The series took part in such world-threatening multi-series crossovers as Secret Wars II (1986), The Fall of the Mutants (1988), Inferno (1988), and Acts of Vengeance (1990). In addition, they frequently face big-league villains, such as the fearsome mutant known as Saber-tooth. During these adventures, the team is frequently at odds with their father’s former boss, who becomes a supervillain whose name is calculated to strike fear into the hearts of children: Bogeyman. The Powers also have a number of adventures with Kofi, the son of White-mane, the source of the group’s powers. Franklin, who becomes an honorary team member, adopts the supermoniker “Tattletale” because of his ability to see events from five minutes in the future, thus “telling on” bad guys before the fact (he also frequently quarrels with the headstrong Katie). The group eventually expands to encompass a nonfamily member, four-year-old Franklin Richards, the son of the Fantastic Four’s Mr. Power Pack evidently found its unorthodox audience right away though originally conceived as a miniseries, Marvel quickly decided that the concept was strong enough to sustain an open-ended monthly series.ĭuring the first half of Power Pack’s run, the kids’ adventures don’t involve their parents, who were at first entirely ignorant of their children’s superheroic double lives. While Power Pack’s unusual content may have put the series at a competitive disadvantage in terms of sales, it provided seven years of highly original comic book storytelling. ![]() The reason for the distinctiveness of Brig-man’s illustrations may have been her relative un-familiarity with the comics medium prior to working on Power Pack being largely unacquainted with the conventions and clichés of the superhero genre, she wasn’t enslaved by them. Brigman’s art had a gentle, expressive, and whimsical quality that brought Simonson’s words and imagery to vivid life. Simon son’s scripts blended fairy tales with science fiction and children’s books (the evil alien Snarks, for example, were straight out of Louis Carroll), juxtaposing the backdrop of outer space with the real-world setting of New York City, and presented relatively realistic characterizations of children and their sibling relationships. ![]() As the oldest of the siblings, Alex becomes the group’s natural leader, carefully looking out for the younger kids (especially the emotionally volatile Katie, to whom Julie often refers affectionately as “Katie-bear”).Īlthough many enthusiasts of the era’s traditional superhero fare (primarily adolescent males) disdained Power Pack, younger readers, and those who were themselves the parents of small children, found the series enchanting. To prevent this, Whitemane gives twelve-year-old Alex the power to make objects lighter or heavier (hence his superhero name “Gee,” as in gravity) bestows superspeed upon ten-year-old Julie (“Lightspeed”) confers upon eight-year-old Jack the ability to expand and contract his body’s molecules, thus enabling him to alter his body’s density at will (and justifying his nickname “Mass Master”) and empowers five-year-old Katie with the ability to unleash powerful energy blasts from her hands (she calls herself “Energizer,” thanks to the inspiration of a well-known television commercial). James Power, who had invented a technological device that the Snarks sought to possess. Alex, Jack, Julie, and Katie Power are the children of Margaret Power and Dr. Power Pack is the tale of a quartet of siblings, four young children who receive superhuman abilities from a benevolent, horse-like alien named Aelfyre Whitemane, who with his sentient spaceship seeks to thwart the invading reptilian Snarks. But Power Pack, created in 1984 by Marvel Comics writer-editor Louise Simonson (an alumnus of such Warren horror magazines as Creepy and Vampirella), and artist June Brigman (also known for her work on Supergirl for DC Comics and the syndicated Brenda Starr newspaper strip), followed a decidedly different trajectory. Power Pack (pop culture)ĭuring the early 1980s, mainstream superhero comics such as Frank Miller’s Daredevil were becoming increasingly “gritty” and “hard-boiled,” a trend of escalating violence that would reach its apotheosis with such series as Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (also by Miller, 1986) and The Punisher (1986). McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
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