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slimikin's review
3.0
Quite enjoyable until the Civil War stuff, which was a bit dicey at times (who're all these people, and why are their villains so melodramatic?!). And then Joss Whedon took over and did what he always does: create drama where it doesn't need to exist whilst completely ignoring all opportunities for subtler growth and drama where it already exists. I miss Vaughan, et al already....
Spoiler
At least Manic Pixie Dream Girl Lillie didn't join the team, and I have hopes that the relationship that had been developing so interestingly between Vic and Nico will get back on track once Whedon's mitts are off the controls.manwithanagenda's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
Crossovers are bound to happen, but for the most part I'd rather not have them. 'Runaways' continues to lose direction narratively and the characters are treading water. Perhaps the reboot is better.
Runaways
Next: 'Volume 4'
Previous: 'Volume 2'
Runaways
Next: 'Volume 4'
Previous: 'Volume 2'
thestylishreader's review
3.0
Full Disclosure: I did not read the Secret Invasion and Civil War Crossovers 1) because I haven't read either of those arcs and 2) because I just wanted to flow with the Runaways individual stories as best I could. Please forgive me.
That being said, I could tell the series was starting to loose steam by the time Whedon took over. It was slowing down so much the creative team had to make time travel the primary premise, and that's usually a signal of the end in a lot of series. While I wouldn't necessarily say the story dropped in quality, it did just seem sloppier in general with the writing, and the artists either didn't want or couldn't nail down a consistent look on a few characters, meaning I had to constantly look back and figure out who the heck that was in a panel....
Overall though, I am still in love with the characters. Rarely have I seen teen superheros so ironically human or "realistic," for lack of a better word. Even 10 years later...
That being said, I could tell the series was starting to loose steam by the time Whedon took over. It was slowing down so much the creative team had to make time travel the primary premise, and that's usually a signal of the end in a lot of series. While I wouldn't necessarily say the story dropped in quality, it did just seem sloppier in general with the writing, and the artists either didn't want or couldn't nail down a consistent look on a few characters, meaning I had to constantly look back and figure out who the heck that was in a panel....
Overall though, I am still in love with the characters. Rarely have I seen teen superheros so ironically human or "realistic," for lack of a better word. Even 10 years later...
myliterarylove's review
3.0
Think I'm going to take a break from Runaways.
It's usually a fun read, but I found this volume a bit annoying.
2.5 Stars
It's usually a fun read, but I found this volume a bit annoying.
2.5 Stars
tklassy's review
3.0
3.5 Stars.
I really enjoyed the ending but I found the beginning of this collection a little lacklustre; all over the place. The art as always was beautifully done but as previously stated was even better in the end. Overall, a good ending to a fun and colourful collection.
I really enjoyed the ending but I found the beginning of this collection a little lacklustre; all over the place. The art as always was beautifully done but as previously stated was even better in the end. Overall, a good ending to a fun and colourful collection.
audstruck's review
2.0
The first half of the book is much better than the second half. The second half gets messy and involves too many crossovers to really focus on the main characters. I wish BKV had stayed on until the end to keep the writing in tact and the story flowing.
Will still finish out the series though. I came this far...
Will still finish out the series though. I came this far...
jedi_indyjones's review
3.0
I began this third volume of The Runaways to prep for the final season on Hulu. I still have one more volume that I wanted to read, but I admit my steam is starting to run out on this series. It's been fun, but this volume wasn't enough to get me excited to read the next one. I am a big fan of Vaughan's and some cool stories were in this one, but I am thinking I might wait for a bit to read the next volume, if at all. I know this volume was kind of a mixed bag, with the stories being by different authors and artists, but that being said, I think I have had my fix for a while.
captwinghead's review
3.0
Better than the last but not by much.
More high school drama and I guess I'm gonna have to get used to that. They really gave Nico the worst romantic life in this series. Yikes. Poor girl.
Xavin is much better here although I question the writers just making them so willing to help the Runaways because of Karolina. Aside from Molly, and we'll get to her relationship with Xavin later, they're all quite mean and distrustful of Xavin. Before you start, I know, this was a gender fluid character in 2005, I shouldn't expect the writers to be super progressive. But that's complete bullshit. You took on the task of writing for a gender fluid character, do your research and don't have the group intentionally misgender or make fun of their gender identity. It doesn't take a genius to know "Sh*male" is a slur. Yet here is Xavin saving Victor and Chase's asses left and right. I would not have their patience.
Molly is kind of a different tale. They clearly use her to get at what Xavin's take on gender is and that's fine with me. She comes around to be the most respectful and understanding towards Xavin which may be a way to say "Children adapt better" because she takes Xavin's words and runs with them. Although, it was heartbreaking that she implies she's uncomfortable with Xavin not being a girl all the time and we later get an injured Xavin, unable to transform, apologizing to Molly for making her uncomfortable. That does not sit well with me.
We also get Karolina constantly uncomfortable with Xavin when they're in a masculine form. That was icky to me as well, actually. Later on, there's a scene where Xavin transforms into a female form while arguing with Karolina and the writers use that as a way to say "look, this is Xavin's natural form" and that was... a writing choice , I guess.
Sigh, I grew to really like Xavin and I wish the writers had done more research before trying to tackle concepts of gender.
This was a collection of Runaways series involving other characters and I didn't really like that. Punisher was boring. Kingpin was... okay. Not that interesting except that it presenting a moral conflict because he group has been trying to distance themselves from their evil parents and here they are signing up to work with Kingpin.
The journey to the past bugged the hell out of me. As a woman of color, I hate, hate, HATE, when a group of characters travels to the past. If there's people of color in the group, they almost always get treated like shit because this is the past. Xavin gets it worse than Victor. Molly and Karolina rescue a child bride (that subplot :( ) and try to bring her back with them. She sees Xavin transform and kiss Karolina and runs away because she grew up around racists and homophobes. Victor and Xavin get called slurs. It's just not good. The structure of this plot is Lilly telling the story of how Victor tried to get her to come to the future and she refused. It's kind of interesting but I soured on Victor a long time ago.
I love the Young Avengers so it was cool seeing them come back. Honestly, and considering how awful that arc was, I'm throwing up in my mouth a little, but the Secret Invasion tie ins were the best in this book. There's a conflict between Xavin and Teddy because Teddy gave up his destiny as the savior to the Skrull community. The Skrulls are trying to take over Earth and will kill anyone who gets in their way and Xavin thinks Teddy could have stopped that.
Xavin saves Teddy a lot even though they're Skrulls they won't be able to stop the other Super Skrulls because they never learned or use more than one power at a time. Teddy bows to Xavin in the end and that was amazing to see! There's also kind of a cute moment when Karolina yells at Xavin for initially telling the others to leave when it looked like they might die. Speaking of, I did not appreciate Victor immediately joining the "Xavin's evil because they're a Skrull and Skrulls are attacking" bandwagon. Like he doesn't know what it feels like to be misjudged.
Anyway, better than the last but I've soured on Victor and Chase
More high school drama and I guess I'm gonna have to get used to that. They really gave Nico the worst romantic life in this series. Yikes. Poor girl.
Xavin is much better here although I question the writers just making them so willing to help the Runaways because of Karolina. Aside from Molly, and we'll get to her relationship with Xavin later, they're all quite mean and distrustful of Xavin. Before you start, I know, this was a gender fluid character in 2005, I shouldn't expect the writers to be super progressive. But that's complete bullshit. You took on the task of writing for a gender fluid character, do your research and don't have the group intentionally misgender or make fun of their gender identity. It doesn't take a genius to know "Sh*male" is a slur. Yet here is Xavin saving Victor and Chase's asses left and right. I would not have their patience.
Molly is kind of a different tale. They clearly use her to get at what Xavin's take on gender is and that's fine with me. She comes around to be the most respectful and understanding towards Xavin which may be a way to say "Children adapt better" because she takes Xavin's words and runs with them. Although, it was heartbreaking that she implies she's uncomfortable with Xavin not being a girl all the time and we later get an injured Xavin, unable to transform, apologizing to Molly for making her uncomfortable. That does not sit well with me.
We also get Karolina constantly uncomfortable with Xavin when they're in a masculine form. That was icky to me as well, actually. Later on, there's a scene where Xavin transforms into a female form while arguing with Karolina and the writers use that as a way to say "look, this is Xavin's natural form" and that was... a writing choice , I guess.
Sigh, I grew to really like Xavin and I wish the writers had done more research before trying to tackle concepts of gender.
This was a collection of Runaways series involving other characters and I didn't really like that. Punisher was boring. Kingpin was... okay. Not that interesting except that it presenting a moral conflict because he group has been trying to distance themselves from their evil parents and here they are signing up to work with Kingpin.
The journey to the past bugged the hell out of me. As a woman of color, I hate, hate, HATE, when a group of characters travels to the past. If there's people of color in the group, they almost always get treated like shit because this is the past. Xavin gets it worse than Victor. Molly and Karolina rescue a child bride (that subplot :( ) and try to bring her back with them. She sees Xavin transform and kiss Karolina and runs away because she grew up around racists and homophobes. Victor and Xavin get called slurs. It's just not good. The structure of this plot is Lilly telling the story of how Victor tried to get her to come to the future and she refused. It's kind of interesting but I soured on Victor a long time ago.
I love the Young Avengers so it was cool seeing them come back. Honestly, and considering how awful that arc was, I'm throwing up in my mouth a little, but the Secret Invasion tie ins were the best in this book. There's a conflict between Xavin and Teddy because Teddy gave up his destiny as the savior to the Skrull community. The Skrulls are trying to take over Earth and will kill anyone who gets in their way and Xavin thinks Teddy could have stopped that.
Xavin saves Teddy a lot even though they're Skrulls they won't be able to stop the other Super Skrulls because they never learned or use more than one power at a time. Teddy bows to Xavin in the end and that was amazing to see! There's also kind of a cute moment when Karolina yells at Xavin for initially telling the others to leave when it looked like they might die. Speaking of, I did not appreciate Victor immediately joining the "Xavin's evil because they're a Skrull and Skrulls are attacking" bandwagon. Like he doesn't know what it feels like to be misjudged.
Anyway, better than the last but I've soured on Victor and Chase
moreadsbooks's review
4.0
How does this not have cover art yet?
Well, it turns out the question I had about the last volume had a satisfactory answer - you can use the Staff of One with a thesaurus! Now I guess the next logical question is why it took Nico so long to figure that out, but oh well. The swap ofGert for Xavin still makes me unhappy; as substitutions go, his weirdly abusive-boyfriend-ish/non-contraction using self is always going to strike me as a poor choice, even if I hadn't totally adored the person who died in the last volume (but I do have to give him grudging kudos for "'Crossing your arms and turning away does not mean I'm the one being unreasonable!'"). I am growing weary of the Young Avengers crossover issues, basically because I don't really care for the new Young Avengers (which I am kind of afraid to say out loud - don't tell Caitlin!), but I'm giving this whole thing an extra star for Dead End Kids - "'Why aren't you awesomed by me?'" All over that, and the cover art for that whole storyline is some of the best of the entire series. Even though I remain bitterly disappointed at yet another fake death (of someone who I really wanted to see dead, dammit!), I still enjoyed this more than the second volume.
Well, it turns out the question I had about the last volume had a satisfactory answer - you can use the Staff of One with a thesaurus! Now I guess the next logical question is why it took Nico so long to figure that out, but oh well. The swap of
burstnwithbooks's review
3.0
Okay, the parts that were actual Runaways comics? Fantastic. Way more entertaining than the last collection. The rest of it? Could not care less. 2 stars to young avengers crossover, 3 to “super” avengers crossover, and ZERO to Runaways saga (what is the point of that comic??). I’m still curious about their story though.... I feel like it could have gone in a really interesting direction from here.