If you aren’t reading Marvel’s Runaways, you should be shot in the street and lit on fire… that, or you should consider purchasing and reading it.

I’m usually completely turned off by all things Marvel (even though I’m collecting the entire Civil War series, including tie-ins… can you say hypocrite?) thus I refused to buy in to the Runaways hype. However, after being berated by my local comic shop for not keeping up with Runaways, I finally broke down and bought the first volume.

I am a moron. I had become so jaded with Marvel that I let me hatred for their spin doctoring blind me when it came to Runaways… but no more! I read the first volume of Runaways in only a few hours… I simply could not put it down. I went back to the comic shop as soon as I could and purchased volume two and ran with that one as well. Last night I finished off volume 3 and I’m planning on making a trip to the shop to purchase volume 4 today.

The series is about 6 kids who run away from home and fight against their parents whom they discover some deep dark secrets about. In volumes 1 – 3 the kids learn things about themselves (don’t want to give to much away) and try to fight back against their parents.
That’s all I’m saying about plot, it’s really worth reading and discovering on your own.

Runaways really reminds me of Japanese Manga, however it is an American comic. I was biased against this type of fusion art and story telling until this series… it just works so well.

The cool thing about this comic is even though it takes place within the Marvel universe, it does so in a very quiet way. Sure, there are references to Spider-Man and the Avengers and many other super heroes, but they all seem light years away from the events taking place within the pages of the Runaways. This is a good thing, because Runaways wouldn’t fit in to the traditional Marvel mold.

The dialogue is wonderful, the story is cool, and the art is beautifully done. I’m even going to go in an opposite direction of my usual comments and say that the color is well done, even though it has a computer feel (gradients, flares etc.)… but in this case it just works.

If you have missed this series, get on the boat now… but don’t dive in with the latest issue. Go back and buy the graphic novels. Marvel has done a great job here as well, because they release this series in digest format (the traditional size of manga comics) and price each graphic novel at $7.99.