I have never read anything in DC's Runaways series before, but I picked this up because of the Eisner nomination for Best Continuing series. Rowell and Anka have done a good job making this new volume one an easy place for an unfamiliar reader to step in. It re-introduces the leads, a batch of teens who are all the children of super villains who ran away from and eventually betrayed (or even killed) their parents. It opens with Nico Minoru, a magician who has to draw blood before she can work magic, and can only use any spell once. She's living in a small shitty apartment by herself and hasn't seen any of the others for a while when Chase Stein crashes a time machine onto her bed, holding Gert, who died two years previous in their last big battle. Except now she hasn't. She's just two years younger than all the rest of them, and she wants to get the band back together. But do they need to be together? Karolina, the magical rainbow alien who can fly, is disguised as a human girl and going to college. She has a girlfriend who is in the Avengers. And Molly, the baby of the group, is living with her grandma and also going to school. Are they still a family? Were they ever a family?

The second volume in the Eisner nominated Runaways reboot. Chase, Nico, Gert, Old Lace (the dinosaur), the head of Victor the cyborg, and Molly are all back living in the old Runaways underground mansion. Someone has to drive Molly to school everyday, and Chase and Nico are both looking for jobs, and Karolina keeps sleeping over for movie and game nights. It would be prefect, expect some damn thing always seems to crop up: an evil best friend with a magical cupcake, a Doombot, a crush, a kiss, a breakup. Anka's art is gorgeous as always, and Rowell keeps the story moving while taking care with the emotional moments.

Hazel grew up white, middle-class, vegan, and home-schooled in Portland, OR. Lacking a social circle outside other home-schooled teens, Hazel had no idea how sheltered she was until she started a summer job pulling invasive English ivy out of parks in youth nature summer program. For the first time, Hazel worked along side teens from different schools, races, backgrounds and with different goals. It's a rude awakening, but ultimately an enlightening one. Newlevant (the author now uses they/them pronouns) hasn't cut themself any slack, and their honesty leads to a story which is at turns humorous and uncomfortable, but always compelling. I picked up an advanced reader copy at BookExpo 2019, which is printed in black and white. The final volume will be printed with ivy-green washes, highlighting the nuanced watercolors. This is an important, timely, and engaging story and I can't wait for its official release! Full disclosure, the author and I share a publisher and we are friends :)

I follow the author of this book on instagram and I had seen so much of the character development art and sneak peeks of panels that as I read it I almost felt like I had read it before. Not in a bad way! It felt like reading something I had previously read in a dream. It's a slim book but every page is textury and dark and rich. It's a novella in the vein of Tillie Walden's On A Sunbeam. It's set in a strange future in which most of the world has gone wild and uninhabitable except the Citadel, which is protected by the Chancellor. This mysterious and powerful being never shows her face- her expressive eyes show out from the shadow of her hood. Her closest friend is a baker and healer named Olive, who defends the Chancellor against those in the city who mutter than she has too much power and can't be trusted. A surprise attack by a ragged band of outsiders sets in motive a series of events that threaten the safety of the whole city. I'm not sure how widely available this book is, but I highly recommend it. I bought it because I knew I wanted to pour over the art and think about it for a long time. Frantz has a technique of combining digital colors over feathery traditional inks that I absolutely love (and want to learn myself someday).