Runaways Volume 09 review

I'm not a big fan of superhero comics. The sprawling contuity and back story is one problem, as is the constant shift of writer and artist, but mostly it's because they're just silly. I like Batman in the movies, where he fights criminals and super villains who seem as if they could actually exist. I like the X-Men films because they introduce one fantastic element- a genetic mutation that grants super powers- and build the entire plot, villains and all, on that concept. I liked Superman Returns because Superman was fighting a human opponent and himself and kryptonite were the only sci-fi elements present, both of which came from a single source.

But contrast that to the comics, where Batman is suddenly running around in a garish purple suit he got in another universe or something, the X-Men fight freaking aliens and Superman stumbles into five alternate dimensions every time he trips over the mantle and all of this is crossed over with five hundred other stories, all of which are just as wierd and ouch my brain hurts.

More so than the inability of super hero stories to focus on one damn story at a time, it's just impossible to take the characters seriously. I cannot feel any empathy with someone who calls themselves [insert animal/concept]man and who runs around all day in a skintight latex outfit. Now you might say that the movies I just claimed to like suffer the same problem, but they also go to great lengths to make their characters seem more human. Movie Wolverine feels like a real person, whereas comic Wolverine feels like, well, Wolverine.

Which is why I love Runaways. There's all sorts of crazy shit going on here- aliens, time travel, robots, mutants, you name it, this series has it, but it's established right from the beginning that the story is going to be a melting pot of different concepts. You don't start off with a comic about, say, a super hero with the ability to control electricity fighting gangs (why yes I have been playing inFamous) and then suddenly there are aliens invading for no apparent reason. The aliens were always there, as were the time travellers and the evil geniuses and what have you, so it's no great surprise when the biblical giants come along.

But the big reason I like Runaways is because the characters are real people, not super heroes. They refer to each other by their real names and wear ordinary clothes. They're teenagers with super powers, not super powers awkwardly shoved into a human frame.

With that rather long winded introduction over, lets look at the latest volume of Runaways!