Runaways : Dead End Kids

A major theme in the early years of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the rejection of adult authority figures. Buffy and the Scooby Gang were constantly in conflict with symbols of authority. Principal Snyder was a perpetual thorn in the side of our heroes, a disciplinarian goon who took pleasure in berating the students of Sunnydale High. The Watcher’s Council turned out to be a corrupt organization, arrogantly treating Buffy like a disposable weapon. This theme was best demonstrated by Mayor Richard Wilkins III, the Big Bad of Season Three. Mayor Wilkins’s outer persona was that of a polite and charming small town mayor with a love of miniature golf and a no-swearing policy. In reality, he was an immortal sorcerer trying to complete his ascension to full-blooded demon.

Of course, there are benevolent authority figures in the Buffyverse. Buffy’s mother Joyce Summers grows to accept her daughter’s heroic responsibility as the Slayer. Rupert Giles, Buffy’s Watcher, acts as a replacement father figure to Buffy and her friends.

Runaways, the Marvel Comics series created by writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Adrian Alphona takes Buffy‘s theme of rejecting adult authority to the next level. The series challenges what Vaughan saw as a tendency in the superhero genre to put guardian figures on a pedestal and show that true heroes always respect their elders and blindly follow their teachings. In Runaways no adult authority figures can be trusted. Parents, police, teachers, and even superheroes are all antagonistic towards the runaway teens of the title. Unlike Buffy, the Runaways have no one to turn to for advice or to protect them. The group of friends are completely on their own, with only each other to depend on.

The central metaphor behind Runaways is a very simple idea. At some point in their lives, every teenager considers their parents to be evil. For Nico, Chase, Molly, Karolina, Gert, and Alex, their parents actually are evil. Living in Los Angeles, the families meet once a year at Alex’s house and the kids are forced to interact with each other while their parents discuss their charity plans. Alex convinces the older kids to join him in spying on their parents’ meeting. What they see is the murder of a young woman by Alex’s father, and they find out that their parents are actually a secret cabal of supervillains named the Pride. As the Pride, their parents are the secret crime lords of Los Angeles, (Vaughan makes clever use of Marvel’s tendency to set all their comics in New York; there are no local superheroes to fight the Pride.)

The teens go on the run, trying to find a way to end their parents’ criminal empire. Each except for Alex discovers secret powers or artefacts that their parents had hidden from them. Nico discovers that her parents are dark magicians and that she has inherited their magical ability. Chase finds out that his parents are mad scientists. Gert realizes that her parents are time travellers and she unlocks a genetically engineered Deinonychus-like dinosaur her parents had bought for her in case she was ever in danger. She names her new dinosaur, Old Lace. Karolina has to deal with the shocking revelation that her family are aliens who have been hiding out on Earth her whole life and that her abilities had been kept suppressed by her parents. Molly Hayes, the youngest of the group, discovers that she’s actually a mutant and is gifted with super-strength (with the minor drawback that using her power tires her out and she needs to take a nap to regain her strength.)

They discover that the police are on the payroll of the Pride and they are unable to get in contact with any of the established Marvel superheroes. The first volume of Runaways follows the conflict between the Pride and their children. The story climaxes with a twist as shocking as Angel becoming Angelus in Buffy Season Two. Alex, the de-facto leader of the Runaways, turns out to have been a mole for the Pride the whole time. Alex had been subtly manipulating the other kids throughout the series. The ending finally brings to an end the Pride’s criminal empire and the Runaways are split up and sent to foster homes by Captain America.

The influence of Joss Whedon is apparent throughout Vaughan’s work on Runaways. The cast challenges the traditional superhero team set-up. Superhero teams have traditionally been dominated by male characters, often containing only one or two token female characters. The Runaways gang is instead dominated by females, with Chase and Alex being the only two males in the original line up. Vaughan’s dialogue in the comic is as funny and witty as the dialogue in the Whedonverse while still sounding natural coming from the mouths of teens (plus one pre-teen.) Whedon himself is referenced in a story-arc where the Runaways are in a fight with a vampire. Joss Whedon was so impressed by the comic that he wrote a fan letter published in the last issue of Volume One, decrying the seeming end of Runaways.

In Vaughan’s run throughout Volume Two of Runaways, the group reunite and run away from the foster homes (and Molly from the Xavier Institute) they’d been placed in. They try to combat the supervillains and organized crime moving into Los Angeles to fill the void left by the Pride as a means of making up for their parents’ crimes. Now led by Nico, the Runaways have a problematic relationship with their new role as superheroes. The team doesn’t wear costumes or use codenames. Rather than having a rallying cry like “Avengers Assemble!” or “Flame On!” the closest equivalent they have is “Try not to die.”

The group pick up two other runaways, Xavin, a Skrull warrior who had been promised Karolina’s hand in marriage, and Victor, a half-robot teen created by one of the Avengers’ greatest enemies. The team experiences the tragedy of losing one of their own, a death which still haunts the team. Vaughan and Alphona finished their work with Runaways in 2007. Their run ends with the team on the run from Los Angeles following a confrontation with Iron Man, who had taken leadership of the government registration of superheroes as part of the Civil War storyline.

Marvel enlisted the services of Runaways’ highest-profile fan, Joss Whedon, to take over writing chores. Teaming up with artist Michael Ryan, Whedon would be the first writer after Vaughan to write the Runaways in their own book (although they had appeared in a team up with The Young Avengers). Their six-issue story arc, entitled Dead End Kids began in Runaways 25. The story follows the Runaways as they escape to New York and meet up with the Kingpin, Daredevil’s arch-nemesis and a former business associate of their parents. They’re tasked with stealing a piece of technology that turns out to have been made by Gert’s time-travelling parents. The Runaways are forced to use the technology to escape an attack and find themselves sent back in time to 1907.

Dead End Kids is recognizably Whedonesque, dealing with the ongoing themes found throughout his work. The entire story is structured around a doomed love affair between a Runaway and a girl from the 1900s. Karolina also has to deal with the unsavoury aspects of the 1900s when she discovers Klara, a young girl forced to work in a factory. The dialogue is recognizably Whedon, but still sounds in character for the Runaways. A highlight is when Victor admonishes Molly for punching the Punisher, telling her that she should have known from his name that he has no superpowers: “What, you think he’s got some sort of punishy force?”

Dead End Kids also gives Whedon the opportunity to contribute something to the wider Marvel universe. By taking the Runaways back to 1907 New York, Whedon is given the opportunity to create an entire new set of characters. For example, 1907 New York is protected by a superhero team named the Upward Path that includes the Difference Engine (a steampunk robot), Black Maria (one of Nico’s ancestors), and Adjudicator (a 1907 version of Punisher). While stranded in 1907, the Runaways are taken in by a group known as The Street Arabs, a group of superpowered people living in New York. In Dead End Kids, Whedon creates a whole raft of new characters for the 1907 timeframe. Any future Marvel creators looking to tell stories dealing with the time period will be able to make use of Whedon’s contributions to the shared universe.

Runaways also allows for Whedon to look at the Marvel Universe from a skewed perspective and introduce some of his idiosyncrasies to established characters. In an interview to promote his run, Whedon described Runaways as “the new voice of the Marvel Universe because it thinks the Marvel Universe is a bunch of old guys, and treats them accordingly.” Whedon’s Kingpin interrupts his inner monologue to consider his love of chocolate and is pitied by Molly because he probably has Glands. Rather than being a badass, the Punisher comes off as a psychopathic jerk and like his earlier incarnation is willing to kill in order to punish the perpetrators of minor crimes. He’s humbled by a punch from a 12-year-old girl. Whedon, like Vaughan uses the Runaways to poke fun at the conventions of the Marvel Universe. One panel showing a brawl between superheroes and villains in 1907 resembles the fights between superheroes in Civil War, a war the Runaways purposefully tried to avoid.

Following Dead End Kids, Runaways was again relaunched, this time with Terry Moore writing and Humberto Ramos on art. Their run was not particularly well received. The follow-up story arc written by Kathryn Immonen and drawn by Sara Pichelli was better received by critics and fans, but unfortunately lagging sales led to the cancellation of the title. Runaways is now in creative limbo, currently unused at Marvel. However, plans are underway to adapt Runaways as a feature film. Hopefully the upcoming film will spark a revival of the series in the comic medium.