After the conclusion of the 3rd volume, things didn't go so great for the Runaways. They got folded into Avengers Academy about the time I dropped it. Then Chase and Nico were thrown into the meat grinder that was Avengers Arena and Avengers Undercover. Nico Minoru lost a hand, replaced by a magical gauntlet, while Chase mostly got his butt kicked (which was at least enjoyable for me.) There was a mini-series during Secret Wars, but I have no idea what it was about. Nico did end up on one of the million Avengers' teams for a hot second, as did Victor Mancha (a different one of the million Avengers' teams.)
Finally in 2017, they got another ongoing series, this time written by Rainbow Rowell, with Kris Anka and Matthew Wilson as the initial art team. The group, family, team, whatever you'd call them, has broken up. Nico is living alone in an apartment, but she got her hand back! Somehow. (It's addressed eventually. Very eventually, as Rowell doesn't advance any plots quickly.) Karolina's attending college and dating Julie Power (Lightspeed from Power Pack.) Molly's living with her grandmother. Victor is a disembodied, deactivated head in a box, courtesy of Tom King's Vision series.
Chase? Chase apparently went back to the Hostel, which was much bigger than they thought, and got it livable. Then he somehow refueled Gert's parents' time machine, and traveled back two years to save Gert. Being Chase, he fucked up by not getting there prior to her being stabbed, but Nico's able to stumble through magically saving Gert's life by abducting a podiatrist.
Also, Old Lace is alive again. Somehow.
So Gert's back, a lot's changed, everyone's split up and gotten older, and she doesn't like it. But like there's a magnetic pull between them, the group comes back together. Victor's only pretending to be deactivated, because he doesn't want to deal with what he did. No judgements, I wouldn't want to deal with having been in a Tom King-written book either. Molly's grandmother turns out to be a creepy scientist who created telepathic cats, among other things, so Molly can't stay there. Karolina begins neglecting school and Julie to hang out with her old friends. Everyone gradually moves into the Hostel. A Doombot Victor knew from his Avengers team shows up, and sticks around as the closest thing to parental supervision they've got, although it is interesting watching Chase and Nico try to be responsible adults when they and Gert are still so adamant all adults suck.
(It takes Rowell 11 issues to bother answering what happened to Klara, only getting to it after torching the Karolina/Julie relationship so she can eventually put Karolina and Nico back together. As for Klara, she was adopted by a gay couple and lives in a nice home in a suburb where she has her own garden. Demonstrating more brains than anyone else, she does not want to go back to a life on the run where shit constantly blows up and people die. So that was it for Klara. No one comes back to visit or stay in touch. Like she escaped their creepy cult and now she's dead to them.
At least she fared better than Xavin, who is, so far as I know, just dead.)
The book's pace is clearly written for the trade, only marginally compensated for by the number of subplots Rowell has going at any given time. A particular issue may spend a few pages on Victor's resistance to getting a new body, or Doombot's struggle with self-determination, a few on Molly and her BFF at school, a few on Karolina's failing grades or Nico's issues with her magic. None of the threads advance much, but they all advance a little, which makes a less irritating read than Rowell's She-Hulk was, where the pace was equally slow but there was only whatever was going on with Jack of Hearts.
Alex Wilder, sorta resurrected in Avengers Undercover, shows up with a warning the children of the Gibborrim are here, expecting a sacrifice from the Pride. And this is where those threats by Nico in volume 2 to tear out Chase or Victor's hearts if they turned traitor seem ludicrous. Alex has literally betrayed them, tried to kill them, made Nico waste dozens of spells while mansplaining the "one use" thing was a mental block on her part and not an actual condition of the magical instrument she wielded that he never understood, and at one point here, tries to sacrifice Victor against the wishes of the others. And they. . .just let him walk away. Don't do a damn thing, even later, when they think he abducted Molly (she went with him willingly thinking he could help get her parents back.)
At the end of the day, Alex was there at the beginning, so apparently nothing he's done since is ever going to earn him an ass-kicking. He's still one of them in a way Xavin or Klara never were, even though he seems to find the way they go about things as insane as Klara, albeit for different reasons.
Anka is the regular artist for most of the first 18 issues, then giving way primarily to Andres Genolet. It's a very pretty book. Wilson and later, Dee Cunniffe, tend to warm tones. Strong, but not overly bright or garish. It doesn't overpower any of the pencilers' linework, instead enhancing everything.
Anka and Genolet uphold the Runaways' tradition of giving the characters distinctive and unique looks, although Anka's work there is stronger. Fashion seems to be a real strength. Nico wears different stuff from how she dressed in the earlier volumes, but with enough similarity you can see a throughline of her preferred styles in her clothes, adjusted for growing older. With most of the cast having aged two years since Gert (nearly) died, the artists play up size differences a bit more, most of the cast now towering over Gert. Even Molly gets a growth spurt late in the series where she shoots up closer to Nico or Karolina in height. There aren't a lot of fight scenes, but those there are, while brief, are usually well-illustrated.
The book seemed to run out of momentum in the last 10 issues, though that may just have been COVID messing with the release schedule. Gert and Chase were awkward around each other, given the age difference, so Gert drifted to Victor. Chase briefly considered dating an employee at a superstore, but that got immediately dropped by the arrival of an older Gert from the future, who later abducted him. The X-Men show up to haul Molly off to their mutant prison, I mean, mutant utopia, and Nico seems about two seconds from making out with Pixie. (Nico Minoru may be hornier than Deadpool, which is a staggering notion, but the evidence is strong.) Nico and Karolina were arguing about Nico's magic and a particularly bad bargain Nico made to ditch the "one use" aspect, before Karolina went off into space, taking the Staff of One with her.
(Writers always come back to Space Stuff with Karolina, but we never actually see any of it. Her friends never insist on coming along. How has Marvel resisted the siren call of Molly Hayes & Rocket Raccoon meet-up?)
The one member of the Gibborrim who decided they liked humanity and sided with the cast, starts going to high school with Victor and Gert, but that barely got off the ground. Alex was lurking in the shadows, making his plans and whatnot. A few of those things got picked up in the tie-in mini-series to One World Under Doom that just wrapped up, but I'm not sure how much actual resolution we're going to get.
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