Power Pack: Difference between revisions

The kids, from oldest to youngest, and their (original) powers are:

 

 

 

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, precognitive dreaming, and a ghost body.) 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.

Not to be confused with a type of battery, or with the Matrix in the [[Blind Idiot Translation|very poor dub]] of ''[[Transformers Headmasters]]''.

 

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* [[Ambiguous Gender]]: The kids argue early on if Smartship Friday is "him" or "her" (according to their own gender).

* [[And Now for Something Completely Different]]: Issue 47 of the original comic is entirely about Katie entering a cartoon bizarro universe straight out of ''[[Little Nemo]]'' and trying to escape. The credits page using TV style credits (For example: Writer Jon Bogdanove is credited as "Script & Cinematography"), events in "Elsewhere" being rendered in landscape instead of portrait (accomplished by turning the book sideways) and comments in the ''Peer Pressure'' miniseries (saying that everyone sees "Elsewhere" differently) all suggest this is supposed to be Katie watching ''way'' too much TV. Katie learns a new power the group's costumes have during this adventure, causing it to be referenced several times.

** Franklin's guardians have a bad habit of knowing full well that his dreams [[Dreaming of Things to Come|foretell the future]] and ''still'' passing them off as just normal dreams.

* [[Astral Projection]]: In a change from the [[Deus Ex Machina]] Batman <s>Wizard</s> Psion he was normally used as, ''Power Pack'' consistently limited Franklin Richards' power set to this and [[Dreaming of Things to Come]].

* [[Baseball Episode]]: Nearly an entire issue of the original series takes place at or near Shea Stadium, and a baseball game [[Writing Around Trademarks|the "Mecs" vs. the "Clubs"]]) figures into the plot.

* [[Bequeathed Power]]:

* [[Blonde, Brunette, Redhead]]: Alex/Katie, Jack and Julie.

* [[Blue Eyes]]: The Power children.

* [[Cheerful Child]]: All the kids in the Marvel Adventures series are cute, but Katie is the epitome of cute as a button.

* [[Create Your Own Villain]]: {{spoiler|The Pack's [[Arch Enemy]], Douglas Carmody aka "The Bogeyman", is already something of a villain when we first see him (planning to weaponize Dr. Power's converter technology rather than using it to provide cheap power [[Straw Character|and calling Dr. Power a "hippie" for wanting to do any less]]), but he descends into full-blown supervillainy after the converter is destroyed, descending into madness, losing the remnants of his fortune, his marriage, and basically his whole life... which he blames the Powers for.}}

* [[Continuity Snarl]]: The ''Shelter From the Storm'' PSA comic was released in 1989, but can't be fit in continuity anywhere from issue 22 (1986) to the end of the series (1992) because {{spoiler|the Power Pack has the wrong powers}}. The trade compilation places it next to issue 17, but this creates a small issue where the group's mom mentions Nintendo games as though Jack had a long obsession with them, but it's placed with comics where the latest came out when the NES had only been released for a few months.

* [[Cute Bruiser]]: Katie

* [[Cut Lex Luthor a Check]]: Averted by Dragon Man's creator [[Kidnapped Scientist|Professor Gilbert]]. After a cop mentions his robots far exceed those he saw at his recent Disneyland vacation, Gilbert quits his professorship and gets a happy job at Disney.

** Played straight in one late issue has Mysterio try to buy the apartment building the family lives in while getting them to leave via [[Scooby-Doo Hoax]]. This scheme requires not only expensive fiber optics, but also the money to buy an entire building of classy 3 bedroom apartments in New York in the first place. There's an implication there's something special about this building in particular, but this plot thread was never resolved.

* [[Exclusively Evil]] and [[Always Lawful Good]]: The Snarks and Kymellians are shown this way at first. It's eventually revealed most Snarks stick to their own planet and don't try to raid other planets for weapons to use in local power struggles, while the kids learn Whitemane was the last Kymellian to actually uphold the virtues the species was supposedly about.

* [[Fail O'Suckyname]]: Alex drops the Gee moniker upon realizing how stupid it sounds and becomes Zero-G instead when he gets his powers back years latter. Julie says she would rather have used "Starstreak" over "Lightspeed" when got her initial powers, though unlike Alex she keeps her original name when getting her powers back.

* [[Friends Rent Control]]: The ability for Dr. and Mrs. Power to afford a 3 bedroom New York apartment while feeding and clothing 4 kids as a college professor and artist is hand waved as part of a deal by the college for the apartment, but their ability to live in a nice beachfront property in Maine at the start is never explained.

* [[Morality Pet]]: Katie is this to, of all people, [[Wolverine]].

** This is par for the course for Wolverine, though.

* [[Mother Nature, Father Science]]

* [[Mundane Utility]]: As with many less known heroes, the Powers demonstrate their abilities at the start of most issues. Most of the time this means an issue has a [[Cold Open]] or, more commonly, starts with the siblings doing things around the house with their powers. The most common is using the mass to energy power to dispose of trash.

* [[Never My Fault]]: Carmody refuses to accept any responsibility for the converter not being ready and nearly blowing up the planet, instead blaming the Pack and carrying out a vendetta against them that is implied to have destroyed his career and even his marriage.

* [[Never Wake Up a Sleepwalker]]: Invoked. The children bring Franklin back to Avengers Mansion after witnessing the Morlock Massacre. When the adults find out about this, Franklin claims he was sleepwalking, and the other children say that they didn't wake him because it would be dangerous.

* [[One Person, One Power]]: Played straight for the whole main series, with the kids getting one power each. However, it turns out that someone could easily [[All Your Powers Combined|hold all four at once]], just like Whitemane did.

* [[One Steve Limit]]: Averted. Professor (James) Power exists in the same universe as Professor (Anthony) Power, though they've never met.

** As well as another with Cloak and Dagger centering on runaways.

* [[Wake Up, Go to School, Save the World]]

** In the reboot, in a reference to her problem with the [[Inverse Law of Sharpness and Accuracy]], Katie hates robots. This means not only is it acceptable for her to destroy them, she jumps at the chance to.

* [[What the Hell, Hero?]]: Whitemane's entire race gets this when the Power Pack discovers what was done to their parents, in addition to discovering certain... glaring moral deficiencies in their society.

** Not to mention they have grown so used to artificial environments as a consequence of destroying their world that natural environments are actually repellent to most of them. Whitemane, it seems, was ''not'' a typical example of his race.

* [[Wolverine Publicity]]: Both exemplified and inverted. Wolverine was a regular guest, even notoriously showing up on a cover of ''Uncanny X-Men'' looking as if he were about to skewer Katie like an olive in a martini. But everyone guest-starred in ''their'' book during its original run, and the new miniseries are almost all team-ups.

 

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[[Category:Marvel Comics Series]]

[[Category:The Eighties]]