Power Pack 44 - Inferno

Power Pack continue saving lives but can they save their parents?

Power Pack #44

Special guest scripts: Julianna Jones
Special guest pencils: June Brigman
Special guest inker: Hilary Barta
Letters: Joe Rosen
Colors: Glynis Oliver
Edits: Carl Potts
Same old Editor in Chief: Tom DeFalco

Or not quite as the opening splash page is signed "Bogdanove & Heath" which has confused many including some online databases. The above list is what was printed in the issue but is in fact the credits for issue #45 accidentally printed in this issue as well and not the Inferno collections, neither Power Pack Classic Omnibus Volume 2 nor the digital listing online includes a correction. The letters page for a later issue reportedly lists the following as the correct team:

Jon Bogdanove - Writer & penciler
Russ Heath - Inker
...and the rest as above.

As we'll see this credit mistake matters more than most as it offers a very different perspective on what's going on editorially...

The issue opens with Power Pack fighting off demons when the portal reverses and sucks them all back into Limbo. Heading home they find their parents are in a permanent state of shock about the revelation their children are powered superheroes. Eventually Margaret breaks down, crying that she just wants her normal children back. Jim tells the kids to go out and they head off to help with the clear-up operation. Several vehicles are frozen in monstrous form and Alex's attempts to use his powers to rescue people reactivate the animated vehicles. They take a busload of passengers to a hospital which is understaffed and overwhelmed when the New Mutants show up. Mirage uses her powers to create solid images of what the head doctor wants - a small army of health care staff to cope with all the patients and a construction crew to rebuild the hospital. Together with Power Pack and the New Mutants they get the hospital into working order until an army unit shows up. Resting the Powers tell the New Mutants about how their parents now know their secret and can't cope with it. Mirage wishes they could help. Power Pack return home to find their parents in an even worse state with Margaret fantasising over a baby doll and Jim rambling on about not being fit parents good enough for their children. Then the New Mutants come in and tell Jim and Margaret that in order to protect their real children from Carmody the Bogeyman they hid them away and created super powered decoys to stop Carmody but didn't realise the parents would be in danger as well or tell them. Mirage pulls images from Jim and Margaret's mind of their desire - their children as normal. Gosamyr uses her powers to convince them then put them to sleep with the four Power Pack children then taking the place of the images then the New Mutants leave them to sleep and wake up with things back to normal.

To cut to the chase this is one of the worst reset switch stories I have ever read. The mistake with the credits will have convinced many readers that someone in Marvel editorial ordered an immediate undoing of the parents discovering their children's powers and assigned a guest writer to carry out the deed, undoing Jon Bogdanove's work. The discovery that actually this issue is written by Bogdanove complicates things but it still seems that some rapid U-turns have been happening. There was a hint on last issue's cover that the children would soon be going away to Professor Xavier's school and the cover of this issue with the children flying off with a suitcase and the New Mutants alongside them would seem to reinforce that plan, though in the issue itself there's no sign of the suitcase. There's a brief moment near the end where the parents have been put to sleep with the images and the real children assume they've been permanently replaced with duplicates as though that might have been part of the plan but that also doesn't match what's shown on the cover.

It's not clear what caused this change back though one factor may be that the planned new setting was now unavailable. This issue would have been published before the destruction of the mansion in Uncanny X-Men #243 which would leave the fate of the school up in the air. Add in the New Mutants' final loss of confidence in their headmaster Magneto after seeing him conversing with N'astirh in New Mutants #73 and it's likely that the school won't be taking in new pupils any time soon. But also there's a total change in the way Jim and Margaret are reacting to the discovery.

Last issue they were initially shocked and in denial when Carmody forced the children to reveal their powers but the parents soon accepted it and showed strength in dealing with the Bogeyman and the children's reaction to him. It's also worth noting that not only do they live in the Marvel Universe where a lot of strange stuff is public knowledge but by this point they've met aliens and superheroes and often had the child of the Fantastic Four over to stay. It was as though they had come to terms with it until a final panel cliffhanger showed their faces suggesting otherwise. Here they are shown experiencing a nervous breakdown and completely failing to cope with the situation. It's such a sudden shift that really isn't convincing as a motivation for the sudden about turn. Both have been shown as so much stronger than this and deserved better. The revelation had been so heavily debated and so built up to that to just suddenly turn around and unscramble the egg is an atrocious decision that suggests the status quo has to be reset all the time. This is a series of children growing up that has been through status quo changes already (whether moving to New York or swapping the powers around) and would do so again during the rest of its run and once committed to it should have built on the revelation with all the potential it offered. Instead this issue just tries to say it was a bad idea to ever make such a move but in doing so it has to undermine the parents in the process.

As for the means by which it's reversed, Mirage's false explanation is an extremely long speech with one of the biggest word to picture ratio ever seen in comics. It's astonishing that anyone would believe a stranger's claim that actually these are artificial duplicates and here are the real children especially as the actual real children's reaction is not in accord with this cover story. It takes a dose of Gosamyr's powers in order to reinforce convincing Jim and Margaret which may be about the only time Gosamyr has been of any use whatsoever but it's in the cause of an awful move to negate such a big development in the series so it does it not excuse the sheer tedium of the awful story that introduced her. A universe were there are many telepaths and magicians offers much easier ways to pull off this sort of reset rather than bizarre explanations and emotional manipulation but finding one with a connection to the Pack at short notice to have this all reversed in a single issue amidst the clearing up after Inferno might have been a bit of a stretch. So instead we get a lousy explanation to implement a lousy reversion.

This is the single worst issue of Power Pack in the book's whole run. Other issues may have silly stories that are best forgotten and the less said about the end of the series the better but this takes a huge development and stops it dead in its tracks through character destruction and a very silly reset method. There's clearly been an element of editorial diktat handed down and it is frustrating when story ideas get vetoed after they've started resulting in these messy U-turns but the result is this mess of an issue.