I’ve been going through the backlog of comics I’ve been
meaning to read lately, and I’ve hit a wealth of good stories in the process.
So far, they’ve all been pretty great, but some have definitely been better
than others. So, in my never ending quest to pick apart the things I like and
figure out why I like them, I’m going to try and do that with two of the
stories I’ve been reading.
Runaways and Young Avengers are thankfully two of the
easiest comics to compare. The pair share a lot of themes-a group of superpowered
teenagers brought together to combat the ills of the older generations-and even
crossed over a few times. And as a heads up here, when I talk about the Young
Avengers, I’m talking about the original run, written by Allan Heinberg in 2005
(I’m still working through Kieron Gillen’s 2013 run, which I may write about
later).
In either case, upon finishing the first volume of Young Avengers, I was left feeling…a
little empty, I suppose. It was a fine run, don’t get me wrong. But seeing it
crossed-over with Runaways had me
hoping that it was as good as the latter series, while it was…not quite. I
would actually say that it was about on par with the crossover issues, which I
had always found to be a little weaker than the main Runaways stories. Which made me wonder: where did Runaways go right, that took it from
“pretty good” to “one of my favorite things that I’ve read”?