Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Runaways (Vol. 1), Issue #13 – “The Good Die Young (Chapter 1)”! We’re back at it, ladies and gentlemen, with everyone’s favorite runaways: The Runaways! In the previous two-part storyline, the police lieutenant hired by the Pride has roped in a couple of NYC superheroes named Cloak and Dagger to help find these runaway kids. And they do! And after a brief misunderstanding, Cloak and Dagger help the runaways escape again.

That’s about it.

There’s still a mole in their midst. The biggest mystery right now is which kid is loyal to the Pride. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM IS A SUSPECT.

Except for Colin Hanks. He’s not one of the Runaways.

Runaways (Vol. 1), Issue #13 [May, 2004]
Written by: Brian K. Vaughan
“The Good Die Young (Part 1)”

The “Hostel”, Bronson Canyon, California

It’s been a week of hiding out while Cloak and Dagger are supposed to be doing their thing. Chase listens to the news on these adorkable headphones, but there’s nothing chirping about new superheroes in Los Angeles, or anything about their parents getting taken down. And where are these Avengers?? Aren’t they supposed to rescue those in need? Pah.

“Or maybe those Cloak and Dagger tools we trusted lied to us,” Chase grumbles. “I bet they were working for our parents’ goons in the LAPD all along.”

Alex is in the other room tinkering with the decoder ring and the Abstract. He all but says “Eureka!” when he figures something out. In this case, he thinks he has roughly decoded the first few chapters.

“And?” asks Gertrude. “How does it start?” Oh boy, how does it start indeed! Gather ‘round, fellow kids. Storytime is upon us.

Los Angeles, California, Twenty Years Ago

“Eat lead, pigs!” Alex’s parents are involved in a high-speed chase with the police after stealing a bank-load of cash. Suddenly, they’ve been “summoned”…

“You’ve stranded us in the 1980s!” Gertrude’s parents are fiddling with a time machine. “Have you ever even read a history book? This is the worst decade of the millennium!” They stole artifacts from the previous century and they have to go back before… oh wait, they’ve been “summoned” too…

“MUTIE SCUM!” Molly’s parents are getting rocks thrown at them all because they have glowing purple eyes. And just before they start blasting humans into the Stone Age, they get all sorts of “summoned”…

Chase’s parents are working in a lab, then they get “summoned”.

Nico’s parents are in the middle of a wedding. Then “summoned”.

Karolina’s parents are rehearsing lines. “SUMMONED!”

No way, how dare you? We’re from All My Children. General Hospital is GARBAGE!

They all get transported to a large chamber in front of some big, ornate Stargate thing. They don’t know one another, and they all start fighting immediately because the Deans are aliens and the Hayes are mutants and no one wants to be associated with such riff-raff. “I don’t know why you deviants kidnapped us from our own wedding,” says Ms. Minoru, “but you made a huge mistake.” And then she and Mr. Minoru start creating black holes with their hands. Then they release the bats!

OK, enough of all this. It’s embarrassing. “Creatures, be gone!” booms a voice, then the bats disappear. “The rest of you, be silent. We are the ones who called you here, to our vivarium beneath the seas…”

“We are the Gibborim.”

The Gibborim, as it were, appear to be overlarge, mopey-looking deities. They appear to be unhappy, probably because dealing with humans is a big, fucking drag.

We return to the kids. Gertrude recognizes this word as something similar to “mighty men” in Hebrew. “Heroes”. Nico knows the word, too. “The Gibborim are also mythical evil giants, who supposedly predate the Old Testament.”

So they’re parents are connected to overlarge, ancient deities? “You know, the more I find out about our ‘rents, the more I wish I was adopted,” Gert says, squeezing the bridge of her nose, unphased by her own unironic use of “’rents”.

Chase is more than skeptical. Secret society? Sure. Vampires? Okay. Aliens and mutants? Of course. But giants. That’s where he draws the line!

Well, Mr. Stein drew the line there too, according to the Abstract. But there they were, right before him. They are here to return the Earth to a state of “utopia” instead of, you know, “Fruitopia”. Man, I miss that stuff.

Mr. Dean, or perhaps Hayes or Yorkes or whoever, whatever, I dunno, asks what the fuck the Gibborim need a handful of mortals for in order to restore peace to the Earth. Well, there’s a handy answer for that.

We are also in desperate need of more nail polish.

“The Thieves.” – Wilders

“The Travelers.” – Yorkes

“The Magicians.” – Minorus

“The Outcasts.” – Hayes

“The Wise Men.” – Steins

“And the Colonists.” – Deans

“With your help, we will restore Earth to the glorious paradise it once was,” says the one Gibborim dude. He still looks mopey.

“How? By ‘saving the whales’ or some crap?” asks Mr. Dean.

“No, by destroying all of humanity.”

Oh, ok! Why didn’t you say so in the beginning! Sounds good to everyone involved!

“WHAT?” exclaims Ms. Minoru. Look lady, if you’re not on board then we’re giving you the heave-ho.

Mr. Dean, eager to rid the planet of pesky humans, asks what’s in it for all of them. Immortality? Jewels? A lifetime supply of Hormel chili? “The Gibborim will augment each of your abilities,” claims Mr. Gibborim, “give you enough power to claim dominion over the entire City of Angels… and beyond.”

The Gibborim tell these 12 mopes that it will take 25 years to reshape the Earth to their liking. Until then, go nuts. Do what you need to do. Eat, fuck, whatever. Have defiant children. Enjoy.

Oh yeah, and one more thing…

So no Hormel chili, then?

The Gibborim considers this awful compromise as an incentive! The most faithful disciples get to live forever and therefore suffer endlessly = bad. The least faithful jerks get to die quickly = good. Did I get that right?

Keep in mind that all 12 are replaceable, so if they don’t want to be involved then vamoose and don’t let the corner of the door penetrate your asshole on the way out.

Geoff Wilder likes the 50/50 odds, plus the 25 years of enhanced powers. The world is ending anyway on account of Reagan, et al. Ok, they’re all in!

“If we agree to your terms, you creatures said that you’ll need us to supply you with something… but what?” asks Ms. Minoru.

“The twelve of you will gather once a year for the Rite of Blood…” explains Gibborim Jones.

Aha. The kids stop reading the Abstract and put the pieces together. A girl got killed for the Rite of Blood. “You mean, some girl was getting murdered in the basement every year our families had their get-together?” Karolina asks, obviously not keeping up.

When asked how the six of them fit into all this nonsense, Alex reads further that Ms. Stein was the first woman in the Pride to get pregnant. She brings it up to the rest of the group at their annual meeting and is met with cries of “you’re not gonna keep it, are you??” and “hey, great idea, I wanna kid too!”

“If the Gibborim select Victor and me for Paradise, I intend to give my spot to our offspring,” Stein says while her husband sneers. The Yorkes find this endlessly romantic. Now everyone’s talkin’ ‘bout fuckin’. And Geoff Wilder suddenly decides that the pact now includes children for everyone. He unsheathes a goddamned dagger. “Are you in… or are you out?” he says to Mr. Dean, who intends to opt out. Ms. I-Forget-Her-Name Wilder explains that children will at least keep the Pride legacy going, so there’s that.

So we’re all in agreement? *sheathes dagger*

“We’ll tell our children what gift awaits them after they turn eighteen, just before the end,” says Geoff. “Until then, they need never know just how much we sacrificed on their behalf…”

That includes all those years of welt-raising spankings, sister.

Molly is done listening to this upsetting piffle. Chase agrees, this is more than enough evidence to throw their evil parents in the slammer! But the slammer is run by the police, who are run by the Pride…

…so who the hell are they going to tell?

Doesn’t matter. The whole police found their secret hideout. The whole police. Every police. It really is quite something.

Lieutenant Flores points a gun at all of them. The end.

Final Thoughts

This… is actually pretty interesting! Looks like Runaways has a pretty coherent story leading up to a real conclusion! I mean, I don’t expect much from Marvel comics as it is, so it’s a low bar. But I’m impressed!

Five issues to go, though. Don’t fuck it up, Vaughan.