Broken Frontier

On his website, Runaways writer Brian K. Vaughan announced that he would leave the title, together with artist Adrian Alphona, come January's issue #24. The announcement comes as a surprise to many, since Runaways has been doing really well for Marvel, evolving from a cult phenom to a steady seller, both in comic shops and in book stores by way of the digest collected editions.

According to the writer, he and Alphona never intended to stay on the title forever, and wanted to leave on a high note, following the current storyarc.

Here's a copy of Vaughan's original post:

After working together on the series for more than four years, Adrian Alphona and I will be leaving Runaways with Issue #24.

And no, this is absolutely not because of creative differences. I love editor Nick Lowe like a kid brother, and Joe Quesada and everone at Marvel have obviously been nothing short of insanely supportive of our little book since the first page of the first issue.

This was entirely my idea. While Y: The Last Man and Ex Machina have planned endings, I've always said that I hoped Runaways would last forever, long after I left the series. I never wanted Runaways to become a vanity book that was dependent on its original creators' involvement; I wanted our kids to be able to eventually run away from us, and find new life apart from their "parents."

I can say with a great deal of confidence that these next five issues are the pinnacle of the series, and Adrian and I decided that the best thing for the Runaways would be to hand them off to new creators on this high note, rather than risk overstaying our welcome until we ran ourselves--and the book--into the ground.

I love these characters more than you can possibly imagine, and I swear I wouldn't abandon them unless I knew for a fact that they were going to end up with the very best creative team possible. Marvel will be announcing that new team in about a week, and to say that you guys will be thrilled is probably an understatement.

As for Adrian and me, we've already started talking about possible new projects to work on together. I'd really like to take time to give birth to a few more creator-owned books, and I hope you Runners will follow us wherever we end up next.

No one thought Runaways would last six months, but after nearly forty issues and a few Eisner nominations, our sales are still going up (especially with the digest collections in bookstores), making our series one of the most successful comics starring all-new characters to be launched by any major company in recent memory. I'm extremely proud of the entire Runaways team, some of whom will definitely be sticking with our kids, and I'm so grateful to all the undyingly loyal readers out there, the best group of friends a comic book could hope for.

Keep running,
BKV