Vaughan, Brian K.
AVERAGE REVIEW SCORE:
4 out of 5
(1 book)
Runaways: Pride & Joy
(Art by Adrian Alphona, David Newbold and Craig Yeung)
A group of teenagers in L.A. decide to spy on their parents secret annual charity planning meeting but instead witness a shocking murder. When it becomes clear that their parents are supervillains, the Pride, the six teens decide to go on the run and attempt to bring their parents to justice.
I came to this book having seen the TV show (which I actually quite enjoyed for all its faults) and was pleased to see that, although many details are different, all of the core ideas that I loved are in place in the original incarnation of the story. The biggest and best idea here is how the story taps into that feeling that all teenagers have that the adults around them are keeping important facts of life from them. Here, of course, that hormone-fuelled feeling of being kept in the dark is turned up to eleven when it turns out that the secrets being kept are truly dark and evils ones. More than that, too, this story makes us wonder how we would react if we found out that our own trusted guardians were actually terrible people.
The characters are all really well-written too, each with their own conceits and neuroses, and all displaying the confusion and frustration that comes from being almost-but-not-quite adults. Add to that the development of superpowers and going to war with their own parents and Vaughan gives us a really compelling young superhero team.
And, if nothing else, there's a genetically-engineered velociraptor in the mix too.
4 out of 5