Review by Frank Plowright

Rainbow Rowell has pulled all the primary Runaways together, and shown us what’s happened to several others. However, there’s someone who was there from the beginning who’s not appeared in the current series until his shock manifestation at the end of Best Friends Forever. That’s because Alex Wilder betrayed his friends, then died. Yet he’s there on the cover.

Given those circumstances, Alex isn’t welcomed back with open arms, but what’s following him shelves any arguments in the short term. That Was Yesterday is where Rowell starts poking at the leftovers from the original Runaways series. The parents of the cast made a pact to leave Earth to be over-run by the Gibborim with only six humans surviving, and the Gibborim consider that promise still valid. They’re powerful enough not to be a problem to be fobbed off lightly, and their threat occupies the entire volume, much of it hanging over a scared team being held captive in their mansion.

The opening chapters are drawn by David Lafuente, a perfectly good artist, but not the right match when subbing for Kris Anka. His cast lack the richness and detail Anka brings, and his greater step toward cartooning results in less emotional depth. Takeshi Miyazawa, who has previous form with Runaways, is far better on a wordless story. It’s Anka, though, who breathes the very life into this generation of Runaways.

What Rowell fits into an impending threat is marvellous. She reconfigures Nico Minoru into something more likely, knowing and convenient, supplies a great Christmas story and has Alex as an unwanted and distrusted disruptive presence. Or possibly the only pragmatist. Despite the odds, there’s a victory, but the fallout is consequential and followed up in But You Can’t Hide.

Whisper it, but Rowell and Anka’s Runways is so far matching the original series for character, quality and surprises.