Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Runaways (Vol. 1), Issue #18 – “Eighteen”! In the previous installment, Alex gets killed after spending most of the issue jibber-jabbering about why he betrayed everyone. Burned into a creepy skeleton. Just a smoldering pile of ugly bones.

The rest of the kids get away before the vivarium explodes in a fiery blast of Gibborim nonsense, but then Captain America shows up on the beach ready to turn the end of this comic series into an afterschool special. Fuck that guy. No one invited him. Go soak your head, you ninny.

Runaways (Vol. 1), Issue #18 [November, 2004]
Written by: Brian K. Vaughan
“Eighteen”

“At least once during our adolescent years, many of us felt that our parents were the most evil people alive… but what if they really were?”

This is the kind of investigative journalism that America needs! It’s a special report on the events that occurred roughly three months ago. 12 of the Los Angeles area’s most prominent socialites were part of a covert villainous operation called The Pride. The Avengers uncovered a litany of criminal operatives in the government, law enforcement, and private businesses. “Though the Pride’s true agenda remains a mystery, an exhaustive federal investigation has seen scores of corporate CEOs, high-ranking politicians, and even police officers indicted on charges ranging from racketeering to homicide!”

Oh, I see, this is some bizarre parallel universe where rich people are actually accountable for their crimes. Clearly, I’ve stepped into the Twilight Zone here.

The news report makes it clear that the Avengers did not disrupt and dismantle the Pride, but rather six precocious little scamps – children of the Pride themselves! Cadie MacDunnough is on the scene with Captain America! Captain, please answer the important questions for us: do you jerk off with your right hand or your left hand?

Captain American can’t confirm or deny which hand he jerks off with. He also can’t confirm or deny the killing of one of the children during the final confrontation. These are kids we’re dealing with! Juveniles! Keep your prying buttholes away from the kids until a judge decides otherwise, you vultures!

We’ve erected a small neighborhood of individual biodomes and we’re feeding them pellets while they run on little hamster wheels as we speak.

The James Dean Memorial at the Griffith Observatory, 1:03am

Karolina is creeping around the building looking for her fellow kids, who are nowhere to be seen at the moment. “Come on, I didn’t tie my bed sheets together for nothing, did I?”

Nico suddenly pops out from behind a pedestal with a bust of James Dean’s head, scaring the feces right out of Karolina. Then they hug because it’s been about 12 weeks since they’ve seen each other. Karolina had no problem sneaking out because her foster parents are addicted to prescription painkillers! Still a better situation than Nico, who is stuck at what she calls “Father Flanagan’s Home for Unwanted Goth Kids”.

So these two catch up and it’s all very wholesome. They have to do therapy three times a week with some know-nothing social worker who couldn’t even begin to fathom what they went through. Karolina’s parents were really fucking into James Dean, by the way. It’s probably why they took the name when they came to Earth. “I wonder what they were like back then,” says Karolina. “If they used to be good people…”

No more time to dwell on it, nerd. Gert and Molly have shown up to crash the party! So that just leaves that autistic loser Chase, whom no one has seen since this whole situation went down. Karolina thought that he’s with his aunt in Anaheim, but Nico tells her that his “aunt in Anaheim’s” address is just a P.O. Box where he gets his Playboys sent to. Anyway, he’s safe wherever he is. No one is left to kill him!

Speaking of Chase, here he is in da flesh! Gert slaps him immediately. “I thought you were dead! I thought you got hit by a bus or… killed by drifters or something! Why didn’t you respond to my emails?

Chase has a great reason for this: “I was busy!” Yeah, busy jerking off with both hands, how’s that for ambidexterity? But also finding her dinosaur, which he did, so let’s get a kiss, sugar. That’s the stuff, now.

We all love a good snog and a shag now and again, eh guv’nor?

Chase found a storage facility that was used by the Avengers West Coast team back in the ‘90s. He stole some zoning permits that pointed to it, it’s in Palos Verdes. Now, the exact address is classified, so they’ll have to look for it with their super GPS vision. Nico doesn’t want to steal from an official government facility, people will think they’re all no different from their parents! Chase argues that no one will find out on account of Karolina’s space powers and Molly’s mutant powers and Nico’s Staff of One up her ass.

Nico fidgets and eventually gives in. It’s clobberin’ time.

Downtown Los Angeles, 2:19am

It obviously didn’t take long for our intrepid group to find the storage unit. Karolina gets to work on melting a hole in the steel door while Nico asks Chase if Old Lace might even still be alive. Chase tells her to chill. I am on Chase’s side here. Dinosaurs aren’t extinct. Chill.

The storage unit is full of mankilling robots. “ZZT! YOU ARE TRESPASSING ON PROPERTY OF STARK HOLDINGS LIMITED. *CLICK* YOU WILL BE DETAINED AND PROSECUTED.” Naturally, the kids fight the robots, because of course you’re going to fight robots, dummy.

Everyone handles themselves with gusto except for Nico, who gets pinned to a wall by a giant robot arm. Chase throws her a knife and tells her to stab the shit out of herself so that the Staff of One can emerge from her cleavage zone, which I think happens. It’s unclear, but certainly the robot gets destroyed somehow and everyone celebrates with frosty chocolate milkshakes!

“And we didn’t even need Alex to do it!” Karolina observes.

“We never needed Alex,” says Nico. “He just tried to keep us down, to make sure that we never became a real threat to the ‘rents.”

This touching moment is brought to you by T. Rex, the band. Bang a gong, Old Lace. Bang a gong.

Once they’re done besmirching Alex’s good name like the uncontrollable racists that they are, Gert finds Old Lace behind a touchpad-controlled locked door. One little DEET DOOT (the code was probably “69”, haha, high five) and the two are reunited once again.

“I don’t want to rain on another parade,” Nico says, raining on another parade yet again, “but what now? It’s not like Gert can take Old Lace back to her dorm.”

Why not? Teach the dinosaur the fundamentals of psychology and Gilgamesh. But Gert’s ok with not going back at all. She’s tired of being controlled by adults. Fuck that noise. She’s going to be on her own. Karolina agrees. Chase is picking his nose and eating his lumpy boogers. Molly wants to live on her own too, but Nico tells her that her mutant orphanage is as good a place as any, so no.

“Listen,” Nico starts, raining on more parades, “this is all very flowery and nice, but if we make a break for it now, everyone will be on our tails… cops, child welfare services, the Avengers. What do we do when they come after us?”

Chase points to the Leapfrog thing that got them away from their parents in the vivarium. “We outrun ‘em.”

Well, then it’s settled! Out on the lam it is! That doesn’t sound like a bad idea whatsoever! Good luck never going to a store again, idiots. Amazon shopping for all of you from now on, and Bezos gets another cool $1 billion. Thanks, Obama.

Listen, Toxic Masculinity Boy. You’re a cunt hair away from getting Staff of One’d up the asshole.

Nico is satisfied with the Leapfrog idea. They all pile in, dinosaur included, and take off into the stars.

End of series.

Final Thoughts

Does this mean the Runaways are over?! Hell nah! There’s another whole series to get through, and that one has a whole bunch more issues! See you next time, Runaway Jerks!