okay, this is starting to get a little Eyes Wide Shut...

Runaways #1 (2003)

Chosen by me from my shelf because I reviewed the brand new Runaways (in good shops and others like mine right now) yesterday.

Covert art by Jo Chen

What if you found out your parents were supervillains?

Such a great simple hook. And the amount of kids whose eyes would light up when I told them that was the premise to sell the small manga-ish digest they used to publish was amazing.

Part of a Marvel initiative called Tsunami (terrible name) designed to combat the increasing market share of the massive influx of Japanese and korean books appearing in America, this was the only real lasting success (though Mystique and Sentinel were very good) even if it struggled to sell month to month (it was cancelled and relaunched within it's first couple of years).

The first issue is the usual strong Brian K. Vaughn start. He elegantly and concisely introduces each of the six kids and their parents so that they are all immediately distinct and unique. Not just from each other but also within their position in the general Marvel Universe.

Ably partnered with Adrian Alphona, on one of his first comic books, his art is crisp and  Christina Strain's colours bright and poppy setting this up as a sunny california cousin to the normal east coast super-hero shenanigans.

And a kicker of a cliffhanger (another Vaughn staple) that even I, who has read it many times before, had to continue on for a few pages before doing this review.