I'm no fan of Brian K. Vaughn. I though Y was to Garth Ennis's Preacher what a white suburban kid's version of punk would be; Ex Machina was too dumb to live; and Ultimate X-Men betrayed crucial problems with craft.
So I have no idea why I picked up volume 1 of Runaways while in Austin over the hurricane.
It's good. No, really. The art is charming and mostly effective (although there are enough parents that I had trouble keeping track of which parents matched to which kid, especially out of plainclothes). The kids are none of them whiny unlikable brats. Oh, they're not all admirable or thoughtfully mature, but none of them engender visceral dislike.
Vaughn's conquered most of his expositional demons. I was amazed, for example, that each of the five houses visited after the opening scene in order to introduce the other five sets of parents and kids were labeled with actual names; it's only mildly disappointing to go back to that first scene and the first family to note that, no, he didn't identify them.
The story itself is quite fun. Six kids, the offspring of six sets of parents, discover that their parents are, in fact, nefarious supervillains engaged in evil schemes, and they rebel. Volume 1 only sets things in motion, with the kids together and on the run, and just beginning to grasp their potential, as well as the threat arrayed against them.
It's been long enough since the Champions and the West Coast Avengers that I suppose I can accept a supervillainous cabal that no one's ever heard of appearing and taking over the city. Still, it verges on the sort of thing I've become reluctant to accept, the notion that there's been this big conspiracy all along and we've just now hearing of it, even though it would have been likely for the conspiracy to have appeared previously in universal continuity if it was so powerful and pervasive.
Anyway, there you go. I don't hate a BKV book. I'll be looking for volume 2.
Posted by Greg at October 23, 2008 11:57 AM
Having read five issues of Preacher and three of Y, I'm disinclined to delve too far into the realm of critquing either work, I will however take this opportunity to revive Mike's Arrogant Guide to Reviewing in a speical guest lecture. If you are going to make a comparison to other artforms, you have to make sure you know something about those forms. For example:
I'm no fan of Brian K. Vaughn. I though Y was to Garth Ennis's Preacher what a white suburban kid's version of punk would be
is an extremely odd statement. Given that Joey Ramone grew up in Forest Hills, Johnny Rotten was reared in North London, Lou Reed in Freeport, New York and Joe Strummer went to a boarding school in the English countryside, surely punk is a white suburban kid's version of punk?
I have to agree with Mr. Chary on this one. Punk wouldn't be punk without suburban dissatisfaction playing a major role. (And white is kind of a given, with very few notable exceptions.)
If you'd said "a white suburban kid's version of gangsta rap," I could get behind that.
Perhaps "the Disney marketing machine's version of punk", then.
"Rock rock rock rock rock 'n roll high school...."
The Disney marketing machine, yes, owns Beuna Viste Home Entertainment which, yes, released "Rock 'n Roll High School" starring The Ramones, the ultimate expression of the punk mind set. So, I say paraphrase myself and say "surely punk is the Disney marketing machine's version of punk."
Actually, a lot of Disney owned movies have some good punk music in them. Wes Anderson has a jones for the Stooges and the Faces (which were protopunk), for example.
In fact, I wrote 70 percent of a review of the Ramones boxset "Weird Tales of the Ramones" which is a good deal with 3 CDs, a DVD and a comic book featuring some top indy comics artists. Sadly, that review along with some other material was on an account that I no longer have access to. But the box set is worth checking out.
I'm lukewarm on Y--I thought it was something of a curate's egg--but I've been saying for years that Runaways is pretty consistently Vaughn's best work, and I think it's a shame it doesn't get more attention. I think that it's attracted less attention than Y because it's so unabashedly a superhero story and moderately deeply embedded in the Marvel universe (though not mired in continuity).
The fact that Y has an easily grasped high concept contributes to that as well, though I like the high concept that someone formulated for Runaways--"everyone thinks their parents are monsters, but these guys are right". But mostly it's a really good teens-as-outcast-supers book, the type of solid, down-the-middle book that has driven comics for the last forty-five years, and it's a very good one.
I always felt The Hood was Vaughan's best work, which I'm sure Bendis will find a way to accidentally destroy.
I enjoyed reading The Hood but it didn't stick with me--much like Vaughan's first notable work, a two-year run on Swamp Thing. Maybe when I reorganize my comics collection I'll take the opportunity to re-read it.