Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Runaways (Vol. 1), Issue #11 – “Lost and Found (Part 1)”! In the previous storyline, the kids accidentally invite a vampire kid named Topher into their hostel hideaway. After making out with both Nico and Karolina, he sets his sights on Nico to turn her and help him kill her friends.

It doesn’t work! Karolina allows Topher to chew on her neck for a bit, unleashing a torrent of sunlight-tinged blood! Needless to say, Topher bursts into flames.

The parents, aka The Pride, learn that their kids murdered a vampire. Maybe these kids have what it takes to be part of The Pride after all! Is it going to happen? We’ll probably never know! It’s a new storyline, chumps!

Runaways (Vol. 1), Issue #11 [April, 2004]
Written by: Brian K. Vaughan
“Lost and Found (Part 1)”

Parker Center, LAPD Headquarters – 9:09pm

A detective named Lieutenant Flores, who I guess is a lieutenant and not a detective, is playing detective with a guy in a hood and a woman wearing an outfit that stupidly reveals various parts of her torso. “So wait, you’re telling me that drugs turned you into superheroes? That can’t make you popular with the parent groups.”

“Popularity has never been a concern of Cloak and Dagger,” says the shrouded one.

Cloak and Dagger aren’t junkies, your honor. These drugs were forced upon them by evil men. They now have powers over light and darkness as a result of these evil men. These evil men took advantage of them because they ran away from their parents! They were vulnerable! They were young! They were probably a little horny, too.

This is good timing, because Lieutenant Flores wants to take advantage of them to find some other young kids who ran away from their parents! Flores shows them a picture of Molly, a young girl who had allegedly been kidnapped by other kids: Alex Wilder, Nico Minoru, and Gertrude Yorkes! Maybe even others! Kids these days, eh? Always stealing other children away from their homes.

Cloak and Dagger think this shit is baloney. Kids don’t kidnap kids. Kids don’t run away in groups. All this is fishy and it stinks like fish.

Watch your tongue, Pee-wee Herman.

“Please, I wouldn’t have asked you two to travel all the way from New York if I didn’t think you were the Hayes girl’s last hope,” Flores says, sweating like a WHORE in CHURCH hahaha that’s a funny thing dads say sometimes.

OK, they’ll do it. Bye.

Once Cloak and Dagger leave, the still sweating Flores calls Mr. Wilder immediately and tells him that things are going well! He is pleased as punch to inform Wilder that their kids will be back like a WHORE in CHURCH.

”The Hostel”, Bronson Canyon, California – 10:15pm

The kids lie around bored. Chase observes that their situation, as he puts it, “bites.” Alex tells him to STFU because he’s trying to decipher the Abstract with his brainy brain. He’s only a few chapters away from figuring out the origin of the Pride! Something about secret handshakes and Freemason-style hazing rituals (pouring acid down one’s pants).

What the fuck does any of this matter anyway? Cracking the code of some book isn’t going to help stop their parents from… *checks notes* …being evil.

Nico stands up, and the new artist has made her look like Robert Smith of the Cure. “I’m sick and tired of moping around this dump! We have all of this… this power. We should be doing something with it. Something good!”

Molly agrees! “Yeah, like freeing all the turtles at Sea World…”

Alex doesn’t want to leave. They might be found. Nico argues that staying in one spot might make that problem worse. “What are we supposed to do?” Alex says. “Just head out and look for trouble?” Chase says they can go on patrol! Kickin’ rad!

Fine, whatever. They need more snacks anyway.

I wanna dress up as Big Bird.

The Wilder Residence, Malibu, California – 10:31pm

The parents are having another one of their orgies / discussions. Mr. Stein reports that he was able to counterfeit the new $50 bill! EVIL! With that out of the way, what of the children?

The Drs. Hayes with their glowing purple mutant eyeballs are looking forward to hearing from their mole. They haven’t heard from them yet, and they don’t even know which kid is the mole, but rest assured. One of the kids is the mole (Molly. I thought it was Karolina before, but it’s totally gonna be Molly.)

Also, when all the kids are back, the Drs. Hayes will use their mutant powers to erase all of their memories! Ha! Easy peasy. And, dare I say, lemon squeezy.

“Mind wiping?” exclaims Mrs. Yorkes. “Don’t be insane! That procedure leaves half of its subjects totally brain dead!” Well, we won’t have to worry about Chase, then! LOLOLOL!

Mr. Wilder slams his fist down on the desk! ENOUGH! BLRAHRABHAB! We’ve got Lieuteneant Flores here to help out! He’s got something to say. Lieutenant Flores, you have the floor.

…

Ahem…

…

BLRAHRABHAB! “I got to thinking, what’s the best way to find a bunch of missing teenage do-gooders? With other runaway superheroes, right?” Flores smiles smugly. “Takes a thief to catch a thief, and all that.”

So he hired Cloak and Dagger to–

The whole room stares cloaks and daggers at Flores. “You brought vigilantes? To our town?” Mrs. Wilder sneers. Then she asks for his gun and shoots him right in the kneecap.

Fuck this.

The best way find our children is to look for our children, I always say.

Van Nuys, California – 12:12am

A couple of teenage ne’er-do-wells, the antithesis of teenage do-gooders, are snickering while spraypainting the word “NAKED” on a Stark Industries sign. Alex and the gang drive up in their van. “Finally…” he says. “A crime in progress.”

Gert is very much for the defacing of an evil corporation. Chase is like “come on, I wanna punch a face.” The gang gets ready to reign blows upon these kids would probably kick their asses in school on a normal day and steal their lunch money.

Meanwhile, Cloak and Dagger – remember them? They’re probably going to get killed soon – are hanging out on a rooftop crying about the state of the world today. Children killing children! What’s next? Children killing the children killing children? Dogs killing children? When will it end?

Dagger catches a glimmer of something in the distance and they pursue it.

“Lose the art supplies, Warhol!” cries Alex “The Sleepy Badass Strong Independent Woman Who Don’t Need No Man” Wilder. “You have five seconds.” The whole group stares them down like they’re shaking up a can of whoop-ass and they’re going to spray some whoop-ass all over the place.

After five seconds, Nico takes her staff and uses black magic-type occult Satanist shit to blow up their spraypaint cans. In real life, this would accidentally murder all of them. In comic book life, though, they just kind PUFF and the kids go “AHH!” and “Oye!”

Teenager #1 brings out a gun, ready to bust a gat, but then Cloak and Dagger show up with a quip about West Side Story. “Don’t hurt us yo,” says Teenager #1. “Piece is just a water pistol…” *squirt* “See?”

The delinquents run away. The Runaways don’t run away, but they probably should have. “Alex Wilder and Nico Minoru? You’re coming with us,” says Dagger. Then she’s all “drop the weapon!” and sprays Nico with light, causing her to drop her weapon, as it were. Alex tells his MEN to stand down; these are good guys! “B-list heroes from New York!” This makes Cloak and Dagger frown.

Then a fight happens!

Hey! I may be a skank, but… uh… what was the other thing you called me?

Chase tries to shoot fire; Dagger jumps over it. Karolina tries to shoot light; Cloak can absorb it. And then he opens his cloak and sucks her into his body or some other weird, sexy shit. Dagger then throws Chase at him and Cloaks sucks him into his body or some other strange, sultry shit.

“Stop it!” yells Alex. “I don’t know what you’ve been told, but it’s wrong! We’re not killers, we’re… we’re just like you!”

Cloak and Dagger don’t care. Alex tries harder to get out of this pickle, but Cloak instructs Alex and Nico to “enter the fold,”

Later, Cloak and Dagger are chit-chatting and Cloak is agitated. “The four within my cloak’s shadowy realm… I sense no blood on their souls.”

“What are you saying?” Dagger looks incredulous. “They’re not murderers?”

“It is possible. And yet, in one of them, I do recognize a powerful darkness, a–”

Cloak doesn’t finish his thought. Gert and Molly, plus the dinosaur show up to take back what’s theirs.

“Give us back our friends…” says Gert.

“…or freaking else,” says Molly.

Final Thoughts

Oh no, four of their kind have been EATEN! Right? I’m paying attention.

My money is on the dinosaur. Gert has a fucking dinosaur and she hasn’t ruled the world yet? Unrealistic.