The Gay Geek (May 28, 2008)

Big screen Project Runaways
For me, the big comic book news this week is probably the announcement that Marvel’s Runaways is getting the silver screen treatment, with series creator Brian K. Vaughan writing and producing the adaptation. While Runaways includes a lesbian character in the cast, I think its sales history gives gay superhero fans more reason to be hopeful for the future.

Marvel's Runaways

Longtime fans of the series should remember its long and frustrating road to this point – the series began as part of Marvel’s Tsunami line, which was aimed at bringing in the new comic readers who were picking up manga in the bookstores. Tsunami promised stories that would get collected into bookshelf editions and offered a mix of new takes on familiar concepts such as Andi Watson’s Namor or Vaughan‘s Mystique series. The series also promised new ideas by taking the Marvel universe in a new direction – like Sean McKeever’s Sentinel as well as Runaways. Despite the fact that most of the titles had vocal fans, the line sold badly as individual issues; all of the Tsunami titles were canceled by issue 18, including the collected editions that were promised at the beginning.

However, that wasn’t the end for Runaways as the series' very ardent fans were eventually able to convince Marvel to publish a collected edition as a digest that sold well enough to bring Runaways back as a monthly series, thereby helping create a template for other series aimed outside of the traditional superhero reader. From the reports I occasionally hear, Runaways continues to be a huge seller for Marvel in the bookstores, finding new readers who don’t have much interest about who died in "Avengers Dissembled" or in Civil War.

The first part of Runaways' history is probably familiar to most gay comic fans. The list of GLBT-inclusive series that have received critical praise, a loyal readership and low sales is frustratingly long – including the likes of Young Heroes in Love, Hard Time, New Mutants, Gotham Central and Manhunter. Unfortunately, the comics industry has been stuck in a cycle that ensures these titles won’t succeed with comic shops, wary about spending money on comics they can't sell or return, focus on titles they are sure will sell while fans looking for more than the big names grow increasingly cynical about supporting those titles in the future.

Outside of those “brilliant but canceled" titles, gay readers usually find ourselves as infrequently-appearing guest characters (like The Piper in Flash) or the comics equivalent of "barelythere gays" (Obsidian in JSA).

So far, Runaways has broken that cycle by showing how a critically praised series can eventually find its audience if given the chance. Now, it has the chance to do more. Runaways could show how nurturing a series could end up bringing the big money that comes from getting a title into the movie theatres. With any luck, this also means that this'll encourage the major publishers to help these struggling titles find their audience.