io9
Stan Lee had a lot to talk about earlier this week when he accepted his Jules Verne Lifetime Achievement award, and one of those things was the fact that Marvel has been seriously considering doing a movie based on their Power Pack comic book. You can't chalk this one up to senility, because Lee definitely has all his marbles with him, but dear god in heaven please send a packet of smelling salts to the bigwigs over there before it's too late.
To put things in perspective, Power Pack is the book you hoped you weren't put on when you were hired by Marvel. Imagine getting hired at the place you've dreamed about working, and then being told "We're going to make you the letterer on Power Pack!" Ouch. Although it ran for 62 issues, it was never considered one of Marvel's finest.
The book was about four siblings, aged five to twelve, with the last name Power, who gained their abilities from a dying alien who was trying to stop their father from accidentally destroying the Earth with an experiment. As he kicked the bucket, he passed along his powers to them, leading them to don costumes and adopt nicknames like Mass Master and Energizer. They kept their identities a secret from their parents, although they never wore masks so they quite possibly had the dumbest parents on the planet.
The Powers, or "Power Pack" as they started calling themselves, fought alongside the X-Men and plenty of other Marvel heroes, but always felt like they were toddlers who had wandered into the fray. The series was canceled in 1991, but it's been popping back up with one-shots and miniseries lately, so someone still has a real soft spot for these characters. We just can't figure out who that is.
Marvel tried developing a live-action version in 1991 as a Saturday morning show, but it died after a craptastic pilot was produced. It's harder to find than bootleg copies of The Star Wars Christmas Special, but word is that it was horrendous. If they tried to bring it back today, it would meet with the same fate. After all, kids now have the Teen Titans and The Legion of Superheroes on television. Plus, if you saw the Tim Allen movie Zoom, then you've seen the best that a Power Pack movie could hope to be. There's a ton of great Marvel properties that would make great film or television properties. This ain't one of 'em.
Stan Lee Interviewed [Collider]
Comments
I have been reading io9 pretty much from the start (and Gawker blogs far longer), and while there's been plenty that I've been tempted to comment upon, entropy and attention have kept me from registering to do so. This item was the straw that broke the camel's back.
I'm tempted to get into all the personal reasons why Power Pack means so much to me, but I recognize that may not hold any weight to those who aren't me. So let's run down a handful of reasons why this was a landmark book:
* It was, to the best of my knowledge, the first mainstream comic created by a writer and an artist who were both women (Louise Simonson and June Brigman, respectively).
* It won praise from a wide assortment of sectors and multiple awards for the quality of its writing. Simonson and second stage artist (and occasional writer himself) Jon Bogdanove went on to write and draw Superman: The Man of Steel during the "Death of Superman" period and thereafter, creating the character Steel. (Try not to hold the Shaq movie against them.)
* Despite largely lukewarm sales, it had a vocal following who recognized its quality enough that Marvel continued publishing it long after they might have shitcanned a lesser series.
The mistake that's commonly made about Power Pack is that it was a kids book. (And I should note that there is a dearth of material in the gateway comic market to attract young readers, so really, so what if it were?) Power Pack was a series about kids, and accessible to kids, but took on issues that 25 years ago few if any youth entertainment would have dared touch: corporate graft, school violence, the crack epidemic and missing children. Yes, there was also a healthy portion of mundane childhood issues, but if you're going to write naturalistically about children, it's going to sound pretty immature to the adult ear; if it didn't, it wouldn't be an accurate depiction thereof.
The marketing mistake that Marvel has been making since they've tried resurrecting Power Pack several years back is that they're putting the cart before the horse. The present miniseries have the stink about them of desperate hunger to have a Marvel equivalent of the Teen Titans or Legion of Superheroes cartoons while simultaneously alienating the faithful who've kept the torch lit since 1991. Marvel seems to think that the characters merely need to be in active publication to justify the expense and risk of a major media production. Unfortunately, the present series sell like shit, and have none of the buzz that the original did to offset that.
And, might I add, in response one bit of snark in this column, I would probably pay Marvel to let me write Power Pack. It would not be an albatross; it would be an honor, and I would do whatever was within my ability to make it the best book they publish. Believe it.
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