How Close Did We Come to Seeing a Power Pack Marvel MAX Comic?

Welcome to the 882nd installment of Comic Book Legends Revealed, a column where we examine three comic book myths, rumors and legends and confirm or debunk them. This time, our first legend is about whether we nearly had a Power Pack Marvel MAX comic book series from James Gunn.

In 2001, Marvel announced a new imprint called Marvel MAX. Stuart Moore explained the concept to Jennifer Contino at the time at Sequential Tart, "It's a new imprint that will allow creators more freedom than they've had before in crafting stories about (1) certain, select Marvel characters and (2) original series. It's also a place where we hope to widen Marvel's mandate to encompass a lot of genres that haven't been represented too heavily at the company recently." He explained its origin came when "Brian Bendis had an idea for a crime book set loosely in the Marvel Universe, and wrote a scene to show us what he wanted to do with it. It was full of profanity and had a very psychologically disturbing sex scene in it. We weren't sure if we could publish it, but Bill Jemas got behind it 100%. We'd already been discussing doing an imprint aimed more at adults, and this was the perfect catalyst. So in the end, the starting gun for the imprint was triggered by a particular creator's vision, not some target date or quota set from above. The book became Alias, and the sample script, slightly altered, forms about half of issue #1, which just came out."

The line never quite solidified, outside of Alias and Garth Ennis' The Punisher. It has mostly been defunct since around 2014, outside various Ennis sequel miniseries to his Punisher and Nick Fury stories, like 2019-20's Punisher: Soviet. However, before the line was mostly discontinued, was there really almost a Power Pack MAX comic book?

What was Power Pack?

Power Pack was a comic book series from Marvel that launched in 1984 by Louise Simonson, June Brigman and Bob Wiacek about the Power siblings - Alex, Julie, Jack and Katie. Their father was a notable scientist, and some evil aliens known as the Snarks came to Earth to try to access a prototype he designed for a device that could create energy out of anti-matter. A similar device had destroyed the Kymellian homeworld, and so a Kymellian scientist, Aelfyre Whitemane came to Earth to try to get Jim Power to stop his experiment. The power children befriended Whitemane, who they dubbed "Whitey." They also befriended Whitemane's artificially intelligent ship, Friday. Whitey is fatally injured by the Snarks, and before he dies, he transfers his powers to the Power kids. He has four different super powered abilities, and each one went to a specific kid. Alex got his gravity control powers, Julie got his superfast flight, Jack got his density control powers and Katie got his ability to absorb matter and turn it into energy.

Aided by Friday and fancy costumes that appear whenever they need them, the kids became the Power Pack, and kept their father's experiment from being used for evil by the Snarks. The family then moved to New York where the kids continued being superheroes while trying to live their everyday lives, as well.

The original series lasted until 1991, although Brigman left relatively early on (followed by Jon Bogdanove as the new regular artist) and Simonson left before the end (she and Bogdanove continued collaborating as the long-running creative team on Superman: The Man of Steel, starting in 1991). In the last 15 years or so, the Power Pack has returned for all-ages comics with some regularity...

it's obviously not a property that you would normally consider for an R-rated comic book series, and yet, that's almost what happened!

Was there really nearly a Power Pack Marvel MAX series?

Back in 2017, James Gunn revealed on Twitter that he had pitched a Power Pack MAX series. He noted:

No joke; back in the day - 2009 or so - I pitched a Power Pack Max (NC-17) series to Marvel Comics. They loved it. Marvel Studios nixed it! To elaborate: It was an alt Universe story & the Pack was in their teens/early 20s & they were all very screwed up from their childhoods

So obviously, Gunn was just talking about an alternate reality take on the characters. I imagine, though, that Marvel Studios wanted to keep the characters "clean" in case the company thought it could get a movie or cartoon made based on the Power Pack. They've been in talks to have Power Pack adaptations ever since the 1980s, so I can see why Marvel Studios wouldn't want to mess around with an "Adult only" take on the series.

Amusingly, in 2014, for Marvel's 75th anniversary, Marvel did a 75th Anniversary Celebration comic book, and Brian Michael Bendis did a number of humorous concepts (paired with a number of amazing artists) for fictional Marvel Comics that we never saw, like a Licensed Contest of Champions, featuring characters that had Marvel comic books in the past, but Marvel no longer had the license to use them anymore...

and, of course, there was a Power Pack MAX comic by Bendis and Bill Sienkiewicz that seems like it was very much in keeping with the idea that Gunn had pitched back in 2009...