The helpful Agent Aether, mentor to super-kids, turned out to be the evil Wizard (that’s actually his villain name), with a plan to steal the Power kids’ powers! Can they un-disempower themselves and foil his plans, now that they’ve got help from another adult…Wolverine? Power Pack #5, written by Ryan North, drawn by Nico Leon, colored by Rachelle Rosenberg and lettered by Travis Lanham.
This is the one where the Power kids fight back. They need help, and they get it. And the whole arc– as in the other Outlawed mini-series– comes to a satisfying close.
Ryan North should write Wolverine more often, and Nico Leon should draw him. He’s fun here, an all-ages kind of fun we haven’t seen since Fred Van Lente’s Wolverine: First Class, and he’s helping The Kids, in his gruffly playful way. Clad in a new purple costume (because secondary colors = bad guys), he pretends to be his own evil brother [Ed. note: Named Wolvermean], in order to let the Power kids clobber him, in order to make the less than wonderful Wizard believe the kids still have their powers: that’s part one of their two-part plan.
It’s one of my favorite fight scenes in recent comics, because– and I wish I know how they do it– North and Leon and Rosenberg draw stage combat, fake combat, that looks like real stage combat. As Wolvie fakes a throw, Alex considers: “I think I just simultaneously understood, and also became a fan of professional wrestling?” [Ed. note: this site now covers professional wrestling!] Stage fog billows up from a literal gasbag. Julie’s light powers are rainbow fabric strips. A wall gets “pre-snikted” to make the fight look real. And Katie, the youngest, delivers the fake coup de grace with handheld…. flashlights.
Part two gets topical: you see, the Wizard watches “a lot of TV. TV that flatters him. That makes him feel smart. And that’s how we beat him.” When he sees the fake powers, the “poison gas, ultimate energy balls and gravity tricks,” that the kids used to defeat “Wolvermean” on TV, the Wiz (who has already stolen the kids’ actual powers) kidnaps them again to steal their fake ones. He shoves them back in his power-transfer tubes, unwittingly giving them their powers back. And– thanks to some prep work the older kids did off panel– he loses; the Power kids win.
Leon is at the absolute top of his game here, drawing kids and teens who look like kids and teens, who look dynamic and motivated rather than puffy and cute, and if you object to the way that the kids look like members of the Runaways, I may have some news for you about who came first. As for Rosenberg, these colors pop, as Power Pack colors must. The asymmetrical panels build up to the, uh, mean reveal about Logan, without sacrificing the comic surprise. And the quick epilogue at the end shows Leon’s range: dawn at the elevated subway tracks; night in the railyards; crowds in the classroom; blurs on TV.
This story arc didn’t need five issues– another kind of writer could have fit them into two– but that’s a good thing, because it means North and company can happy-ending the heck out of this conclusion: the Power kids’ solution not only entraps the Wizard but gives every underage do-gooder on Earth-616 a way around Kamala’s Law, if they want to take it. Plus there’s a cameo from North’s signature hero, the still-unbeatable Squirrel Girl. Hi, Doreen! (Also a forlorn hi to the long-lost Dog Logan, James Logan Howlett’s actual adoptive brother, last seen in Jason Aaron’s Wolverine and the X-Men lo, these eight years ago.)
As for North’s words, we get a lot of them: this comic has not one, not three, but four narrators– the kids take turns, with color-coded panels and distinctive voices– he’s the right writer for that. And the final, extremely self-conscious reveal (I won’t spoil it) gets effectively meta as few all-ages comics do. If you’re a parent I hope you’re listening. If you’re not, I hope you’re also listening. The kids need one another. And they need us, too. Even if we don’t know what they’re doing until it’s all tied up with a four-color bow.
Stephanie Burt is Professor of English at Harvard. Her podcast about superhero role playing games is Team-Up Moves, with Fiona Hopkins; her latest book of poems is We Are Mermaids. Her nose still hurts from that thing with the gate.
