The Runaways are back—well, sorta-kinda. Doctor Doom’s reign as Earth’s emperor disrupted life across the globe, and the Runaways were no exception. Runaways: Think of the Children compiles issues 1-5 of One World Under Doom: Runaways. This comes from the creative minds of Rainbow Rowell, Elena Casagrande, Roberta Ingranata, Lee Ferguson, Dee Cunniffe, VC’s Travis Lanham, and Michelle Marchese, and it’s been collected by Jennifer Grünwald, Daniel Kirchhoffer, Lisa Montalbano, Stacie Zucker, Jay Bowen, and Adam Del Re over at Marvel Comics. Neither the world nor the Runaways know that Doom’s reign will end imminently, but that still means they have to survive long enough to see it!
Of late, life has been somewhat calm for the Runaways, despite it also being one of their most disassembled eras. As the most recent author to pen an ongoing Runaways series, Rowell has the rare opportunity to pick the group up almost right where she left them. Karolina’s recuperating off-planet, and Chase is in a post-apocalyptic future with an alternate Gert. Molly, Gib, Gert, and Victor remain together under the care of Doombot, while Nico works a non-magical day job to pay their bills. That is, until other Doombots come knocking. Emperor Doom’s efforts to consolidate power hold strong until the very end, and one such project is to reclaim all the Doombots that were “misplaced” before Doom rose to absolute power over the planet. One of these lost sheep just so happens to be cooking up a hearty goulash at the Runaways’ Hostel.
Between the group’s reduced numbers and Nico’s separation from the Staff of One, playing defense against waves of Doombots poses quite the challenge. What follows is a mad scramble for survival. Time machines, teleportation spells, and Leapfrog hops ferry the heroic outcasts from safe house to safe house across LA county. Along the way, missing members of the Runaways begin to reappear. Chase Stein returns first, resentful about his trip to the future, but he remains tight-lipped about the details. Karolina Dean narrowly misses the group’s initial escape, but her arrival at the Hostel intersects with that of another missing Runaway, Alex Wilder. Not alive but not undead either, the Runaways’ long-lost traitor proves helpful by aiding Karolina’s search for the others. The reunions in this book range from awkward to adorable, and they just might give the gang enough of an edge against the Doombot horde.
The economy of storytelling in this miniseries cannot be undersold. The full plot takes place in less than a full day, but the book is never weighed down. Instead, the creative team feels excited to check in with each character while running at full speed. Nico, Gert, and Doombot have the fuller arcs, but there’s plenty effort put into seeding further narratives for the full cast. What happened to Chase and Future Gert? Why did Karolina come back to Earth? What has Alex been up to in that Doc Justice disguise? How does this sympathetic magic between Gert and Nico even work? There’s a giddy energy that this limited series has for all these questions, even if it only has time to ask and not answer.
Marvel
The hard limit on this book comes at the close of issue #5. The plot to protect Doombot from his maker may have been completed, but it seems clear that Rowell’s break from writing these characters has only given her even more ideas. It’s a book that is bursting at the seams in the best way; a miniseries begging to become a full-fledged ongoing title. Sadly, this has not yet come to pass, and there’s no word from Marvel on any further Runaways’ revivals in the immediate future. We can only hope that this changes soon.
The art of Think of the Children flows so smoothly, which speaks to some serious talent and coordination. Series color artist Cunniffe has an unenviable position, as color consistency can make or break the balance between various inking artists in a collection. On top of that, Cunniffe is not simply tasked with coloring different inks issue-by-issue, but instead marries one ink artist with another within each issue itself (three artists, in the case of issue #4). In the face of all that, Cunniffe’s colors never feel diluted or compromised. The rich pink hue of Nico and Gert’s new spell dynamic is especially nice. Artists Casagrande, Ingranata, and Ferguson shoulder their side of the burden successfully as well, and the attention devoted to face acting is so appreciated when the Runaways relies so highly on such emotive characters.
Echoing some of my earlier sentiments, it’s a loss that this series is not a launchpad for a new Runaways series. That’s not so much a flaw of the book but a flaw in comics publishing that so many of us are tired of seeing again and again. In terms of in-book problems, there aren’t many. The one worth noting is the splash page near the beginning of issue #1. It’s not a flaw when you can flatten it out as a floppy single issue, but the formatting of the trade version eats the middle of the image away, heavily undercutting the scene at play. Those are really the only things that didn’t sit right with me.
Runaways: Think of the Children has so much heart for all of its cast, especially the one with no biological heart. It’s a fun, energetic check-in with the whole Runaways roster that moves each of their stories forward in dynamic ways over the course of a single night. The real criticism here is that this team behind this book didn’t get a green light to keep going (there’s still time to change that, Marvel!). For fans and newcomers, this trade is a treat worth buying.
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