Runaways Volume 5

Written by Brian K. Vaughan
Illustrated by Adrian Alphona, Takeshi Miyazawa, and Craig Yeung
Marvel

This time around Vaughan puts together a plot that lets our kids visit the place where (before Civil War) all the cool heroes hang out--New York!

As we open this volume, as with the first of the re-start, our heroes are out battling the latest villain to think that maybe it would be better to get away from New York, Swarm. Swarm's a lame-o Spidey villain with bees for brains--and everything else. He's soon dispatched so we can get to more trouble--a skrull wants one of the runaways as his bride-to-be! If she refuses, Earth may be destroyed! What's a young girl to do when proposed to by a super-skrull?

(Okay, perhaps a little issue with the idea of there being more than one super-skrull, but Vaughan is pretty good about making me okay with little changes as we go along. I can see there being more than one, especially given how much the skrulls crave power.)

We're just barely through that idea when out pops Cloak, claiming he's been framed. There's only one thing for the Runaways to do--ROAD TRIP! Soon they're in New York, clashing with the Avengers, having sushi with Spider-Man, and finding out that sometimes the truth is cloaked right below your nose. In the end, they save the day, but we're left with a teaser that more bad stuff is right on the horizon.

It's fun to see Vaughan play with the New Avengers, especially watching them try to "rescue" Molly and the scenes with Spidey are classic. He plays Cloak a little too softly, though, for my money. Cloak is borderline psychotic (part of why he'd be easily framed) most' of the other times we've seen him, but not so much here. I do like the idea of the fact that the drug dealers are still using things to give people superpowers, an idea that's been lost a bit in modern Marvel.

Again, I love Runaways, and you should, too.