Still want more issues of Runaways? The scripting/art team changes but Volume 3 is still great stuff!
Check out all 14 issues of Runaways Volume 3 on Marvel Unlimited. Remember, you can get these comics in digest format easily here: Runaways series on Amazon.com
Until next time,
Excelsior!!!
I can’t get enough of this series. The artwork is stellar and the scripting is great (even if I was pissed about the “bad guy” in volume 1) -
Check out all 30 issues of Runaways Volume 2 on Marvel Unlimited. Remember, you can get these comics in digest format easily here: Runaways series on Amazon.com
Until next time,
Excelsior!!!
The Marvel Rating System assigns each comic book one of the following ratings:
The first Marvel Rating System, implemented in 2001, used the following categories:
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Greetings comic book fans,
Just finished Runaways volume 1, and it is an amazing piece of comic book fiction. The perfect blend of new characters and concepts with old-school classics, even tossing in some biblical references. The artwork is flawless, you’ll fall in love with the characters and just be angry that it ended when it did.
Never mind that though, because there are two additional volumes of Runaways issues, thanks in part to the popularity of the trade paperbacks!
Because the Runaways issue order on Marvel Unlimited is off (way out of order if you click previous issue/next issue in many places), I’ve added the remaining issues in the first 18’s run below:
We’ve already covered:
Issue 1 - the discovery
Issue 2 - next steps
Issue 3 - the hidden room
Issue 4 - seeking the truth
Issue 5 - the big battle
Issue 6 - the founding of the Runaways
Continuing on:
WTH? These (13-16) issues aren’t on Marvel Unlimited and are $1.99 each, but worth the money. Also consider buying the collected works on Amazon. The Runaways series was collected into “digest” size paperbacks (5” x 7.8”) with Runaways Volume 1: Pride & Joy (Runaways Digest New Ed) collecting issues 1 through 6 for just $8.99, Runaways, Vol. 2: Teenage Wasteland containing issues 7 through 12, and Runaways Vol. 3: The Good Die Young closes the first volume of the series with issues 13 through 18. Amazon is my favorite place to buy comic paperbacks, but I hear great things about DCBS from my friend Nethead.
Free on Marvel Unlimited
By the way, did I mention that Cloak and Dagger are in the series? When I was a kid, I became a fan of them pretty quickly. They were a bizarre pair of runaways themselves, and they had been the victims of drug experiments forced on them that awakened mutant powers (actually, the mutant part is a retcon courtesy of Marvel). They were active on the War on Drugs and had crossovers with the New Mutants and the Power Pack kids. They also had some involvement with the X-Men over the years. Unfortunately, their first appearance in Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #64 is not on Marvel Unlimited, but there are a ton of Clock and Dagger issues on MU. Check out Spider-Island: Cloak and Dagger, their X-Men: Nation X one shot (Clock and Dagger 2010) to their run in Marvel Knights (beginning with issue #7).
Ok, seriously. I LOVE Bendis. His work is amazing.
That being said, why do we get Ultron starting out with masterpiece-level artwork only to see it handed off to Peterson?
FAIL!
Come on Marvel, same thing is going on with X-Men. Lots of rotating of artists in the X-Books and it is almost always crap.
STOP IT!.
Disappointed until next time,
Excelsior!!!
Ok, so you take Bryan K. Vaughan of LOST fame (writer, story editor and producer during seasons three through five) and a totally new set of unlikely heroes who discover their parents are part of a secret society called “The Pride” and witness them sacrifice a girl.
Craziness ensues. Also, this is a great reason to read my blog - the Marvel Unlimited forward and backward buttons will get you to the wrong issues. They really need to work on that.
The first story arc is six issues, originally Vaughan’s entire idea for the series. Later Joss Whedon took over for an arc and then another creative team took over for the remaining issues before cancellation at issue 18. Luckily, the trade paperbacks sold well and there are two additional volumes of issues, volume 2 has 30, volume 3 has 14.
The artwork is flawless, click on the issues to jump straight in on Marvel Unlimited!
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Until next time,
Excelsior!!!
There’s a reason I keep mentioning ComicBookHerald.com, and it’s not just random praise. This guy Dave has made it super easy to learn to use Marvel Unlimited and saved the rest of us a ton of work.
Check out this post: What Comics Are in the Marvel Digital Unlimited Catalog? for a great overview of the service, how to use it, and even highlights on which books to read.
The blog you are reading wouldn’t be possible without CBH and a number of forums (named in relevant blog posts where they helped me get the data for links), so please visit his site. You won’t be disappointed, except that you might wonder how useful my blog is after you visit Dave’s!!!
Anyway, as always:
Until next time,
Excelsior!!!
Seriously, a three-day or four-day weekend and you aren’t going to spend at least some time reading comic books?
If you have limited time, check out any of these “Origins” posts, each a single issue and tending to have incredible artwork.
For some of my favorite stories that reference only a few issues each, check out these:
Where do I find great reading lists? Well, there’s Google, Wikipedia, and my new friend Dave over at ComicBookHerald.com. You can read all about the coolness that is Dave’s site by reading about it on the blog here.
Finally, if you have the time, please invest those hours in one of the greatest crossover arcs ever: Avengers Disassembled. This blog post and the related What If? post (to be read AFTER the full crossover) are great comic book works that should entertain you for a few hours to say the least. I’ll tell you this for sure: it’s much more fun to read on Marvel Unlimited than to read summaries on Wikipedia. ☺
A brief word about the tag cloud on the right side of the blog. Click it to jump to lists of posts with the words in the tags section of the post. The more posts with a given tag, the larger that tag appears, which is why as of this posting, origin is larger than Phoenix which is larger than new mutants, etc.
Until next time,
Excelsior!!!
Update: these reading lists are a great thing to do with your time when Netflix crashes under the weight of all of us trying to watch Arrested Development season 4 at midnight 5/26/2013.
This classic X-Men issue featured the (temporary) swan song of Cyclops as an X-man. Click this link to read with Marvel Unlimited.
By the way, a great source for content about X-Men comic books is UncannyXmen.net with this issue covered here. The website has a great synopsis of the plot, covering the funeral of Jean Grey (spoiler alert!!) by going back to her first appearance in X-Men #1 and talking about some of the most important battles of her life. As fans know, this isn’t truly the end of Jean Grey, but was a pivotal point in both storytelling and the saga of the Phoenix as an all-powerful cosmic entity.
This issue follows the death issue, #137.
Below you’ll find some of my favorite panels from the issue. Enjoy!
Until next time,
Excelsior!!!
This is one of my all-time favorite issues. It’s got hope, it’s got tragedy, it’s got Scott Summers and the love of his life Jean Grey and it’s got the Starjammers plus the Shi'ar empire. It’s got everything I love about a comic book, and it was an adult story for me as a 9-year old who felt really mature reading it.
You can read it online here and I’ve posted some of my favorite pieces of art from the book below. You can pick up X-Men: Dark Phoenix Saga on Amazon for CHEAP if you want the trade paperback (or full Kindle edition) in your hot little hands.
Until next time,
Excelsior!!!
I just found this page on the Marvel website tonight. It’s the perfect selection of comics for new readers, and you MUST check out the Whedon run on Astonishing X-Men that I’ve blogged about before.
The Marvel link is here, but I’ve copied the issues over from their site so you can dive right in from here. Enjoy - and please comment with your favorites or series Marvel should’ve included for noobs! ;-)
Until next time,
Excelsior!!!
