• Published by Marvel Comics

Alex Power

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Zero-G
Zero-G, art by GuriHiru
Publication information
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First appearance	Power Pack vol. 1 #1 (August 1984)
Created by	Louise Simonson June Brigman
In-story information
Alter ego	Alexander Power
Team affiliations	Power Pack New Warriors
Notable aliases	Gee, Destroyer, Mass Master, Powerpax, Powerhouse
Abilities	Controlling gravity. Previously: Controlling gravity, Acceleration/Flight, Control over his own mass and size and Disintegrating, absorbing and releasing energy.

Alex Power is a fictional character in the Marvel Universe. He first appeared in Power Pack #1 and was created by Louise Simonson and June Brigman

Contents 1 Publication history 2 Fictional character biography 2.1 Origin 2.2 Power Pack 2.3 New Warriors 2.4 Civil War/The Initiative 3 Powers and paraphernalia 4 Other versions 4.1 Marvel Adventures 4.2 Avengers and Power Pack Assemble! 4.3 House of M 4.4 Millennial Visions 4.5 X-Force 4.6 Marvel Zombies vs. The Army of Darkness 5 Bibliography 6 Footnotes

[edit] Publication history

Alex was introduced in Power Pack Vol.1 issue 1, where he took the name Gee (the phonetic pronounciation of the letter ‘g’) after attaining gravity-manipulating powers. He swapped powers with his sister Katie in issue 25, after which Alex took the name Destroyer until issue 52, when he obtained his brother Jack’s power to manipulate his own mass and took the name Mass Master from that point until Power Pack’s cancellation with issue 62 (it is also later established that Alex was replaced with a doppleganger at some indeterminate point after becoming Mass Master). In the Power Pack Holiday Special, he regained his original gravity-manipulating powers and nickname, and presumably continued under this pseudonym until he resurfaced in New Warriors issues 47-51, in a storyline written by former Power Pack editor Fabian Nicieza which saw Alex steal his siblings’ powers for himself and adopt the name Power Pax. Continuing as a periphery cast-member of the New Warriors, he sporadically appeared in their adventures (see bibliography at bottom of page for relevant issues) and renamed himself Powerhouse before deciding – after blaming himself for the destruction of his family’s sentient starship Friday – to rejoin Power Pack and return their powers to them. Resurfacing with the rest of his family in a 4-issue miniseries published in 2000, Alex had taken the name Zero-G at some point during the team’s 4-year publishing hiatus, and also created a new costume. With the end of that miniseries, Alex was not seen again until he appeared on the cover of Avengers: The Initiative #1 (in his Zero-G costume) as one of 150 Marvel superheroes either involved with, or being cinsidered as potential recruits by the Fifty State Initiative. He appeared in Civil War: Battle Damage Report as a potential recruit (named as Powerhouse, not Zero-G – possibly having changed his name once again), but this book featured no original comic book material, and his picture was cropped from an issue of the 2000 miniseries. It is stated by his sister Julie that she was speaking to him on the phone during a scene in The Loners #1, but he is not seen or heard.

[edit] Fictional character biography

[edit] Origin

Alex Power was born in Richmond, Virginia. Alex is a founding member of Power Pack. The oldest of the four Power siblings, Alex is twelve years old when he receives his powers from Aelfyre Whitemane, a dying Kymellian noble. He is the unofficial leader of the team throughout their entire history and later strikes out on his own to become a member of the New Warriors without his siblings. He eventually leaves the New Warriors and returns to Power Pack.

Alex aged from 12 to 13 during the original Power Pack series, and in the 2000 mini-series, he was 16. Currently not starring in any ongoing Marvel publications, his current age can only be assessed by proxy using previous Power Pack cast members as a point of reference: Julie (two years his junior) was revealed to be a 17-year-old in The Loners #4, and Franklin Richards (8 years his junior) was revealed to be 8 in Fantastic Four 564^[1], meaning that Alex is either 19 or 16. In the Marvel Adventures mini-series (set in an alternate universe), he is 15.

[edit] Power Pack

As the eldest of the four Power children, Alex quickly became the de facto leader of the group. His bright and inquisitive nature was perhaps partially responsible for the creation of the team. The Powers first spotted Friday when they were camped out on their back porch with Alex’s telescope, stargazing.

Alex proved to be a strong and insightful leader for Power Pack, rallying them to win several important battles. However, he also occasionally exhibited an explosive temper; it was sometimes unleashed upon his siblings to disastrous results. Alex’s outburst resulted in the entire team being located and kidnapped by the Snarks.^[2] When his youngest sister, Katie, was Energizer, he bullied her to such an extent that she compared him to the team’s archenemy, Queen Maraud, and voluntarily gave up her powers to the Snarks.

The oldest Power sibling by several years, Alex often expressed a desire to cultivate friendships outside of the Pack. He had an on-and-off relationship with a girl in his class, Alison (sometimes spelled ‘Allison’) McCourt; this friendship would last throughout most of the series. Like his sister Julie, Alex also occasionally clashed with bullies at school. One of these, Johnny Rival, would prove to be a serious threat: he suspected Alex’s powers, believed he was a mutant, and brought a gun to school to attempt to kill him.

Following an encounter with Hobgoblin and Spider-Man, Alex and Johnny buried their differences and became friends.^[3] This relationship was short-lived however: Johnny’s older brother was a drug-addict and dealer who was killed by the police during a robbery to fuel his addiction. Alex had tried to prevent it and Johnny blamed his interference for his brother’s death.^[4] This rejection prompted Alex to destroy a drug-house.^[5] Johnny was himself opposed to drugs; in one scene he is shown angrily ordering some boys away from a drug dealer who was goading them into buying heroin.

[edit] New Warriors

Alex’s time with the New Warriors began when he was recruited by both Bandit and Hindsight (Lad) in order to help stop the Sphinx and rescued the time displaced Warriors. However, he initiated a power transference from his siblings in order to be a greater help to the Warriors without the need to involve the rest of the Power Pack.^[6]

Afterwards, he returned their abilities back to them and promised not to take them again,^[7] but was later forced to reclaim them again to aid in the Warriors’ battle against the Soldiers of Misfortune.^[8] Eventually, Alex explained to Julie and Jack his reasons for taking the Pack’s powers into himself, which angered his siblings, especially Jack.^[9]

Among Alex’s tenure with the Warriors was the encounters against Spidercide, a brief fight against Psionex (with then Night Thrasher and Rage on said team at the time), Protocol and the Soldiers of Misfortune, and both the Sphinx and Advent.

Alex’s final mission with the Warriors was when they fought the Dire Wraith Queen Mother Volx (who had already stolen the Torpedo suit from Mickey Musashi, Power Pack’s Smartship Friday, and Rom’s Neo-neutralizer). The team succeeded in destroying her plans (along with the Dire Wraith as well), but at the cost of nearly destroying Friday.^[10]

[edit] Civil War/The Initiative

Alex’s codename Powerhouse was previously mentioned by Hindsight.^[11] Alex has been identified as one of the 142 registered superheroes who are a part of the 50-State Initiative^[12].^[13] and reportedly training at Camp Hammond^[14] (though not all characters seen on the cover of The Initiative’s premier issue have been used within the book itself). This is at odds not only with previous portrayals of the character as an admirer of anti-registration figurehead Captain America, but contradicts Alex’s opinions aired during Power Pack’s original run, where he expressed disgust and alarm at the idea of mutant registration (which would have affected Power Pack member Franklin Richards) eventually leading to the (then) unthinkable scenario of “(making)everybody with powers register”.^[15]

[edit] Powers and paraphernalia

Alex’s original power was control over gravity; his original codename was “Gee”, as in Zero Gravity. He first used this power to make himself stick to Friday to avoid being pulled into the Snarks’ starship and he quickly learned he could use it to cancel his own gravity and that of other objects. Alex’s ability to cancel gravity was unlimited; however, he also had to deal with the inertia of the objects he lifted. Though Alex could float by negating gravity, he had no means of self-propulsion, and thus could not truly fly. He initially depended on his sister Julie to push him along before developing an alternate method (see below).

After having his gravity powers forcibly removed by Jakal, Alex received the energy powers previously held by Katie.^[16] He renamed himself Destroyer, but found himself struggling with the moral issues his new power’s lethal potential raised. Alex also pushed the upper limits of the energy power’s capacity for absorption; in a battle with the Sentinel Master Mold, he disintegrated almost the entire bulk of the multi-story robot’s body, causing his body to swell with stored energy. In the process, Alex found that exceeding his normal absorption limits generated intense pain, impaired his ability to think clearly, and made it difficult to release the stored energy. In a later adventure, he was also shown to be highly volatile in this state, prone to random releases of energy on physical impact.

After a third power switch, he received the density powers previously held by Jack and Julie and took on Jack’s former identity as Mass Master.^[17] Alex was the first Power sibling to use the powers to turn himself into a liquid state and further developed the abilities so he could create a density blast of solidified air.

Alex underwent a transformation into an actual Kymellian, which started with mild hair loss. It was eventually revealed that Alex had learned of his parents kidnapping and had been kidnapped himself by Queen Maraud and a Kymellian Technocrat and was replaced by a clone which reverted to its original Kymellian form. The real Alex eventually escaped from captivity in Maraud’s ship and rejoined his siblings.

Along with his siblings, Alex possessed Kymellian healing powers. Usually, he was required to work with his siblings to generate and use this ability; however, he occasionally accessed it on his own.

With his siblings, Alex owned a Kymellian smartship, Friday. The ship acted as an unofficial team advisor and accompanied the Pack on several missions.

Alex wears a costume of unstable molecules created by Friday. The costume exists in an extra-dimensional space known as “Elsewhere” until summoned by voice command (the wearer would say the words “costume on!”). The costume also houses a communicator which is used to communicate with Friday, and was later modified to include a mask.^[18] As with all the team’s costumes, the pockets of the costume can be used as an access point to Elsewhere itself, where the cartoon-like creatures known simply as “The Tailors” reside in a colorful wonderland of talking dinosaurs, enchanted forests, mad monarchs, surreal architecture and malleable physical laws.^[19]

During his first stint with his gravity powers, Alex also wore a set of wings which he designed himself after learning more about the effects of gravity and inertia in school. The wings, which were sewn by Julie and attached to his costume with straps, allowed him to propel himself and “fly” through clever manipulation of gravity and occasional use of air currents, instead of relying on Lightspeed to carry him. Alex passed the wings on when Jack acquired the gravity power, but they were destroyed during Power Pack’s encounter with the Marauders during the Mutant Massacre.

[edit] Other versions

[edit] Marvel Adventures

Alex appears in the Power Pack line published under Marvel’s all-ages Marvel Adventures imprint. He is similar in age and appearance to the version of the character as seen in Power Pack Vol. 1, though he is portrayed as not needing to make physical contact with something to negate its gravity, often doing so from a distance – in the original Power Pack series, he can only affect objects by physical contact. His sometimes antagonistic relationship with younger sister Katie is also absent, with Alex pointedly nurturing his younger sister through her difficulties in hiding the family’s powers from their parents^[20].

[edit] Avengers and Power Pack Assemble!

Within the third and fourth issues of Avengers and Power Pack Assemble! miniseries, the Power Pack were thrown ten years into the future and met older versions of themselves, including a 25 year old Alex Power. In those issues he shows greater control over his powers, (such as being able to deconstruct an enemy powered-armor suit), and now wields Captain America’s shield.

[edit] House of M

Alex appears as a member of Wolfpack, based in the Bronx.^[21]

[edit] Millennial Visions

In the “Power Pack: Starting Over” story within Marvel’s 2001 Millennial Visions alternate universe one-shot comic, Alex was depicted as a 32 year old construction foreman who had retired from superheroing to raise a family.^[22]

[edit] X-Force

A young girl called Francine Power appeared under the name PowerPax in X-Force Annual #1, not only utilising the collective powers of Power Pack, but wearing the same costume Alex would be seen wearing when he took the collective powers of Power Pack for himself and operated as a superhero also called PowerPax. The X-Force Annual came several years before Alex’s tenure as a featured cast member of the New Warriors, but both were written by Power Pack editor Fabian Nicieza.^[23]

[edit] Marvel Zombies vs. The Army of Darkness

Alex, alongside the rest of Power Pack, appear as zombies in the pages of Marvel Zombies vs. The Army of Darkness #3. They are attacked by Nextwave, whom the Pack murder off-panel in an allegedly graphic fashion.^[24]

[edit] Bibliography

• Power Pack #1-55 (1984)
• Power Pack Holiday Special (1992)
• Power Pack Mini-series #1-4 (2000)
• Power Pack: Shelter from the Storm Graphic Novel (1989)
• Power Pack and Spider-Man (2006)
• New Warriors v1, #47-51, 55-57, 59-65, 67-75 (1994-6)
• New Warriors v2, #1 (1999)
• Fantastic Four v1, #282, 337
• Fantastic Four Annual #23
• Green Goblin #2
• Marvel Fanfare #55 (1982)
• Marvel Universe #10
• Nova v2, #7 (1994)
• Secret Wars II #6 (1985)
• Spectacular Spider-Man #227-228
• Strange Tales v2, #12-14
• Thor #357, #363
• Uncanny X-Men #195
• Web of Scarlet Spider #3-4
• Web of Spider-Man #129
• Power Pack #1-4 (2005)
• Avengers and Power Pack Assembled #1-4 (2006)
• Fantastic Four and Power Pack (2007)
• Hulk and Power Pack #1-4 (2007)
• Iron Man and Power Pack #1-4 (2007-08)
• Power Pack: Day One #1-4 (2008)
• Skrulls versus Power Pack #1-4 (2008)
• Spider-Man and Power Pack #1-4 (2006-07)
• Wolverine and Power Pack #1-4 (2008-09)
• X-Men/Power Pack #1-4 (2005-06)

[edit] Footnotes

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TAGS: New Warriors, Power Pack


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• Last updated on June 16th, 2009
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