Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Runaways (Vol. 1) Issue #6 – “Pride and Joy (Chapter 6)”! In the previous installment, the parents lure the kids over to the Hayes house after threatening 11-year-old Molly. They wouldn’t harm her, but the kids don’t know that.

The kids have been very good at knocking their parents unconscious. Karolina cold-cocks her mother! Nothing but a fist! Chase’s boner about it knows no bounds.

During a confrontation between Nico and Dr. Mrs. Hayes, Molly wakes up with her nose bleeding and her eyes glowing violet. Nico knocks Hayes out with her staff, and Molly jumps on the bed raging.

“GET AWAY FROM MY MOM!”

This issue ends the storyline. Is Molly going to completely tear into her friends? Will the kids escape to Tijuana? Am I getting another bowl of Golden Grahams? Read on to find out all this and more!

Runaways (Vol. 1), Issue #6 [November, 2003]
Written by: Brian K. Vaughan
“Pride and Joy (Chapter 6)”

I got another bowl of Golden Grahams! Molly is fucking furious and Nico is terrified. “Don’t freak, Molly. I know how scary this must seem, but there’s really nothing to be afraid–”

Gertrude enters the room with her dinosaur, which seems like something to be afraid of. Molly screams, afraid. Then Alex shows up looking sheepish and useless. “What are you guys doing in my house?” Molly asks, calmer, eyes still glowing mutantly. Alex is like “whoa”. Very eloquent.

“You have a dinosaur?” Molly asks, still standing on her bed.

“Yeah, but she’s a friendly dinosaur… like Barney.”

“I hate Barney!”

Uh oh, let’s not speak of Barney any more than we have to. We don’t want to get in a Barney-fueled rage. Molly is confused, but not because she’s a mutant. It’s because Nico hit her mom in the face with a staff. That part is bewildering. “She had to, Molly. Your mom and dad might not seem like bad people… but they are.”

Gert continues by telling her all about what happened the previous night. Sacrifices and weird rituals and glowing eyeballs and strange costumes and horrific orgies. “You’re lying!” Molly yells.

They ain’t lying, kid. Chase and Karolina join the party, which means all the kids are now upstairs and no one is keeping an eye on the unconscious, plastic surgery loving–

KROOM. “Kroom” is the sound of a wall blowing up. Mrs. Dean hovers in front of the hole in the wall. “I would say that you should have killed me when you had the chance… but a chance is the one thing you spoiled brats never had.”

Mess with Gert, you gonna get hurt.

“If any of you move, I’ll pop Gertrude here as if she were one of her own blackheads. I’d rather not kill anyone, but this overweight nerdling was the one child The Pride always considered expendable.”

Well, that’s kind of harsh. I would’ve pegged Alex as the expendable one! Look at him, he’s basically drooling.

Molly yells for Mrs. Dean to stop hurtin’ the Gert. She shoves the woman so hard back out of the hole that she plummets into the swimming pool below. Chase just gapes at how strong this 11-year-old is, pushing this 60-lb woman out of the house.

Anyway, let’s get a move-on before Molly’s room gets even more torn up. Karolina insists on rescuing her evil mother from the pool before she drowns something fierce. Nico and Alex will help. Chase, Karolina, and Molly are to get in the van. “If we’re not out in the three minutes… leave without us,” instructs Alex, the de facto leader of their little gang for some reason.

Alex and Nico chit-chat about the staff and how it seemed to have risen out of her body when she needed it to. “It’s almost like my… my soul puked it up. Thing seems to work me more than I work it.” Yes, we’ve all had our souls puke up something from time to time. Mine just puked up a whole watermelon. And I don’t even eat watermelon!

Chase will do it.

They approach the swimming pool where Mrs. Dean floats face down and motionless, lookin’ dead as shit. Alex discovers, on Mrs. Dean’s person, the magic decoder ring that they need to decipher Gert’s magic book. He pulls it off of Mrs. Dean’s dead body, but then it turns out that Mrs. Dean’s dead body is actually an alive body. “VERMIN!” she screams in alarmingly huge, yellow letters. “You think you’ve beaten us? We haven’t even used a fraction of our strength against you.”

Eep and eek. They are *yawn* so scared. “Once the kid gloves come off, your parents will annihilate you. We brought you into this world…”

Alex finishes the cliched end of that sentence and whacks her over the noggin’ really fucking hard with the Staff of One. She’s knocked out again, this time at the side of the pool so that she doesn’t drown hilariously. Onward!

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES – 8:42am

Karolina drives the van. Chase sits in the middle, cozying up. Alex is in the passenger seat trying to make sense of the Abstract. The decoder ring is only translating every other word, so maybe with context it can be figured out. More likely, though, they’re going to need another decoder ring! Check all the boxes of Cracker Jacks you can find. They’ve got some pretty nifty ones for free!

Karolina still can’t believe that her parents pulled a fast one on her. Chase reminds her that her parents are actors. They’re paid a lot of money to act. Acting is their job. You feel me?

Molly wants to go to school. Gert tells her to stuff it.

Go violate your own butthole, old man.

Alex gets a menacing call from his father, who has some bad news. Alex may be on his way to the police to try reporting their parents, but his father has already helped put out a bulletin on the radio. “Police are still searching for sixteen-year-old Alex Wilder, wanted in connection with yesterday’s murder in Malibu.”

Gee, thanks Dad. Now Alex is a wanted suspect. Cool prank. Next, Karolina points out her open window at a storefront with displayed TVs reporting the news. “Runaway Destiny Gonzales was found stabbed to death in the area teenager’s bedroom late last night. Police suspect that the brutal slaying may have been related to the young man’s involvement in violent online role-playing games.”

SURE, BLAME DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS FOR AMERICA’S VIOLENCE PROBLEMS. Roll the dice, stab a teenager. We’ve all heard this one before!

The report continues: “In addition, the Amber Alert system has been activated for eleven-year-old Molly Hayes, who was allegedly kidnapped by this gang just a few hours ago.”

Alex ain’t scared! He ain’t even titillated! “Nice try, Dad. But we’ll prove that you framed us.” Ha! Prove to whom? Your own limp, flaccid penis? Chase’s erect penis? Listen, kiddo. The Pride owns this town. Get your supple little asses back home so you can all get the spankings of your life!

The Wilders promise to be merciful if Alex comes home right now. They’ll forget this incident ever happened and they’ll buy him all the Pizza Rolls that he can eat. They promise he’ll get plump with Pizza Rolls and T.G.I.Friday’s frozen potato skins. “I’d rather blow my brains out than go back to your lies,” Alex responds, clearly not interested in trans fats. His mother grabs the phone and tries one last bit of reason, explaining that going against The Pride will make his life very, very difficult. And they don’t want that. Neither wants that. They just–

*click*

The kids speak amongst themselves. They’re wanted. They’re being chased down. And there’s no going back.

“Then there’s only one thing left to do,” says Chase.

Elon Musk will help you all fly to Mars if you say really nice things about his dick.

THE HAYES RESIDENCE – 9:01am

Dr. Mr. Hayes assures his wife that the Wilders have put their plan into effect. The police will catch them tout suite, Molly will be back in no time, then they can all put this unpleasantness behind them. Magical mystical powers, artifacts, and strange psychic dinosaurs.

Dr. Mrs. Hayes still can’t believe that Nico struck her with the Staff of One. “Big deal, she froze me like a mystical popsicle,” says Mrs. Yorkes, obviously turning it into a competition. They all wonder how their own flesh and blood could betray them like this, but Mrs. Dean enters the room with evidence that not all of them may be traitors. She found a note on the floor: “Mom and Dad – I love you, and I know you have reasons for doing what you did. Don’t worry, I’ll always be loyal to you.”

SOMETHING SMELLS. SMELLS BAD. I think it might be a ruse, but the parents are optimistic that they might have a mole on their hands. “But who the hell is it?”

BRONSON CANYON GRIFFITH PARK – 10:27am

Chase finally takes them to the super-sweet hiding spot he’s been going on about for several issues. It’s a fucking hole in the ground, basically. A cave. Alex looks annoyed. Chase looks proud. It’s off the beaten path, nobody comes here. Not even teenagers lookin’ for makeout spots. Not until now… right Karolina? *eyebrows*

Karolina points to a Danger sign that says “Gamma Testing Site – Lethal Levels of Radiation!” That doesn’t instill much confidence in Chase’s rad hideout. “Oh, I bought that off eBay,” Chase assures them. “I put it up right after I found this place, just to make sure nobody tried to squat in my haunt.”

OK, cool So they’re all supposed to cram themselves in this little cave, huh? Yes! Chase leads them through the darkness until they reach what is supposed to be a large cavern. Karolina lights up the place with her incandescent alien radiance, and the room is revealed to be some caved-in basement of sorts. There are chairs, cabinets, portraits, a grandfather clock, a chandelier, railings, and staircase, all broken and piles up within the rubble of the ruin. “Boys and girls, welcome to a little place I like to call… The Hostel!”

Hostile is right! Oh shit, Alex makes that joke. Always a step ahead, that creep.

Boo! Hiss! Take me to Mars!

“Looks like it was designed by M.C. Escher on crank,” Alex observes, and I think that’s a pretty good summary. Alex read about a “missing mansion” in a book of his father’s. “I guess some crazy actor built this joint up there back in the 1920s. From the looks of it, it got swallowed up during an earthquake and fell down here.”

Sounds cool. It’s not at all likely that Chase’s father already read about this missing mansion and will find them all in it within the next three issues. Not at all.

Gert decides that they should all have different names. She doesn’t want to be Gertrude anymore. “That’s the name they gave me.” From now on, she’s Arsenic! The dinosaur can be Old Lace! Karolina decides she will be Lucy in the Sky. Nico is Sister Grimm, after her AIM handle (lol). Chase is Neo. Lucy in the Sky tells him to pick something original. Chase tells her to go screw. Gert suggests the name Talkback for Chase. Molly laughs and Chase calls her Bruiser. Molly wanted to be Princess Powerful.

Alex is going to be Germpants. Barring that, how about Alex Wilder!

“I recognize that my parents have ruined that name, but I don’t want to run from it. I want to redeem it.” OK there, Contrived Boy. Maybe you should be Contrived Boy.

They can all start using their powers, weapons, and resources to thwart their parents; bring them to justice for everything they’ve done. Atone for their crimes by helping people. Protect the world they’re trying to destroy.

Lucy in the Sky helpfully points out that they are now wanted criminals and that they may as well die in the cave! Alex suggests disguises. Costumes. Superhero shit. “No offense, Alex, but isn’t that sort of childish?” Arsenic complains.

“What’s the alternative, ‘Arsenic’? Being an adult? If that means turning into the people who raised us…”

They all break the fourth wall by making faces of DETERMINATION and HIGHER MEANING.

“…I hope I die before I get old.”

Final Thoughts

Yeah, I don’t think I’m entirely convinced yet that the parents are the bad guys here. This is all going to be chalked up to complete misunderstanding, mark my words. They’re going to be like “oh, kids, we actually killed a planet-destroying alien under the guise of a human teenage girl” and the kids are going to be like “ohhhhhh”.

I’m revisiting this series sooner rather than later. Check in soon enough for more Runaway goodness.