One of my back issue projects this year has been the various late-2000s Power Pack mini-series. The ones with all the Guruhiru covers? Turns out they're a bit tricky to find, at least where I've been looking, so I've only tracked down three so far. One of which is Wolverine and Power Pack: The Wild Pack. The four issues are loosely connected, but I don't think there's an overarching theme.
In the first one, Logan has to fend off the kids while they're under Sauron's control because Karl Lykos was giving a talk at the museum while Alex was trying to do research for a paper. The second issue involves the kids visiting the X-Men's school and helping fend off some Sentinels. Which does end with Cyclops admitting he was wrong to say Power Pack shouldn't get involved because they aren't mutants.
The third issue (drawn by Scott Koblish rather than the Guruhiru team) is Jack Power and Franklin Richards using Reed's (obviously inferior to Doom's) time machine and inadvertently meeting sheltered young James Howlett. Then Jack's siblings and HERBIE (the robot, not the Volkswagon) have to rescue all three of them from some kidnappers. The final issue, the kids briefly try to help Logan fight the Hand, but it's really about whether Alex is going to use his gravity control powers to cheat at one of those Ultimate Ninja Warrior style obstacle course games.
At the end of the third issue, once everyone's back in their proper time, HERBIE tells the kids the shy boy they befriended was actually Wolverine. Not sure it's his place to mention that, but I guess it's OK. Then in the fourth issue, Jack briefly calls Wolverine "Jimmy" during the ninja fight, as sort of a tease. Logan gets kind of gruff about it and Jack backs off. This was from 2009, after Bendis did the House of M thing and gave Logan all his memories, but it's hard to tell how much these books worry about that. I don't know if Logan was confused by Jack calling him a name he doesn't recall, or he doesn't want them spreading it around. Or he knows his name but doesn't remember meeting all of them as a boy (you'd think a girl who leaves a rainbow behind her as she flies would be hard to forget, even with Logan's backstory).
Or Logan remembers all of it and just doesn't appreciate a kid needling him. Probably that. Jack does play the instigator role in the family. He encourages Franklin to use the time machine. He videotaped Alex using his powers to do parkour in his civilian clothes without his brother's knowledge, which is how Alex gets roped into the TV show. And Jack's the one eager to go to Lykos' lecture when the doc promises the chance to see a live dinosaur.
In contrast, Julie's the one who gets the least focus. Sumerak doesn't really seem to have much for her to do. Jack's the troublemaker, Katie's the one who gets to be alternatively cute or afraid, Alex is the leader. Julie's gets stuck with the always thankless Team Mom role. The one who asks Katie what's wrong, or has to watch everyone's backs. She seems to be the most interested in education, as she's excited to sit in on some of the lectures at the X-Mansion, but it's the fact Jack only goes along with it when he can sit in on one Kitty Pryde is teaching that steals focus. The stories are mostly built for light-hearted action and humor, so a gung-ho loudmouth like Jack is going to be important, but he also gets irritating after a while.
There was an episode of Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men where they discussed the Mutant Massacre ancillary tie-ins, including the Power Pack issue where the kids survive an encounter with Sabretooth in the sewers. How, while it made sense for the Power kids to go try and help their friends Artie and Leech, it was maybe not a good choice to pit them against a remorseless killer like Sabretooth. Either he ends up looking like a putz, losing to four grade school kids with no grasp of how dangerous he's supposed to be, or they end up dead.
I thought about that a little in issue #2 when they're fighting the Sentinels, but at least there's an entire school of X-Men, and the Sentinels specifically do not attack the kids, even in self-defense. It came to mind a lot stronger in issue #4, once some mystic that was part of the Hand somehow neutralizes the kids' powers. Because at that point, it's four kids with no powers or particular combat training against ninjas who are trying to kill the guy with an unbreakable skeleton. That should not end well for our heroes. Sumerak gets around it by having Wolverine fight them all himself, although you'd think at least one would try to target the kids to get his guard down.
It does lead to a funny exchange where Logan says he doesn't need his healing factor or enhanced senses to beat the hand, and real power doesn't come from mutant genes of magic spells anyway. To which Katie replies, 'Duh, it comes from alien horsies.'
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