It took a while, but Joss Whedon’s run on Runaways has finally concluded. This was a story set in the early 1900s, where our time’s Runaways escaped the Punisher and Kingpin by going to the past - a New York filled with superhumans known as Wonders.
This was the strongest story arc so far, and I say this because Runaways so far has really lacked a direction. The characters, while original and unique, were thrust into a few situations and really, from that, haven’t grown or matured (Marvel needs to keep them “pure” to use them for another decade or so).
These guys are an example of manufactured emotion - without having years to develop characters and their relationships, the reader is told how the characters feel. For a series that passes itself off as a teen series, based in relationship drama, Runaways fell apart time after time because you could never really see why someone liked the other.
Runaways is more about gimmick than execution. The concepts of characters are original, and their gimmick carries the series. It wasn’t until this new arc, and hopefully this will continue in Tony Moore’s future story arc, that the characters stopped being shells of Dawson’s Creek and finally became comic characters with actual interpersonal mileage.
