Do your parents know you're out saving the world?
Power Pack was a 1980s comic book series by Marvel Comics that starred four child superheroes. While this concept is not unusual in
Western Animation, it was new for the
Marvel Universe. Unlike those of TV cartoon superkids, most of the Pack’s adventures were straight superhero action, with deeper real-world themes as well, such as child abuse, guns in school, bullying, and genocide - the kids were unwilling witnesses to the mass-murder of the sewer-dwelling Morlocks.
The series was about the four children of one Prof. Power, a scientist who had invented an antimatter generator. However, a horselike alien named Whitemane tried to warn him that a similar machine had blown up his homeworld. Unfortunately, “Whitey” (as the kids named him) was mortally wounded by his enemies, the alien Snarks, and couldn’t prevent them from kidnapping the children’s parents. Dying, Whitey had no choice but to pass on his superpowers to the Power children and hope that they could save the Earth
and rescue their parents. With help from Whitey’s living spaceship, Friday, they succeeded, and without their parents finding out about their new powers, to boot! The four of them then decided to keep their powers a secret, and continued to adventure around New York City as the "Power Pack".
The kids, from oldest to youngest, and their (original) powers are:
- Alex, who could control gravity by touch; he called himself G.
- Julie, who could fly (leaving a colored trail behind) called herself Lightspeed
- Jack, who could increase his body’s density (thus shrinking down) or decrease it (becoming a living cloud) named himself Mass Master
- Katie, who could turn matter into energy, called herself Energizer
They would later find out that they could switch their powers around –or even give them all to a single person- as well.
While never a major Marvel series, Power Pack lasted a surprisingly long time, even outlasting contemporaries such as the original X-Factor, and had a loyal following. At one point, Franklin Richards (son of Mr. Fantastic and The Invisible Woman of the
Fantastic Four) joined them for a while under the name
Tattletale (his godlike powers were at the time reduced to just telepathy.) The Pack met various other heroes, including Spider-Man and Wolverine. Strangely, for a long while few people called them on being superheroes at such a young age (Katie was only
five years old!) or going around without adult supervision (unless you count Friday’s) much less doing dangerous stuff behind their parents’ backs.
Their parents do eventually find out, however, and the family has to deal with it - by going insane and turning into catatonic wrecks. It's later revealed that the race of space-horses (no, really) who gave the kids their powers created mental blocks to stop their parents ever realising that the children were superheroes, even if they showed up with a teenage alien runaway and a talking spaceship in tow or something. Which they did.
Although canceled years ago, the Pack characters have resurfaced in other comics such as New Warriors and
Runaways (as teenagers). There was an attempt in 2005 to reintroduce the team to regular Marvel continuity in an unashamedly all-ages series of books, but this was later sideways-retconned into an out-of-continuity series, as the writer of Marvel's Runaways comic introduced a version of one of the Pack characters in that book which didn't match up with the all-ages character - or even the
character from previous appearances.
Now, it appears as a regular series of mini-series in Marvel's
Marvel Adventures imprint and it seems to have found its niche with fun stories complemented with adorable mangaesque art.
There was a made-for-TV movie based on the series, but it was never aired in the US, though it did appear on overseas channels and has circulated as a bootleg among fans for years.
Not to be confused with a type of battery.
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