Runaways

In Runaways #1, Noelle Stevenson and Sanford Greene take the bare bones premise of a teen film like The Breakfast Club or even the original Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona Runaways series of highschoolers from different backgrounds stuck together and adds more physical conflict, jokes, and a less white bread cast of characters. It’s nice to hear two teens have an honest conversation about being bisexual that sounds natural (and maybe a tad flirty) and not like an after school special. Filled to the brim with sparkling personalities and dialogue, comedic mayhem, and spot-on character designs, Runaways #1 is a great, non-traditional addition to the teen superhero genre.

As Joseph Heller wrote in Catch-22, “Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.” The Strain is difficult to categorize. The cynical part of me thinks it was born mediocre and I’ve just been expecting too much from it. Perhaps this was always where we would end up, with Holocaust flashbacks and a sense that this isn’t what we signed up for.