Hello and welcome to Comic Drake, where I talk about comic books and my name is Drake.
The Runaways is a very interesting series in that a lot of people who don’t read comic
books actually have picked this one up and read it, but for those of you who aren’t
familiar with the team or have only read the first volume, I’m going to try to take their
ENTIRE history and condense it down into something a little bit more manageable.
It’s going to be an undertaking, but let’s dive in!
The Runaways are a group of teenage superheroes made up of, you guessed it, kids who ran away
from home, but... they do actually have a good reason for it because THEIR PARENTS ARE
SUPERVILLIANS!
These parents make up “The Pride” which is a criminal organization that rules the
underground of Los Angeles.
When the kids discover their parents’ sinister alter egos, they run away from home, find
out what makes each of them special in their own right, and give themselves ridiculous
code names.
Let’s run down the list.
First up is Nico Minoru A.K.A.
“Sister Grimm”.
She’s the daughter of dark wizards.
She has “The Staff of One”, a magic relic that comes out of her chest when she bleeds
that allows her to cast powerful spells, but only one time each.
Karolina Dean A.K.A.
“Lucy in the Sky” is the daughter of an alien couple from a race known as the (I guarantee
I’m going to mispronounce this) Majesdanians.
I guess it’s like majestic?
Majesdanians?
I don’t know…
Her true alien form can be hidden by wearing a special medical alert bracelet, but when
it’s removed, she essentially becomes living energy.
Karolina is able to fly and manipulate solar energy including, but not limited to energy
blasts and force fields.
Next up is Chase Stein A.K.A.
“Talkback”.
He’s the idiot son of two mad scientists whom he stole a pair of X-Ray specs from along
with the Fistigons, powerful gauntlets that can manipulate fire.
He’s also the team pilot, transporting them around in a massive all terrain vessel called
the Leapfrog.
That brings us to the youngest of the group, Molly Hayes A.K.A.
“Bruiser” or “Princess Powerful”.
She’s the daughter of two evil mutants and although she’s small, Molly has insane super
strength, but does have to sleep immediately after exerting herself.
There’s also Gertrude Yorks, the daughter of time travelers.
Gert’s parents got her a dinosaur from the 87th century that she shares a psychic connection
with.
Gert decided to name herself “Arsenic” and the dinosaur “Old Lace” after an old
play.
Finally, that leaves Alex WIlder, the son of non powered criminal masterminds.
Alex was the only member of the team to not get anything special and instead, he acted
as their tactician and team leader.
And yes, while Alex was the only member of the team to not get a code name, it doesn’t
really matter since the entire team basically got rid of them all together.
Most of the first volume deals with the team discovering their abilities and figuring out
how to take down their parents, but they still have time to fight evil vampires, escape from
superheroes trying to bring them in, and of course, good old teenage romance.
The OTPs are Alex and Nico followed by Chase and Gert who got together after a LOT of sexual
tension.
The Runaways series is a great coming of age story, but ultimately coalesces at the climax
where it’s revealed that their parents are actually working for... giant evil god…
things?
Aaaaaand despite leading the team, it turns out that Alex was working with their parents
the entire time and betrayed the entire team.
The remaining Runaways were able to disrupt the ritual that their parents were performing
for the evil gods who needless to say were not fans of that.
Alex was killed off by the gods and in a fit of parental love, the Pride gave their lives
so that their children could escape.
Immediately upon escaping though, the Runaways were found by Captain America who went public
with their story and put them into foster homes which…
they instantly ran away from.
It’s almost as if The Runaways are good at being runaways.
Who'd've thought?
Anyway, the team decided to strike it out on their own outside of the law in one of
their parents’ old bases.
Things went pretty well until a future version of Gertrude comes back in time to warn the
team of a powerful villain named Victor Mancha and then she immediately dies.
To prevent this, The Runaways kidnap Victor before he can become a bad dude, but it turns
out that Victor is a pretty stand up guy despite the fact that he can’t really control his
electrical powers.
Oh yeah, they’re also being tracked by a super team called Excelsior, but honestly,
they’re not very important.
It turns out that Victor is the “son” of the killer robot, Ultron, and was designed
to be a sleeper agent against his will.
Victor was meant to believe that he was a normal kid that developed powers on his own
and he was obsessed with joining the Avengers.
When he finally does (because well literally everybody becomes an Avenger at some point),
his true programming would kick in and Victor would take them out from the inside.
When all of this is revealed, Victor’s mother would not let Ultron take her son away so
naturally, the evil robot killed her.
This prompts Victor and the Runaways to take out Ultron because let’s face it, pretty
much every creation of Ultron does turn against him.
With nowhere to go, Vic became an official member of the team.
Pretty soon after, Karolina comes out as a lesbian to Nico who... rejects her (because
well… she’s straight) but get this.
AS SOON AS SHE WAS TURNED DOWN, a Super-Skrull in training named Xavin shows up claiming
that Karolina’s parents arranged a marriage between them.
Yeah, the plots move very fast in this series.
Well, Karolina tells Xavin that she likes girls and bing, bang, boom, Xavin shape shifts
into a woman, Karolina instantly falls in love, and the two go into space to get married
after only talking for like five minutes tops.
Don’t worry thought because after a small tussle with the Avengers, Karolina and Xavin
do come back from space just in time to help fight a new version of the Pride.
Okay so get this.
The New Pride is made up of Alex Wilder’s old friends from an MMO that they all played.
They decided to try and perform a ritual that would bring Alex through time a split second
before he was killed which would then save his life.
That backfired and they actually summoned a younger version of Alex’s dad who took
over as the New Pride’s leader.
Under Mr. Wilder’s leadership, the New Pride became a serious threat despite their lack
of powers and managed to not only destroy The Runaways’ hideout, but they also managed
to kill Gert who passed on her psychic connection with Old Lace onto her boyfriend, Chase.
The Runaways were able to take out the New Pride, but this victory was kind of hollow
since without a home, the team had to make do camping out or sleeping on the Leepfrog
and the loss of his girlfriend made Chase go kind of insane.
In fact, after a brief team-up with the Young Avengers during the superhuman Civil War,
Chase almost sacrificed himself to the giant gods that his parents worked for in order
to bring Gertrude back.
That didn’t work out and the Runaways ended up working for The Kingpin which led to them
traveling back in time where they rescued Klara Prast, a mutant with the ability to
control plants...
Because comics.
With Klara joining the Runaways roster back in the present, the team teamed up with the
Young Avengers once again in order to help out fight off the Skrull’s Secret Invasion.
However, after things calmed down after the Secret Invasion, The Runaways moved into the
last remaining Pride headquarters, but were attacked by a the few remaining Majesdanians.
Majesdanians.
Macadamia Nuts.
Aliens.
They blamed Karolina’s parents for the death of their home planet and since they were dead
well…
Karolina was chosen to be put on trial in their place.
However, Xavin took Karolina’s place by shapeshifting into her and hasn’t really
been seen since.
Anyway, after a brief and honestly underwhelming storyline about radio zombies, The Runaways
ended pretty abruptly with an unmanned drone destroying their home and with Chase being
hit by a car, but he made a healthy off panel recovery.
If we’re going to be honest, after The Runaways Vol 2, the entire series kind of went downhill
and for a while, The Runaways only made brief appearances and cameos in books like Daken
and Avengers Academy, but nothing too serious.
If we’re going to be honest, The Runaways have basically disbanded during this era of
cameos, especially after Chase and Nico were brought into what was essentially Marvel’s
Hunger Games after which, things were never really quite the same.
The Runaways have all gone their separate ways, but the recently released and ongoing
revival of the series is aiming to bring the gang all back together and repair their relationships
and as of the time of this recording, the book is actually really good and totally worth
a read!
Now I know that all of this has been very broad strokes for the team because I’m going
to actually make a dedicated video for each of the major members and dive a little more
into their histories and their personal story arcs.
So if you like what you saw here then you might want to subscribe and take a look for
when those come out or if you’re watching this in the future then they’re probably
already out so you should watch them.
But if you liked this video then you probably like younger heroes.
So why not watch my video that I did on the complete history of Batman Beyond?
I go from the animated series to the spin off comics and WAY beyond for an awesome in-depth
video.
Hopefully I’ll see you there and hopefully I’ll see you next time!