Present-day Gertie has fallen for Victor, but the two of them have just found future Gertie snogging with Chase! Gib has been feeding—no, accepting food from—stray cats! Nico and Karolina seek—but can’t yet find—a tearful reconciliation! And no one’s talking—literally! It’s a wordless tour de force of a penultimate issue in Runaways #37, with writing as always by Rainbow Rowell, pencils and inks by Andrés Genolet, colors by Dee Cunniffe, and letters by VC’s Joe Caramagna.
When we last saw our heroes they were one tangled-up in-universe mess. Time-traveling, purple-haired, confident adult Gertie, back from the future again for reasons unknown, began a climactic kiss in the woods with her soul patch-burdened blond ex. No sooner did the pair embrace than high school-aged Gertie and her about-to-be-new-boyfriend Victor encountered them, astonished and dismayed.
Things were looking up, however, for Gib, the square-jawed, pale, black-haired, and decidedly well-muscled (think Piotr Rasputin) demon spawn stranded on Earth, who decided to attend high school. Gib seemed on track to becoming a gridiron star. Karolina Dean was still recovering from her brush with death at the hands of fake hero Doc Justice, and Nico wasn’t really over her. As for Alex Wilder, where’d he go?
Tonight we find out. The first seventeen pages of Runaways #37 contain no dialogue: everything’s body language, backstory, subtext. After a triumphant day as a popular high schooler, Gib comes home and devours the life force of mice, obligingly brought his way by a parade of cats: talk about a double life! (Delicious, for all we know. The cats sure look happy.)
Meanwhile, in the mansion, Doombot dresses up and vacuums. Upstairs, Nico, frustrated, slams and whams the Staff of One against a punching bag, until she can’t take the stress and seeks out Karolina for silent reconciliation, and maybe cuddles. And in the woods, future Gertie and Chase and current Gertie and Victor stare at each other until the moon glows and glows brighter and that’s no moon: it’s a spaceship with glowing adults who have come to Earth in search of Karolina Dean. “Where is Karolina Dean?” they ask.
Eighteen pages make a short comic, you say? Whatever happened to Alex Wilder, you ask? Good question: in a more conventional (that is, non-silent) two-page coda, the evil Doc Justice’s son and his partner go through his effects on his estate and discuss re-forming—without Doc—the teen do-gooder squad called the J-Team. And Alex shows up, and he asks to join.
Wordless comics are sometimes regarded as the highest or purest example of the art form, but in a collaborative, made-on-deadline, company-owned franchise they’re also a rough ride for the artist, who gets less than the usual help making story beats clear. Genolet and Cunniffe keep us along for the ride: this issue’s a masterclass in facial expression, in delight and anguish, determination and tears, especially in the Nico-and-Karolina subplot, where Karolina literally re-lights an old flame.
The issue also sets us up for a grand—or perhaps just a rushed—finale. Pre-1990s Marvel comics– even the most soap-operatic Claremont issues—used to have a rule that every Marvel comic could be someone’s first. Boxes and footnotes and now-obsolete thought balloons served—however awkwardly or rapidly—to fill new readers in: some of those readers found comics on drugstore racks. Today we buy comics in comic book shops, and Rainbow Rowell—rightly famous for her YA novels—writes them for people who have already been reading them: it’s no wonder this intricately plotted relaunch of the early 2000s teen team couldn’t continue indefinitely. Runaways #38 (legacy 100) will apparently be Rowell’s, and the series’s, last. I feel for these characters: the soap opera works. I want only the best for Gertie, and I want to see Nico and Karolina—the dark and the light, the Doomed and the Outsider—figure things out. Most of all I want to know what happens. So will you, if you’ve already been following these kids, whom Rowell knows so well. If you haven’t, though (she said, with a sigh all over her face) maybe don’t start with Runaways #37.
Stephanie Burt is Professor of English at Harvard. Her podcast about superhero role playing games is Team-Up Moves, with Fiona Hopkins; her latest book of poems is We Are Mermaids. Her nose still hurts from that thing with the gate.
