Finally for this week, the final issue of X-Men & Power Pack - a miniseries which pretty much nobody has been reading.  If the idea was that they could sell more Power Pack comics by sticking the X-Men on the cover, it hasn't worked.  (Not that Marvel seem to care, since they're doing the same thing with the Avengers later in the year.)

Despite the title, this has unashamedly been a Power Pack miniseries.  The format is that each issue one X-Man guest stars, and one of the Pack take the lead.  And for the most part, it's been fairly good.  It may not be sophisticated, but it has a ton of charm, something that most comics are desperately short of.  GuriHiru's art may be a little conservative in its narrative choices, but it's also infinitely more effective than most art we see these days.  It tells the story.  It sells the emotion.  They've got the fundamentals of storytelling nailed, while most of the flashier artists have lost sight of them entirely.  (Perhaps one of the reasons why manga is doing so much better than American comics is that the manga artists are more focussed on actually telling the story, while the Americans are too busy showing off.  Discuss.)

Irritatingly, from my point of view, this isn't the strongest issue of the series.  Cyclops is our guest star, and Alex is the lead character.  In theory this ought to work, with Alex meeting the older leader.  In practice, it doesn't, because Marc Sumerak's Cyclops is a bit of a git.  To be fair, he's a difficult character to make work, particularly when you take him in isolation - Cyclops is almost defined by his team leadership role, and can easily come across as horribly bland when he's on his own.  He's also not a character any kid really wants to be.  He's the respectable middle-ranking authority figure in the X-Men, the one who diligently files his paperwork while the more popular characters have fun.

Sumerak ends up marginalising him and doing a story where Alex loses confidence but gets it back again.   It's okay, but it never really does anything with Cyclops.  They could have done this story with any more senior superhero, and the theme of leadership doesn't fully come out.  Something could have been done with the idea of Alex, as the oldest of Power Pack, identifying with the responsibility-laden Cyclops, but it never happens.

It's still quite good fun, and we get to see the Marauders lose another fight, which is always entertaining.  Could have been better, though - there's a lot of untapped potential in this combination.

Rating: B

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