Comic Book / Cartoon Network Action Pack

The fifth and last of the DC Comics-published Cartoon Network Comic-Book Adaptation anthologies, adapting their action-oriented series from The Oughties and the early 2010's (as opposed to its sister series, which adapted comedy series). It ran from 2006 to 2012.

Cartoons included

• Ben 10
  • Ben 10: Alien Force
  • Ben 10: Ultimate Alien
• Codename: Kids Next Door
• Generator Rex
• The Life and Times of Juniper Lee
• Megas XLR
• The Powerpuff Girls (the only show to simultaneously appear in both this series and Block Party)
• Samurai Jack
• The Secret Saturdays

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Tropes:

• Abhorrent Admirer: Issue 5's "Love at First Fight" sees Megas get an admirer in the former of a rampaging sea monster; Coop is forced to go on a date with the creature to keep it from destroying the city.
• Amnesia Episode: Issue 33's "Operation: F.O.R.G.E.T." sees Numbuh 86 accidentally get her memory wiped by the decommissioning machine. This has the side effect of turning her, normally a prime example of Does Not Like Men, into a boy-crazy maniac.
• An Ice Person: In issue 6's "Snow Blind", Ben faces off against a villain with a snow and cold-generating suit.
• Animal Wrongs Group: Issue 17's "Please Don't Feed the Monsters" sees Jack get tricked into freeing a bunch of vicious beasts by a trio of animal rights activists so that the creatures can kill everyone in the nearby city, as the beasts were caged so that they wouldn't endanger anyone. In the end, Jack slays all the beasts and has the three locked up in the cage used to imprison the animals.
  Activist: Those poor beautiful monsters!
  Jack: No. They were pitiful. You are the monsters.
• Armor-Piercing Question: In issue 18's "Monkey Business", Ben ends up fighting a genetically-modified "Infinite Monkey" working under Doctor Animo. When the monkey proclaims that humans are beneath him, Ben asks him why he's working for Animo if that's the case; the monkey thinks over it, then concedes that his time is better spent on more interesting things and leaves.
• The Atoner: In issue 62's "Jail Break", one of the escaped alien convicts turns out to have only broken out so he could thank the Plumber that arrested him for doing so, as he's since learned the error of his ways.
• Beach Episode: Issue 60's "Grunion Run!" sees Rex and Noah head to the California beaches for some good old R and R.
• Beastly Bloodsports: Issue 2's "Ole!" sees the Tennyson family attend a bullfight, only to discover that the matador is using a robot bull to cheat.
• Beauty Contest: Issue 53's "Beauty and the Ben" is centered on one of these, which Ben is invited to judge due to his celebrity status.
• Busman's Holiday:
  • Issue 9's "A Villain a Day" opens with Gwen lampshading how, wherever the Tennysons go on their vacation, they seem to run into a supervillain.
  • Issue 60's "Grunion Run!" sees Rex try and take a break on a California beach after dealing with non-stop Providence business. Naturally, the beach is attacked by a pair of EVO grunions.
• Butterfly of Doom: Issue 4's "Time Out" sees Coop and Jamie accidentally travel back in time; Coop being Coop, he causes chaos and comes back to the present to discover that Kiva's now an ape.
• Chekhov's Gun: At the beginning of issue 55's "Home for the Holidays", while Rex is lamenting how everyone he knows is too busy for the holidays, he sees Bobo working on some kind of project he can't identify. At the end, Bobo reveals what it is — a makeshift Christmas gift for Rex.
• Christmas Episode: Issues 55 and 66 are both Christmas-themed, with all the stories inside referencing the holidays in some form.
• Cinderella Plot: One of the "Aku's Fairy Tales" stories is a fairly straight re-telling of Cinderella; the main twist is that "Sandarella" is in possession of a pair of sentient wooden geta that get turned into the famous glass slippers, and when one of them gets left behind, it directs the prince to where it can find its partner. Also, since it's Aku telling the tale, he casts himself as the fairy godmother and Jack and the Scotsman as the ugly stepsisters.
• Conspiracy Theorist: Issue 23's "Captured!" sees two alien conspiracy theorists mistakenly believe that Max is an alien scout and kidnap him. Ben ends up playing on their paranoia in order to rescue him.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: In issue 59's "Only a Game", Six tries to get info out of an MMORPG player in regards to who created the nanite sensory interface set-up. He isn't successful until Rex threatens to sell the kid's account on eBay for a dollar.
• Cool Teacher: In issue 11's "School of Wreck", Coop becomes a shop class teacher as part of his community service sentence. The kids are thrilled when he teaches them to build a giant robot; Kiva (and the city) less so.
• Cowboy Episode: Issue 2's "Operation: N.O.T.E." takes on a cowboy aesthetic, focusing on Numbuh 2 as he tries to outwit the Six-Gum Gang and deliver a note.
• Creepy Children Singing: In issue 1's "Double Dutch Death Valley", Jack encounters a group of children possessed by Aku that sing a creepy rendition of "Miss Mary Mack" while attacking him.
• Crossover: Issue 65's story is a crossover between Ben 10: Ultimate Alien and Generator Rex, which also serves as a Sequel Episode to the crossover special Ben 10/Generator Rex: Heroes United.
• Demonic Possession: Issue 30's "Operation: P.A.P.E.R.C.U.T." sees Numbuh 1 seemingly get possessed by an evil adult spirit after getting a paper cut from the newspaper's business section.
• Devious Dolphins: Issue 20's "Aqua Nut" sees Ben get attacked by a villain with an army of dolphins with lasers mounted on their heads.
• Destructive Saviour: Coop's tendency to be one gets deconstructed in issue 11's "School of Wreck", when his destructive antics get him saddled with a massive fine and community service.
• Embarrassing Ad Gig: In issue 65's story, Ben does a commercial shoot in Japan for Mr. Smoothie. He reasons that it won't be too embarrassing since it's only going to air in Japan, but the internet ensures that everyone in Bellwood has seen the commercial by the end.
• Enfante Terrible: Issue 46's "What Goes Around..." opens with Ben and his team taking down a villainous young girl with Green Thumb powers; Gwen snarks that society's churning out younger and younger supervillains these days.
• Fairy Tale Episode: Issues 27, 28, 30, 33, 37, 41, 46, and 47 all have stories centered around Aku telling a fairy tale to a pair of kids. The intent of them is to portray himself in a good light and Jack in a bad one, but the kids know who the real hero is.
• Family of Choice: Issue 55's "Home for the Holidays" highlights how Rex, Six, Holiday, and Bobo have all become this for each other — while melancholy about not being able to spend time with his unknown biological family at first, Rex comes to realize at the end he still has a family.
• Frame-Up: Issue 31's "A Blast from the Past" sees Kevin somehow make the Plumbers' "most wanted" list; it turns out that a group of DNAliens planted him on the list in order to take him out.
• Gender Bender: Issue 40's "Operation: G.E.N.D.E.R." sees Numbuhs 3 and 5 accidentally ingest a serum that turns them into boys, complete with a stereotypical attitude towards "girly" things.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: An In-Universe example occurs in issue 65; Ben is apparently hugely popular in Japan, which is why he got an offer to do a commercial there. This ends up becoming a problem later on, as he keeps getting mobbed by fans while trying to help Rex stop the Pack.
• Gilligan Cut: In issue 50's "Distraction!", Rex boasts about how the bad guys are none the wiser that they're in Abysus. Cut to Van Kleiss and his minions commenting on Rex's arrival.
• Gone Horribly Right: In issue 35's "Double Trouble", when chasing after his Evil Doppelgänger Albedo, Ben instructs his parents not to let him in the house unless it's really him. They follow the order to the point that, even after he takes out Albedo, they still refuse to let him in the house.
• Hated by All: Issue 28's "Operation: I.M.P.R.O.V.E." introduces Numbuh 411, who's more concerned with upping the KND's PR than she is making sure they win their battles. She's so annoying that Numbuh 362 sent her to assist Sector V just to get rid of her, and Sector V eventually resorts to using her as a weapon against the adults they're fighting.
• Horrifying Hero: Deconstructed in issue 7's "Fear Itself"; Ben tries to rescue a boy from a fire at a haunted house, but the appearance of the alien forms he picks just scare the boy away. He only succeeds when he leads the boy out of the fire as himself, not as an alien.
• Hostage for MacGuffin: Issue 50's "Tabloid Trouble" sees some goons kidnap Julie in order to try and get the Ultimatrix from Ben.
• Hostile Animatronics: Issue 52's story sees Ben and his friends attend the opening of a theme park ride based on his exploits, complete with animatronic versions of his aliens — animatronics that Zombozo ends up taking control of to attack the riders.
• Hypno Trinket: Issue 15's "Charmed to Meet Me" sees Jack deal with a man who, thanks to an Aku-powered medallion, has got all the women of a village under his control. He manages to control Jack as well, but Jack is able to resist when told to commit Psychic-Assisted Suicide and destroy the medallion.
• Instant Humiliation: Just Add YouTube!: Issue 48's "Going Viral" sees an embarrassing video of Ben getting defeated by a monster get uploaded online; according to Kevin, the video's become the number-one download on the internet.
• Long-Lost Relative: At the end of issue 19's "Operation: H.I.S.T.O.R.I.E.", it's revealed that the Toiletnator is actually the long-lost twin brother of Sydney Beetles, making him Numbuh 4's uncle.
• Manipulative Editing: Issue 49's "Breaking News" had Ben get interviewed by an alien reporter named Gorphax; he's subsequently filmed going about his daily routine, from typical teenager things to saving the news team from a DNAlien attack. When the broadcast is aired, we find out that it was edited to make Gorphax look like the hero of the tale and Ben look like a helpless coward.
• Mind-Control Music: The villain of issue 11's "Techno Zombies" uses his music and special headphones to take control of everyone in a small town.
• Moment Killer: Issue 40's "Operation: G.E.N.D.E.R." opens with Numbuh 4 about to finally confess his feelings to Numbuh 3, only for the moment to be ruined when she suddenly turns into a boy.
• Monster of the Week: Many of the stories in the anthology use this formula, with the heroes usually facing a different threat in each story.
• The Most Dangerous Video Game: Issue 59's "Only a Game" sees Rex get called in to deal with a group of gamers who have figured out how to use their nanites as a sensory interface while playing a popular MMORPG. Unfortunately, prolonged usage causes them to go EVO, but they only wake up and go on a rampage if their character dies in-game.
• Mundane Solution: In issue 1's "Speed Drive", a high-tech bomb ends up attached to Megas that's designed to go off if Megas doesn't move at a certain speed. So what does Coop do when all other attempts at disarming it have failed? He smashes it with a wrench, which turns out to be the right choice.
• Non-Malicious Monster:
  • Issue 26's "Dora Flora" sees Ben face off against a swamp monster that turns out to be an accidentally-transformed young girl; she only hid in the swamp because she was afraid of how her scientist father would react if he found out she was playing with his stuff.
  • Issue 39's "The Cave of the Cacus" sees the Saturday family encounter the titular monster, a three-headed giant spider. A goatherd used to take care of it until he passed away; now, the cacus is hunting goats to stay fed, but it doesn't mean any harm to the humans — as long as it's fed, it'll protect the region from other predators.
  • Issue 56's "A Blank Canvas" sees Rex face off against a giant beaver EVO who's hunting down an artist for some reason. It turns out the EVO is actually a scared young boy whose mom died in the explosion that transformed him — the artist he's hunting is his Disappeared Dad, as he didn't know where else to go.
• On Ice: Issue 49's first story introduces us to the suitably farcical "Ben 10 On Ice", which ends up crashed by the very real Aggregor.

• Origins Episode: Issue 19's "Operation: H.I.S.T.O.R.I.E." covers the origins of the Toiletnator.
• Prequel:
  • The very first The Secret Saturdays story to appear in the comic (in issue 26) is one to the whole series, as it's about the Saturday family discovering Zak's power to control cryptids for the first time.
  • Issue 40 serves as a prequel to Ben 10: Alien Swarm; the first story shows past versions of Max and Victor Validus on a Plumbers mission, the second story is about ten-year-old Ben finding out Elena is a Plumber's kid, and the last story reveals how Ben's team found out about the illegal alien tech sale they intercepted in the movie's opening.
• Pro Wrestling Episode: Issue 22's "Charmed to Beat You" sees Ben have to fight off Hex at a pro wrestling tournament.
• Psycho Serum: In issue 59's "Freak Out", after roughhousing in Holiday's lab, Rex gets a chemical spilled on him that causes him to mutate into a primal EVO form.
• Race Lift: For whatever reason, several of the "KND vs. DCFDTL" comics depict Lenny and Constance as white rather than black and Ambiguously Brown, respectively.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The antagonist of issue 46's "What Goes Around..." is an alien going on one of these. He's already killed the aliens that killed his wife and children, and now plans on taking revenge on Kevin (who sold the weapons to the killers pre-Heel–Face Turn) by killing those he cares about — namely, Ben and Gwen. He ends up dropping his revenge once he realizes how much Kevin has changed as a person, recognizing he's let his anger and need for vengeance consume him.
• Robot Me:
  • Issue 5's "Scots Free Range" sees Jack face off against a robotic clone of the Scotsman made by Aku. He later discovers that the real Scotsman has been enslaved at a factory that's pumping out an army's worth of Scotsman robots.
  • Issue 29's "Samurai Mack" sees Jack encounter a more benevolent robot version of himself — it was built to defend an Arctic research outpost and idolizes the real Jack.
• Sadistic Choice: Aku gives this choice to Jack in issue 1's "Double Dutch Death Valley": either Jack can go back to his own time and leave the children to Aku's mercy, or cut the ropes binding him but destroy the portal home.
• Scary Scarecrows: Issue 23's "The Zen of Hiccups" opens with Jack fighting off an evil scarecrow.
• Secret Test of Character: Issue 35's "The Tunnel of Stone" sees Jack traverse a tunnel filled with living stone warriors. As he battles them, he comes across a woman who begs him to leave, telling him that taking her with will only slow him down. He chooses to rescue her despite her warnings; when they get out of the tunnel, she reveals herself to be the spirit of the tunnel and tells him that saving her was the correct option — if he hadn't, he would have become another stone warrior.
• Serious Business: As with many things in the KND world, issue 12's "Operation: G.A.M.E.O.V.U.H." shows that video games are this — to the point that vikings roam the world destroying the game consoles of those about to beat their high scores.
• Shout-Out: The "KND vs. DCFDTL" short comics seem to be ones to Spy vs. Spy in premise (being largely dialogue-less comics centered around two parties fighting each other that end with one party being Out-Gambitted) and length; the main difference is that, in contrast to the more even-handed Spy vs Spy, the comics always end with Sector V triumphing.
• Sick Episode: Issue 10's "Cold Comfort" sees Juniper Lee laid up with a cold, meaning Ray Ray and Monroe have to fight the Monster of the Week.
• Sinister Car: Issue 4's "Fast Lane" pits Ben against a possessed race car that tries to turn Gwen into its new driver.
• Sirens Are Mermaids: Issue 8's "Calling All Creatures" sees Jack battle a trio of sirens, who at first try to hypnotize an innocent monster into attacking him and then try to hypnotize him into killing it.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Ben 10 is by far the most used series in these comics, to the point that some later issues consist entirely of (or are only advertised as having) Ben 10 content. It's partly justified in that, compared to other series that ended and thus had to be cycled out of the comic, Ben 10 ran for the entirety of the comic's life span.
• Spring Cleaning Fever: In issue 8's "Clean Sweep", Ah-Mah goes on a cleaning frenzy near the Chinese New Year and makes Juniper clean her room.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: In issue 21's "Operation: S.M.U.G.G.L.E.", after all the work Numbuh 1 puts into making sure the corn dogs get smuggled across the border, the ending reveals that Numbuh 3 ate the whole supply.
• Stable Time Loop: Issue 25's "Mountains of Trouble" sees Max deliberately shove Ben into a time machine, transporting him to the past while stuck in Wildmutt form and causing him to encounter the younger Max and his then-partner in the Plumbers. When he comes back to the present, Max reveals he did it to help keep the timeline stable, having remembered running into Wildmutt during his Plumber days.
• Static Electricity: Issue 21's "Operation: S.T.A.T.I.K." sees Numbuh 3 face off against a girl who uses static electricity to give herself full-on Shock and Awe powers.
• Tabloid Melodrama: The aptly-named "Tabloid Trouble" from issue 50 centers on Ben and Julie dealing with the fallout when their relationship gets leaked to the tabloids — especially when some goons decide to kidnap Julie and ransom her for the Omnitrix.
• Toilet Humor: In issue 7's "The Hunger Within", Coop accidentally ingests a parasite that could kill him if he doesn’t keep it satiated. Since it ended up in his stomach, he gets rid of it after a quick trip to the bathroom, grossing out Jamie and Kiva and traumatizing the parasite.
• Tooth Fairy: Issue #3's "Operation: T.O.O.T.H.F.A.I.R.Y." sees Numbuh 4 get attacked by a tooth fairy brigade looking to collect his last baby tooth.
• Trash of the Titans: Issue 57's "One Man's Trash" sees Ben encounter and help an alien who looks to be piloting a garbage ship at first, but the "trash" turns out to be his collection.
• Upper-Class Twit: Issue 17's "Swimming with Sharks" gives us one in the form of one of Max's old army buddies, who spends most of his time bragging about his fishing skills or his wealth or whining about how much repairs to his boat are going to cost him.
• Villain Episode: All of the The Powerpuff Girls stories in the anthology focus on recurring foes the Rowdyruff Boys.
• Villainous Crush: Issue 54's "Heart of Stone" is about Van Kleiss encountering a female scientist and EVO who's every bit as psychotic as him, and has a crush on him to boot. While he seems to reciprocate those feelings, it doesn't stop him from draining her nanites.
• When Trees Attack: Issue 14's "The Height of Heat" sees Ben fight off a bunch of fire-breathing aliens that look like trees.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Multiple Samurai Jack stories show Jack seemingly find a way back to his own world, only for him to have to abandon or destroy it to stop Aku's schemes.
• You Are the New Trend: Issue 48's "Fashion Victim" sees Ben's jacket become a trendy fashion item after he becomes famous.
• Your Mind Makes It Real: In issue 63's "Anything You Can Chew", Van Kleiss has a nightmare about Rex which, combined with his control over Abysus, ends up creating a nanite-hungry Rex-shaped sand monster.

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