I know I’m late to the party (again) but I finally read the first volume of Rainbow Rowell’s Runaways comic book series and I have to share the Squee! Volume #1: Find Your Way Home collects Issues #1-6 of Rowell’s run. I loved this comic when it first originated with Brian K. Vaughan as the writer. I followed his stories and the subsequent Joss Whedon run but stopped after the Whedon run concluded. I’m overjoyed that Rainbow Rowell and artist Kris Anka have captured everything I love about this series.

By the way, I’ve never seen the TV show. This commentary only applies to the comics.

The original premise of Runaways was that, while most teens believe that their parents are evil, six teens find out that their parents really areevil. They also discover that many of them (the teens) have super powers, and one of the teens, Gert, establishes a mental link with a genetically engineered Deinonychus named ‘Old Lace.’ Various traumas occur to various team members and by the time the Rainbow Rowell comics start, most of the characters are around 18-21 years old, and the initial conflict (kids vs parents) has been resolved, leaving the team scattered and their goals undefined.

Find Your Way Home opens with an intense sequence involving magic and time travel, and ends with an action sequence involving psychic cats, but most of the plot consists of characters talking to each other (and to themselves) about who and where they think they want to be in this new stage of their lives.

I love this comic for the themes of found family and for the generous mix of humor and zaniness among the action and heartbreak. In Find Your Way Home, Gert wants to “get the gang back together” which means that the characters have decide if they still want to be part of the group, and what that might look like now that the characters are older and are facing new challenges. These challenges include PTSD, grief, survivor guilt, and, in the case of Victor, the fact that he exists only as a cybernetic head. The challenges also include mind-reading cats and a mad scientist grandmother, of whom Molly, the youngest Runaway, says, “She says I’m ‘the triumphant culmination of a lifetime of experimentation.’ She said it in a grandma way! There were cookies!”

Runaways is also notable for having an inclusive cast. As of Find Your Way Home, two of the team members are male (Chase and Victor). Chase is White and Victor is Hispanic and also a cyborg. Karolina is White (and also an alien), and a lesbian. Nico, who is Asian, is bisexual. Gert is ethnically Jewish and slightly overweight. While the members of the team change periodically, there are always more girls than boys on the team, and they all have realistic body shapes. I won’t spoil who will be joining the team in the near future except to say that this person is African-American (the original line up had one to two African American members depending on the Issue).

The kids don’t wear costumes and although they tried out code names (Gert was ‘Arsenic,’ he code names never stuck. They aren’t even officially known as ‘The Runaways.’ They are just a group of kids and also a dinosaur, who banded together for survival and became family. They also have a lot of romantic tension within the group. Nico and Karolina were together at one point, and so were Gert and Chase, and at one point Gert was with Victor, and now Karolina is with Julie Power.  Rowell is really good at unpacking all these relationships and the fall out from them without letting them completely take over the comic.

Based on my experience, you should be able to jump into this series with the Rowell run. There are two volumes out now which collect Issues #1-12. Rowell comes up with a way to get enough exposition across that a new reader can be comfortable diving in. This also applies to readers like myself, who liked the series back in the day but since then have forgotten everything except the dinosaur. This series works for teens and adults. In the past, the heartbreaking bits have been REALLY heartbreaking and I expect more of the same.

Fair warning! In the meantime, enjoy the snark. It goes well with cookies.