Jurassic Park Might Have Ended A Lot Differently

Last Saturday night, I hung out with two wonderful friends of mine. They have a seven week old daughter, which makes them real people, unlike me, who dresses up stuffed animals and lets them sit at the dinner table when my roommate isn‘t home. It was a delightful weekend. I held the baby, we watched the old version of “Fright Night,” then after a lovely homemade dinner, contemplated exactly how the gruesome 1980s prosthetic vampire makeup from the movie would scar their little girl for life. I know it scarred me!

Post dinner, I had a nerd attack. Going through my friend’s comic collection, I discovered “Runaways,” a Marvel comic series created by Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona. Being the gracious host, my friend lent me the comic and I drove back to West Hollywood fully intending to be a productive human being for the next several hours after arriving home.

Wrong, Steinho! Wrong! It was the equivalent of a fat lady taking out an entire chocolate cake after licking a bite of frosting off her finger. I read all 18 volumes of it between about 8:30pm and midnight. I couldn’t stop. Not since I finally kicked my World of Warcraft habit back in 2008 have I been so drunk on nerdly delight.

This is a little how my experience reading “Runaways” started. Fifteen pages in, you find out that something is up with the parents of six regular teenagers. Gee Mom and Dad, why are you all gathering around a table in a secret library wearing cool costumes? I think, “Because they’re super heroes, right? Awesome! I wish my parents were super heroes! Yay comics!” Five pages later, the kids watch their parents murder a teen prostitute in human sacrifice. I think, “Human sacrifice? Teen prostitutes? Even better!” Oddly enough, the kids in the comic turn on their parents pretty quickly after this, vowing not to stop until they’ve brought about their wicked group’s downfall. No waiting around to see if it was all just a misunderstanding for these boys and girls! Maybe the writers were banking on the thought that deep down all teenagers already think their parents are evil, and wish they’d turn out to be diabolical magicians so their feelings would be justified.

“Runaways” is the type of story I love, where the focus is on a group of characters, all with a very distinct personality and ability. I think it’s a throwback to my days of D&D. There’s just some satisfaction knowing that you’ve got the whole set … strong dude, wizard, rogue, technomancer from the future, hot elf chick and so forth. In “Runaways” it’s a little more like, nerdy leader, goth wizard girl, hot hippie alien, jock with robot hands, super strong mutant kid, and sarcastic geek with psychically linked velociraptor. What a team!

My favorite was the dinosaur girl, Gertrude. Her parents are inter-dimensional time travelers, which explains how they got the dinosaur to give to her in the first place. There simply aren’t enough stories about evil time travelers. I think what I liked most about the idea of having a dinosaur for a weapon is that you can just hang out, tell your raptor to fetch/kill whoever you want, and then watch the magic happen. But that’s not all. Gertrude names her dinosaur Old Lace, after deciding that her code name will be Arsenic. Get it? Arsenic and Old Lace? No? Did your high school not have a theatre department?

Okay, so maybe not everyone is a theatre geek as well as a fantasy nerd. BUT for anyone who’s ever wished to be a superhero, or who just wished a dinosaur would eat their father, “Runaways” is sure to satisfy. And unlike chocolate cake, it will not give you diabetes.