Vaughan again?! Oh, how the weak have fallen further!

Here I sit writing my third review on the fine works of Brian K, just waiting for next month to arrive. I loved this story, featuring Molly alone out of the rag-tag teenybopper heroes.

In a nodlike gesture toward Dickens, Vaughan borrows the premise of this tale from the story of Oliver Twist. Molly wakes up, after an unseen battle with unseen villains, in the sewers and finds herself under the forced control of the wonderfully named Provost.

The Provost is a sort of Fagan who controls runaways though magical collars which he can use to turn the children into stone if they disobey.

When Molly comes onto the scene, the Provost - I really love that villain name - is running a very smalltime operation. He forces the young runaways (not the runaways of Runaways the comic, but other runaways in the comic Runaways) to pick pockets and commit petty thievery. But when he recognizes the incredible power that Molly possesses he decides that it is time for his smallish minions to do a big job, namely, to knock off a bank.

Molly is forced to concede. What commences is the stuff that makes comics, and in his own right Vaughan, so great. This book, as always, is filled with teenaged angst. This angst is far different from that of the vastly more mature Y the Last Man and the incredible Existential dilemmas of Ex Machina, but it is perfect and fitting for its subject - the misadventures of teenaged orphans with powers. This is more akin to Vaughan's work on Ultimate X-Men, but better as it is isolated and fully under the control of its writer.

All hail the king, Bill Willingham*...oops. Well, hail this other guy too, Brian K Vaughan.

-Peblee

*Bill Willingham writes the little known title Fables, and is somewhat celebrated in these parts.

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