Young Avengers Catch-Up: "What If The Runaways Became The Young Avengers?"

This story was published in five installments, each of which ran as a back-up in one of 2008's suite of What If...? specials (What If? Secret Wars, What If? Captain America: Fallen Son, etc), as an enticement to buy them all. It can be found in collected form in Runaways: Homeschooling, the volume that contains Kathryn Immonen and Sara Pichelli's high quality, but unfortunately truncated run on Runaways.

The title isn't terribly accurate, and the story has almost nothing at all to do with the Young Avengers. This isn't the story of how the five surviving original Runaways take on the names or identities of the Young Avengers characters, or teenage versions of any Avengers (That is, Nico doesn't become Wiccan or Scarlet Apprentice, Gert doesn't become Patriot or Lieutenant America, etc). Nor do they take the place of the Young Avengers in a Young Avengers story, or meet any of those characters.

For the most part, then, this is just a Runaways story with a catchy title, and a single shared plot-point with the first story arc of Young Avengers. Iron Lad, the disguised teenaged version of Kang The Conqueror, has come back in time to recruit a team of young super-heroes, and, instead of choosing the characters who would become the Young Avengers, he chooses the Runaways. Teen Kang is the only Young Avenger character to appear at all, unless you count a one-page cameo from a future version of The Vision.

Teen Kang trains the Runaways, gives them new, more superheroic spandex costumes (The Runaways just wore street clothes), has them using their superhero codenames (which the characters all came up with early in creator Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona's run on the book, but then almost immediately discarded) and collectively calling themselves The Young Avengers.

When we meet them, they're fighting apparently ubiquitous Marvel bad guys The Wrecking Crew, training to take on Victor Mancha, whom Iron Lad tells them will grow up to be Victorious, a super-villain who decimates The Avengers in the future (As Runaways fans know, Mancha is actually the "son" of Ultron who joins The Runaways). There's a twist, a betrayal and multiple versions of Kang and Mancha show up for the big showdown fight.

As a Young Avengers story, it's really not, not in anything but name, anyway. As a Runaways story, it's interesting enough; writer C.B. Cebulski's plot is fairly generic, and his big moments are merely repeats of those other Runaways writers had previously used, but he gets their voices right, and gives them a few of those Whedon-esque smartasseries that Vaughan was so fond of. As a What If...? story, it's pretty weak, as the variation from the "real" Runaways story is so very slight, and really little more than a matter of cosmetics (their team name and wardrobe, basically).

The artwork is provided by penciler Patrick Spaziante and inker Victor Olazaba. Stylistically, its closer to the work of Young Avengers's Jim Cheung than to any of the artists to have worked on The Runaways...it's certainly quite different than Pichelli's art, as a flip-through the rest of Homeschooling on the way to this story will attest.

It looks an awful lot like Barry Kitson art, with maybe a hit of J. Calafiore in the faces. I wasn't crazy about it, but there's nothing wrong with it either. It just looks rather dark, cluttered and overly-rendered, particularly when compared to the work of Pichelli or Alphona or Humberto Ramos or other Runaways artists

I do like the story's title, and wouldn't mind reading a What If...? story in which the characters from The Runaways joined up with the characters from Young Avengers and formed some sort of super-sized super-teen team, but then, there probably wasn't room for Cebulski to even consider it, give the relatively short page-count (32) that the story's original format demanded.

The "What If...?" FF's snazzy new costumes

My sole disappointment with last year's Jeff Parker and Mike Wieringo collaboration Spider-Man and The Fantastic Four was that when Reed Richards went off to space and asked Spidey to fill-in as a member of the Four for him, he handed him a little press-on FF badge (seen above).

In my head, I was imagining how cool it would have been if Spidey got a special Fantastic Four-ized version of his costume to wear with the team, in their blue-colors and with a "4" instead of a Spider icon.

So I was downright giddy when I saw the "What If?" FF of Spider-Man, Wolverine, The Hulk and Ghost Rider don their own versions of FF uniforms in Wednesday's What If This Was the Fantastic Four?: A Tribute to Mike Wieringo.

The premise of the story, also written by Parker with art begun but sadly never finished by the late Wieringo, is that Reed, Johnny and Sue died and Ben gave up super-heroing to raise Franklin Richards, leaving Spidey, Wolvie, Ghostie and ol' Jade Jaws...er, ol' Gray Gams to fill set up shop in The Baxter Building and slap down the likes of Blastaar and Dr. Doom on the behalf of their predecessors.

Here's a wonderful little sequence in which they go into action in their new uniforms for the first time. Peter Parker and Johnny Blaze/Danny Ketch (it was supposed to be the latter, but is drawn like the former; it's explained in the book) are at an oudoor cafe when The Sandman appears, and Ghost Rider vomits out a signal flare for his commrades:


(The first two panels were penciled by Alan Davis; the third one is by Casey Jones)

Here's the best look at all four of the costumes at the same time, from the original cover by David Williams and Arthur Adams (They ended up re-purposing a splash page Wieringo drew as the cover for the project, once it transtitioned from just another Marvel What If? special into a tribute book):

Pretty cool, huh?

In the upper lefthand corner is another group shot of the team in their uniforms. He's not credited with it on the page, but that sure looks like Wieringo's work, doesn't it?

Here's a closer look:


Finally, Chris Giarrusso contribued a one-page Mini Marvels strip to the book, featuring the "random group of four heroes" filling in for the official Four. In the last panel, they also adopt Fantastic Four-ized versions of their costumes:

I like the way the other costumes match one another better, but these are kinda fun too, particularly Hulk's and Ghost Rider's.

Hey, check it out:


Looks like Ghostie is a Guy Gardner fan. It works for him.

And yet it's still more exciting then Mark Millar's original ending...

(From What If? Civil War #1's "What If Iron Man Lost the Civil War?" by Chrstos Gage and Harve Tolibao)

Move over, Hang In There Kitten! Make way for Nova!

I've repeatedly mentioned how great I think the last two panels of David Hine, Mico Suayan and Rafael Kayanan's What If? Annihilation #1 are, and here's why.

Superhero Nova has returned to Earth in the middle of the heroes' "Civil War" (Perhaps you've heard of it?). He's there to warn them of a much bigger threat then whether they ought to have ID cards and be governement employees or not. Annihilus, the giant bug man bad guy from the Negative Zone, is ravaging the universe with his imaginatively named "annihilation wave," a wave of soldiers and ships that, um, annihilates everything in its path.

After about 20 boring-ass pages of recapping and Uatu The Watcher breaking his vow never to interfere with events for the 433rd time, Hine brings us to the awesome climax, which is well worth $2.99 all by itself. Reed Richards and Uatu set up the Deus Ex Machina machine, but it's set on a timer or something, and it looks like Annihilus will be able to reach it and shut it off before it does its day-saving.

Unless someone stays and tries to hold him off, which, successful or not, means certain death. Nova steps up. As does Captain America. And Iron Man. Uatu is impressed as hell, as you can tell by his breathless narration. These are the last two panels of the story, although the second panel is actually a two-page spead (which I've trimmed a bit off, so it would fit here—Sorry Suayan!), so keep that in mind when you're reading 'em. Nova says his peice, then you turn the page and —bam! Two-page splash! (Oh, and click to make them big enough to read.)








See what I mean? Whenever you feel your resolve faltering, or you feel yourself losing hope, just remember this:



Uatu could totally write a self-help book based around this idea. It would just be two pages long, and across those two pages would be printed this image:




I think he's on to something. Let's test it out.


Oh man, am I ever going to get my credit card bill completely paid off?




It's the end of the month and the rent's due! That'll clean me out till payday. I wish I owned my own home instead of throwing away hard-earned cash to line my landlord's pockets every month, but I'll never be able to afford-





Is there really such a thing as true love? I wonder if I'll ever meet that someone special...





I want to keep up my daily blog posting schedule, but I'm all tapped out. I don't know if I can think of anything insightful or funny, or even mildly amusing, to post today...



Wow, it really works! I feel my resolve and hope returning!

So head to your local comic shop, buy What If? Annihilation #1, carefully cut out those last two pages, frame them, and hang them somewhere central in your house or office, where you can look at them to gain inspiration any time you need it.

After all, if Captain America, Iron Man and Nova can hold off 200,000 of Annihilus' soldiers, surely you can accomplish all your goals in life, whether it's acing that big presentation at work, or completing your run of All-Star Squadron back issues.