will note that impressive sales will warrant further stories involving the characters (see example here). The (assumedly) most cost effective way for Marvel to give Runaways fans the ending that they want let alone deserve would be to give Runaways a follow-up finale mini-series, 4-6 issues long. Marvel certainly has done it before, with New Excalibur spinning out of House of M and being cancelled at #24, seeing it’s eventual finale in X-Men: Die By The Sword, a “crossover” between New Excalibur and Exiles. One could even argue that they’re doing it now, with Hawkeye and Mockingbird/Black Widow ending together in Widowmaker. It doesn’t seem to off the wall to imagine that perhaps some of these loose ends could be tied up in a mini (which could possibly even boost sales/awareness of the characters, thus giving enough creedance for an ongoing – but that’s another article for another day). While the drawback of this would be that it’s not easily accessible to new fans due to the story that’s already taken place, it’s still offers itself up for a great marketing angle: YOU DEMANDED IT, SO HERE IT IS: THE END OF RUNAWAYS!, at which point anyone who has not read Runaways before can be directed to the trades/hardcovers/digests at their local shops, boosting sales and also offering up a new way to tackle some kind of digital promotion. Cool, eh?

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Immonen is without a doubt in my mind the only creator who should come back to the characters, and not just to finish her story. Immonen has told a lot of really great stories in her time at Marvel, which has largely gone unsung. She’s written mini’s for characters like Pixie and the recent Wolverine and Jubilee, not to mention the Heralds mini that flew under the radar (somehow). Immonen is good at writing young characters, and while she doesn’t spend as much time making timely references as Vaughan does, she still effectively gives off the needed vibe for a book starring this age group of heroes and heroines. She already proved once that she can be the writer that the Runaways need (and needed), and I’ve already spent four paragraphs arguing that point. If you’re not convinced by now, I’d assume you probably need to re-read her arc.

Of course, the only person I see working with her on the title now is her partner in Wolverine and Jubilee, Phil Noto. Her original arc was done with Sara Pichelli, but Pichelli never felt right for the book. The Runaways had a very distinct look with Alphona on the book, but as soon as the third volume began, there was a mass-over sexualization of the characters that just came out as gaudy and ill-fitted. While Pichelli has certainly evolved as an artist since her time on Runaways, I would argue that Noto is better for the title (and for the record, Noto has done art for Nico before, having illustrated a Sister Grimm one-shot for the Mystic Arcana mini before). Noto with Immonen on Wolverine and Jubilee are creating one of the most fantastic minis that Marvel is currently producing, with a stylized tone in the art department that fits 100%. Jubilee is essentially the “forever teen” of the X-Men, and as much as she has grown up in the comic she will now never age due to her vampirism. Noto has proven, if nothing else, that he can draw young characters without devolving to the over sexualization that other writers fall prey to, and with a comic like Runaways that exists to steer away from cliches, he fits the best. Besides, if he can maintain his colors in Runaways as he has, you know, in all his art, you’re going to get one of the best looking stories on the market.

Runaways needs to end. That’s really all that can be said here. Cliff hangers are fun, but they’re only not completely aggonizing when you know there will be some kind of resolve. If someone were to come to Runaways now through the trades and read all the way through volume 11, all they’re met with is disappointment due to the completely unresolved nature of the story. Marvel knows it’s way around the market by now, and obviously they wouldn’t put out a new title if they didn’t think people would be interested in buying it. However, I would assume that by now they know that they could probably get away with a mini-series with a low print count to wrap up the Runaways story. The thing with the Runaways is is that everyone seems to be too afraid to use them now. The Young Avengers for a long time were in the same ball park, but as time went on more people got comfortable with including the characters in their stories. The Runaways are rich characters with 69 issues worth of history to evolve on, and it’s a shame that they won’t get touched on for whatever reason. Perhaps people are afraid to touch them given the end, or perhaps no one sees a way to continue… but I would guess that Immonen does. And if you put Noto by her side again, I can guarantee you’ll have another critically acclaimed hit on your hands.

To recap: Kathryn Immonen. Phil Noto. 4-6 issue mini-series. The end of Runaways. Let’s do this, Marvel.


//TAGS | Fund It

Matthew Meylikhov

Once upon a time, Matthew Meylikhov became the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Multiversity Comics, where he was known for his beard and fondness for cats. Then he became only one of those things. Now, if you listen really carefully at night, you may still hear from whispers on the wind a faint voice saying, "X-Men Origins: Wolverine is not as bad as everyone says it issss."

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