Marvel's Runaways

It’s off to an incredibly compelling start, thanks to Schwartz and Strange’s confident storytelling, and should it keep moving forward at its current pace, it could become a truly addictive hit. As it is, it’s one of Marvel’s most promising series to date.

The Breakfast Club meets X-Men with a splash of Stranger Things thrown in, Marvel’s Runaways is the richest, best-realized Marvel drama of the new TV season.

There’s a deep vein of dark comedy here, a satire of point-one-percenters that deepens the more recognizable superpowered-teen melodrama.

While Runaways can still feel like a show written about teens by adults (here’s looking at you, #blessed selfies and rando man at a rager peddling pills by asking girls if they “want to party”), for the most part, Runaways demonstrates empathy for its characters by allotting them time and consideration beyond their most basic descriptors.

It succeeds by providing a fun mix of whimsy and gravitas that pays respect to its source material while also being compelling television.

So no, this Runaways isn’t a literal recreation of a beloved comic. But it works in its own right, and feels more fun and durable than a lot of its Marvel TV counterparts.

Runaways is no phony teen drama, and although the first episodes somewhat falter when trying to merge awkward angst and fascinating mythology, when it succeeds the show is as effective as any of Marvel’s other big-screen genre mash-ups.

It’s a cheeky, splashy and addictive coming-of-age adventure that feels at once fresh and comfortingly familiar.

Runaways maintains an appealing balance of accessible familiarity with a savvy sense of surprise, augmented by a strong cast. Most of all, it’s fun without being weighed down by the sense of self-importance that sometimes surrounds Marvel shows.

It remains to be seen where Runaways will go when the show really establishes what the powers of these teen heroes are--in these early episodes, it’s all the producers can do to simply sketch in the personalities of what is, when you add in the parents, a very large main cast. Right now, there’s a nice tension here between the ways adolescents often tend to isolate versus the ways they’re forced to come together as a team.

What Runaways has going for it is being better than the fall's other new Marvel shows.