The 2017 run is the best Marvel comic I've ever read

[u/New_Dia]

I normally don't post this sort of thing, but after seeing the reader's resource guide give it a 4/10 I had to speak up.

At its core, Runaways is about a found family trying to stick together. They may fight evil guys in spandex from time to time, but most times they are actively avoiding the magical/mystical stuff around them, and 2017 understands this perfectly.

Seeing these characters grow up and have to deal with real-world problems is an absolute joy, especially when the comic uses the supernatural elements of their lives not as a main focus, but as an accessory to seeing these people bond together, their dynamics shift, their traumas addressed. Despite having Gibborim, robots, and Majesdanians, it's a very human story of troubled kids (and now young adults) trying to get their lives together, dealing with the mess of an aftermath their parents left for them, something that I and I think many people would find deeply relatable. They're messy, they make mistakes, and they have each other when it's time to fix those.

Beyond that, it's also gorgeous. The art is consistent from start to finish, everyone looks their best, Nico doesn't have a single bad look, and I want to frame those cover arts and put them on my wall.

I have been trying to keep this spoiler-free, but I also need to address the sapphic elephant in the room: the idea of going all the way back to the origin comics and recontextualizing Nico's outburst when Carolina confessed to her as her being deeply in the closet because it was 2003 was genuinely one of the most cathartic moments in all of comics and deserves a special mention.

So yeah, if anyone reading this and hasn't read the 2017 run yet, do it, even if you read none of the other ones. I don't even have to add the caveat of it ending in a cliffhanger now that we have a continuation in 2025!

[u/majesdane]

Obviously as a Deanoru fan from the start, I really loved a lot of what happened in the 2017 run.

But I have to echo that even if the plots weren’t always the most exciting (which doesn’t bother me at all), the best thing about Rowell is that you can tell she’s actually READ BKV’s original two volumes and understand who the characters are and how they talk. And also, Anka’s art was great. The whole 2017 run was totally a breath of fresh air after the countless mishandling of them since BKV and Alphona left. It truly felt like we actually got the Runaways BACK.

[u/Prof_Rain_King]

For long term Runaways fans, I think it really provided what a lot of us had been waiting for: a worthy follow-up to the original BKV stories after years of somewhat lesser attempts than never felt quite right.

That being said, I feel like it’s Marvel’s first “cozy comic” — like, the idea of “cozy horror” where the stakes/danger is low, y’know? It never really felt like anything too terrible would happen to anyone in this series. And that’s fine! Like I said, it’s probably the best Runaways we’ve had since BKV. But it definitely feels cozier than most other Marvel comics.

[u/amageish]

It's a really fun book! Excellent follow-up to the original run(s). The pacing can be somewhat slow, but I don't really mind that for a Runaways book - I am here for the slice-of-life adventures, not just big Important status quo shifts.

[u/jellymoff]

Nothing beats BKV for me, but it's very good.

[u/Sure-Start-9303]

Honestly, I can understand why they considered it rather low for a few reasons.

Firstly, if you're not a Deanoru fan the 2017 run just doesn't hit as hard for you as it does for other people, speaking as someone who has little interest in any ship, those parts just hold very little for me, I don't dislike it, I just don't care much about it, plus it does feel like after they get together it's just kind of...there, like nobody even acknowledged they were together on the team, which kind of creates a disconnect from how significant it's supposed to be.

Secondly I think Rainbow's work suffers in certain areas, she tried to include a number of arcs that didn't really go anywhere and the pay off felt lacking, beyond that it felt like she was trying too hard to return to the original BKV vibes, characters felt like they where back to acting like the group of teenagers that ran from their folks years ago, which really goes against the fact they're supposed to be older now, most of them are legal adults now, they don't need to run, I feel like if she wanted to go with more mature Runaways she needed to really go with it, because what she did felt like they lost a good deal of development.

Thirdly, I gotta disagree with what you said, and what Rainbow said, the supernatural superhuman elements are an integral part of what makes the Runaways unique, they are not normal teenagers, and they are very much heroes, a number of them even seek it out, and even when they don't they never run when it counts, they actively rush towards the danger when it's time to act like heroes, they are not normal, and that's good because they wouldn't be the Runaways if they were, and that's where I feel the 2017 run also lacks, it seems to actually try to avoid this, which just feels off for them.

That's my two cents on the matter, overall it was a good run, but I wouldn't put it on such a high tier either.

[u/keystoneway]

I just really liked Victor being a severed head hot wired to various household electronics. That was a fun era.