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Mars Will Send No More

~ Comic books, art, poetry, and other obsessions

Mars Will Send No More

Tag Archives: brian k vaughan

Big Box of Comics: Runaways Omnibus

18 Sunday Oct 2020

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in superhero

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

adrian alphona, big box of comics, book review, brian k vaughan, Marvel Comics, omnibus, runaways

The Runaways Omnibus is the latest treasure I got thanks to this blog’s readers who help me earn store credit at MyComicShop.com when they click through my affiliate links to find the books they want. My big box of comics series aims to bring the love full circle by sharing those treasures with you.

Once upon a time, I had all the single issues of the first and second Runaways volumes. But they took me a few years to collect, and I read a bunch of them out of order at different times. So, it was great fun to finally kick back and read the entire Brian K. Vaughan run in its original reading order with this Omnibus.

Teenagers are the stars of this series and, it’s fair to say, the target audience. I don’t read many books like that anymore, and most of the “young adult” category of fiction is lost on me. If I never hear another thing about Hunger Games, Twilight, and Harry Potter, it will be too soon. But author Brian K. Vaughan lists Harry Potter as one of the influences on this series, according to the original proposal included in the Omnibus. So, what about this foray into overtly young adult superhero fiction appeals to me?

My favorite thing is the character interaction. The dialogue is PG in terms of cursing, but our teenage heroes fling savage insults at each other when they aren’t getting along. Their reckless insensitivity seems authentically adolescent, and it acts as a foil to the intentional diversity of Vaughan’s cast. One of the characters, for example, uses the word “gay” as an insult—as in “superhero costumes are gay”—which creates tension because one of the characters is a girl who likes girls. One character is repeatedly ridiculed for being chubby, and one endures transphobic insults for being a gender-switching alien. One encounters casual racism for being Asian, and a cyborg is constantly reminded that machines are soulless, unfeeling, and less than human.

I love a diverse cast of characters, but sometimes authors shy away from the conflict that naturally arises when you put wildly different people together on the same team. And when I say “natural,” I mean it is so prevalent that we even studied this conflict in my graduate-level management classes. Globalization means we often work on teams of people with a vast array of cultural, ethnic, and gender identities, and Vaughan mines that situation for dramatic conflict. But along the way, Vaughan imbues each character with depth and humanity, contrasts that with the way people flippantly dehumanize each other for being different, and ultimately makes the experience rewarding by showing how these characters grow to accept their differences, work together, and form bonds of true friendship—even love.

Another thing I love about Runaways is that while it isn’t about a dystopia like Hunger Games and a zillion other young adult novels, you could say that the real dystopia for these characters is adulthood. The kids become disillusioned and distraught about grown-ups when they find out their parents are all child murderers who are sacrificing the souls of other kids in a weird pact to bring about the end of all humanity (except for six survivors). If that doesn’t breed a severe distrust of adults, I don’t know what would. The other adults in this series—from Marvel’s Avengers to two warring alien races who cannot make peace, from parents to the police—continually reinforce the Runaways’ conviction that adults suck.

Even as the characters grow up and mature throughout the series, they express disgust at the idea of adulthood. One of the worst ways one Runaway can insult another is to say, “Now you sound like our parents.” And when one character turns eighteen, someone asks if he should even be included in the group anymore. That same eighteen-year-old, now legally an adult, embarks upon a mission that tempts him to become a killer just like his parents, driving home the point that adults can’t be trusted.

That story arc expresses a major concern shared by many young people. We all tend to become more like our parents when we age, but does that mean we are doomed to make the same mistakes as them? How many people in their thirties or forties have had a moment where they realized they sounded or acted just like their mother or father, despite their youthful determination to never let that happen?

I like how Vaughan explores this tension, and I love the way the artwork brings the characters to life. The Omnibus is an excellent reproduction of the original issues and their gorgeous covers. Upon re-reading the forty-two issues collected here, only a few flaws nagged at me.

First, the dialogue relies heavily on pop culture references—even ones that seem oddly out of place, like kids born circa 1990 quoting lines from “classic” rock songs from the 1960s and 70s. Similarly, much of the slang might have been relevant to teenagers at the time but is already beginning to feel dated. I see it all the time in novels and comics that are trying to be “relatable” to today’s young audiences by trying to sound current or hip. Maybe that helps sell more books at the time, but it tends to distract from the quality of being timeless.

The other flawed aspect of these stories is the mystical evil beings called the Gibborim. They have a stupid, nonsensical plan for world domination, and their power levels and abilities make no sense either. They say they need a sacrifice of one innocent soul for twenty-five consecutive years to bring about the end of the world. What? Why not get all twenty-five souls at once then, and get on with the apocalypse? Or, if they can appear on Earth, why not kill the kids themselves instead of hiring six married couples to do it? Evil plans should at least make some sort of strategic sense.

Later in the series, the Gibborim have been banished to a kind of limbo where they need to eat another innocent soul to escape. But they didn’t seem to be doing anything about that until the plot allowed one of the Runaways to find them in limbo. So, these beings who are powerful enough to end humanity are… totally impotent? Pick one!

The only way I can see to resolve this problem is to assume the Gibborim were lying to the Runaways’ parents from the beginning, that they never had the power they claimed to have, and that the parents bought into a total scam due to their own greed and stupidity. I doubt that is what Vaughan had in mind, but it’s the only explanation I can think of that is consistent with the plot and fits with the theme that adults are bad.

Finally, I would gladly trade the “bonus material” in the Omnibus in exchange for the six-issue story by Joss Whedon that finished the 2005 series. I recall it as a good coda to Vaughan’s run.

Despite these minor problems, the Runaways Omnibus is a terrific read with great characters who have some wild adventures while dealing with the conflicting emotions and traumas of adolescence, struggling to create new identities for themselves after all that was familiar and secure about their childhood has been torn away.

Collector’s Guide: Runaways Omnibus, Marvel, 2018. Collects #1-18 of the original Runaways (2003) and #1-24 of Runaways (2005). The Omnibus is also on Amazon. For a less expensive digital version, you can now get a $55 edition for Kindle/Comixology called Runaways: The Complete Collection, a four-volume set with everything in the Omnibus plus the continuation of the Runaways series after Vaughan left.

Privacy in Peril: The Private Eye

05 Saturday Sep 2015

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in crime, indie, science fiction

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

brian k vaughan, digital comics, digital rights management, indie box, Indie Comics, Marcos Martin, Muntsa Vicente, privacy, public policy, swans, the private eye

Privacy in Peril: The Private Eye and Recent Developments in Privacy, DRM, and Copyright

One of my classes this semester deals with telecommunications policy in the USA. Even though I am late to the party on The Private Eye, I spent an evening this week devouring all ten issues of the digital comic book series. I was pleasantly surprised to discover it deals with many of the concerns we discussed in the telecom class. Our first discussion centered around two articles on mobile apps that either lack adequate security or mine your device for your personal data and contacts.

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The Private Eye addresses privacy and intellectual property concerns not just in its content but in its form. It comes to us from author Brian K. Vaughan (who wrote such critically acclaimed series as Y: The Last Man and Ex Machina, and wrote for the TV show Lost for a time) with art from Marcos Martin and Muntsa Vicente. It is available at http://panelsyndicate.com/comics/tpeye as ten individual issues and now in two 150-page volumes which collect the complete story.

tpeye_vol02_small

First, the content of this science-fiction/mystery adventure deals with privacy and the Internet. It proposes a future where all the information people stored about themselves in “the cloud” was exposed through an event called “the flood”. Dialogue reveals that making people’s search histories public destroyed their lives. As a result, the Internet exists no more, and people are paranoid about protecting their privacy. Just as people do today in online forums and multi-player video games, people in this future use costumes and fake names to mask their identity and explore their fantasies, sexual kinks, and other aspects of identity they want kept private. Photographing people without their consent has become a crime, a crime the story’s hero commits for cash as a private investigator. The story’s villain wants to [spoiler alert] bring back the Internet.

tpeye_05_small

But besides the privacy conflict at the story’s center, the distribution of this series also ties in with concerns about copyright, digital rights management, and the ease of sharing content through the Internet. The series is only available digitally, and it is sold on a “pay what you can” basis. Readers choose their own price, even if that price is zero dollars. This addresses the sales problem of digital content: How do you get people to pay a specific price for digital content when it is so easily downloaded and shared among users? Here, there is no problem. If people cannot or do not want to pay, they can still get the series directly from the creators without skirting the law, and those who can afford to support the work can choose to do so.

tpeye_07_small

The download files, made available upon payment, are given free of Digital Rights Management, a system of protecting copyrighted and trademarked works which has proven problematic for users and courts. Recent headlines have shown how silly DRM takedown requests can get, with Forbes reporting in August that “Columbia Pictures, the studio behind the critically-panned movie Pixels, has succeeded in getting a number of utterly unrelated videos pulled from Vimeo — but the only actual footage from the movie to be taken down is Columbia’s own official trailer.”

DRM takedown requests have become the occupation of lawyers who can file them without any actual investigation, leading to such ridiculous outcomes as random videos that mention the word “pixels” in ways unrelated to the film having been forced offline. Headlines in August also revealed UK legislation which is so technologically mis-informed that it would criminalize making a back-up copy of your own mp3 music files library. The creators of The Private Eye have sidestepped this nonsense and made their files available without DRM restrictions on the files.

tpeye_02_small

The Private Eye, besides being an excellent and entertaining read, highlights the growing divide between how large, institutionally entrenched corporations are dealing with these concerns compared to the way independent creators are looking for new and more flexible solutions. This is taking place alongside a surge in advance sales (such as Michael Gira’s band Swans releasing limited-edition, handmade concert recordings to fund the production of upcoming studio albums) and crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter which help secure funding before a project is finished rather than trying to control “piracy” after the fact. These solutions favor creators who understand the unique technological environment of our time and want to maintain creative control without resorting to the cumbersome and ill-advised measures favored by the industry giants, their lawyers, and our legislatures.

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To close on a visual note, I especially appreciate that The Private Eye is the first digital comic I have seen which looked awesome on my monitor due to the horizontally wider aspect ratio. Comics made at the right aspect ratio for print just never look as great on my screen. I usually need to zoom in to read the text, and thus can’t see the whole page at once, which is part of the joy of comics. The Private Eye fixes this beautifully and lends itself to creative page layouts that take full advantage of its aspect ratio. Go pick up the two collected volumes and pay what you can!

No DRM, no encryption, just plain files optimized for on-screen reading. Available in English, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese & French.

tpeye_01_small

She’s Just the Girl Who Made Me a Man!

24 Thursday Jan 2013

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in superhero

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Tags

atomic bomb, brian k vaughan, Eduardo Risso, Logan, Logan Black and White, Wolverine

Welcome to the Wolverine Gallery! It’s an ongoing project, so just click Wolverine Gallery to see everything in this virtual exhibition. Today’s Wolverine feature comes from a three-issue series by writer Brian K. Vaughan (Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina, Saga, Runaways) and artist Eduardo Risso (Chicanos, 100 Bullets.) We’ve seen Wolverine blown to smithereens by the explosive Nitro, get eaten by the Hulk, and get his adamantium ripped out of his body by Magneto. Now, Wolverine takes the most brutal punishment ever — he gets nuked!

Vaughan sets the story in Japan in 1945. A super-scumbag just made a samurai shiskebab out of Wolverine’s girlfriend. The two begin to settle it as comic book heroes settle things: kicking the crap out of each other. But, they really picked a bad day to be duking it out: the day the atomic bomb dropped. Let’s have a look.

Collector’s Guide: From Logan Black and White #2; Marvel, 2008. The series was also printed in color as Logan #1-3.



Hormones That Will Make It Extremely Violent!

31 Sunday Jul 2011

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in science fiction

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

assassinate the pope, brains, brian k vaughan, evil rat brains, Ex Machina, rat, Tony Harris

Ex Machina by Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris is so awesome we can hardly pick just one scene to share with you. How about we start with evil spies plugging wires into rat brains?! Guess what they are going to do with their evil rat brains. Assassinate the Pope! Now that’s EVIL RAT BRAINS!!

It would never happen, you say? Let’s see what the deal is in Ex Machina #31:



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