Nico Minoru Archives

Before Saga and Ex Machina (and early in Y: The Last Man), Brian K. Vaughan’s Runaways was a blast of pure, bright imagination (still with sinister undertones) in 2003, as Marvel was succeeding with imaginative reboots and Mature Readers updates. The initial, self-contained run about a group of teens thrust together as they flee a deadly secret is a perfect book to introduce new fans to reading comics.

Runaways by Brian K. Vaughan is the #44 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017 on Tigereyes’s Secret Ballot. Visit the Marvel Masterworks Message Board to view the original posting of results by Tigereyes. And, check out the Guide to the Runaways to track down every single issue.

Past Ranking: A 2017 debut!

Probable Contents: Collects Runaways (2003) #1-18 & Runways (2005) #1-24.

A second volume would be “Runaways by Joss Whedon, Terry Moore, & Kathryn Immonen” – check out 12 Must-Read Marvel Runs (that ought to be an omnibus) – 1998 to 2008 to see my predicted contents.

Creators: Writer Brian K. Vaughan and penciller Adrian Alphona created the team, with Alphona alternating art duties with Takeshi Miyazawa (宮沢武史) with inkers David Newbold and Craig S. Yeung.

(If those pencillers sound familiar, it’s because they are also the team on G. Willow Wilson’s ultra-popular Ms Marvel.)

Both pencillers are initially colored by Brian Reber, with Christina Strain taking over from issue #8 and remaining with the team across all of their runs.

Can you read it right now? Yes!

Runaways might be Marvel’s most thoroughly-reprinted series of the modern era outside of Grant Morrison’s New X-Men! You can get it in original hardcovers and paperbacks, oversize hardcover, pocket-sized digests, and hefty Complete Collection paperbacks – all as described in the Guide to the Runaways to track down every single issue. It’s also available in full on Marvel Unlimited!

The Details:

Runaways is about a group of unwitting teen heroes finding their powers and themselves amidst an unravelling mystery about their families.

Notice I didn’t call them a “team.”

Brian K. Vaughan and artist Adrian Alphona created a cast who were teenagers first and superheroes second. Or third. Or maybe not at all. [Read more…] about Runaways by Brian K. Vaughan – The #44 Most-Wanted Marvel Omnibus of 2017

The definitive, chronological, and up-to-date guide on collecting Runaways comic books via omnibuses, hardcovers, and trade paperback graphic novels. A part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated November 2024 with titles scheduled for release through January 2025.

The Runaways are a unique gift to the Marvel Universe from author Brian K. Vaughan, who would later write such modern classics of the medium as Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina, and Saga.

The Runaways are are a team that are not a team and a heroes that don’t mean to be heroes. They’re just kids – regular, average kids. They aren’t even friends with each other.

Instead, they are thrust together by the insane circumstance of their parent’s plotting. Some of them discover inherent powers they were never aware of, while others inherit special artifacts or technology, but they are kids first and super-powered teens second.

Over time that initial direction has faded, new cast members have been added, and the Runaways have begun to make more connections across the Marvel Universe.

Yet, part of the continuing gift of the Runaways – and part of why their new connections are so interesting – is that they never needed to be in the Marvel Universe in order to exist. Vaughan could have just as easily penned them as a creator-owned title. It’s surprising he did not, as Marvel was long since out of the game of creating new teams of characters wholesale without attaching them to another franchise.

As a result, the Runaways cast offers something magical every time they do bump up against a Marvel stalwart. Those characters seem more fantastical to the Runaways than they do to us as readers, which in turn helps us to see them with new eyes.

Over time, these random characters thrust together and forced to be friends and occasional heroes have transformed into Marvel’s most-modern family – a family of that chose each other, and will support each other until the end.