Runaways: Pride and Joy—Brian K. Vaughan, Illustrated by Adrian Alphona

I've been trying to get back in touch with my geek self in the recent past, especially having recently moved my entire life to a place where I know very few people; it's given me more time to focus on my interests and hobbies.

This re-awakening has manifested itself in several different ways: my renewed love of board games, my desire to get back into gaming (although they don't really sell many N64 games in the stores nowadays...), and finally my introduction to comics.

I have to say, one of the things that I didn't get a lot of when I was a kid was comic books. I was a ridiculously avid reader, but for some reason I never really got into comic books. Of course, it may have had something to do with my father's influence, who constantly called video games "vidiot" games and was pretty averse to superheroes and comic book type things in general. He was more of a mechanic and beer type guy. Nothing against him, just different interests.

Well, I've been wanting to get into reading comics for a long time, but I would constantly feel overwhelmed about where to start.

I was inspired to figure it out, whatever that would mean, after watching the first season of Comic Book Men on the Netflix. The show is a reality show based around a podcast that Kevin Smith (director, actor, writer, comic book lover) does with his friends/the guys who work in the comic store he owns in New Jersey, Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash. Seeing those guys nerding out about particular 

Anyway, I actually found, on one of my favourite YouTube channels Geek and Sundry, a vlog from Amy Dallen about where to start with comic books. It was great, and one of the books she suggested was Runaways. She mentioned one later in the series that was written by Joss Whedon (who doesn't love Whedon?) but I wanted to start at the beginning, so I could fully understand.

The premise is interesting and I'm excited to read more. I'm especially looking forward to the Whedon-authored volumes.

Basically, it tells the story of six kids who discover that their parents are actually supervillains, and that they themselves have powers. As the title may indicate, they decide to run away from their families, not wanting to be follow in their evil parents footsteps. Of course, it's not that easy, to just "run away" from supervillain parents. In this first volume, 

An exciting thing about starting these series at this point is that many of them have books and books worth of issues to get through. Hurray! It's the same reason that I love the Netflix: because I can move at my own pace with television shows, rather than waiting at the edge of my seat each week for a new episode (or waiting each Wednesday at my local comic book store, as the case may be).