Warning: contains spoilers for Power Pack #5!
Marvel Comics' the villain of the piece, with Marvel resetting Tony Stark's memory shortly after to restore a hero fans could still root for. But despite his redemption, Tony's plans were even darker than they first appeared, especially in the context of the recent Power Pack #5, from Ryan North and Nico Leon.
Young heroes gifted incredible powers by an alien benefactor, the Power Pack are the four Power siblings: Alex, Julie, Jack, and Katie. Power Pack remain a cult favorite team for Marvel fans, having a surprising history of engaging with social issues, and impressive physics-based powers that respectively give them control over localized gravity, light, mass, and energy. Marvel's recent Outlawed event - a mini-Civil War all of its own - has forced the Power Pack to find an adult mentor in order to avoid a ban on teen heroes. Sadly, they were tricked into trusting the villainous Wizard, who siphoned off their powers after convincing them they would be far better used generating free energy.
In the most recent issue, the kids work with Wolverine to defeat and de-power the Wizard, but they take his earlier advice to heart. Working from the Wizard's earlier sketches on how their powers can be used to generate energy without pollution, the Powers kids end the issue revealing they now dedicate some of their time to providing free energy, and use the profits to run a night school for disadvantaged teens. It's a fascinating look at how superpowers could do good without being used offensively, but also casts a light on how dark Iron Man's Civil War plans turned out to be, especially for young heroes.
Having won the superhero Civil War, Iron Man, Reed Richards, and a Skrull posing as Hank Pym set about enacting a list of a hundred projects that would improve the world around them. One of these was the Fifty-State Initiative, which gave each American state its own dedicated team of heroes. To make this dream real, Iron Man's SHIELD also established Camp Hammond, a training facility designed to prepare young heroes for combat service.
Harsh, militaristic, and lethally mismanaged, Camp Hammond took young heroes and attempted to turn them into soldiers. Few people exemplified the dark side of this process more than Cloud 9, who ed the Initiative with a simple love of flying and helping others and ended up a jaded sniper expected to kill her enemies from afar. It was a role Cloud 9 hated even as she performed it, and one she immediately rejected once the Superhuman Registration Act was revoked.
Tony's inability to see young heroes as anything but soldiers showed the dangerous path Captain America had predicted come true, but Power Pack #5 makes it clear how unnecessary this myopic focus on combat actually was. Applying their powers creatively allows the Power Pack to benefit their community in a positive, productive way that brings out the best of their sense of duty and responsibility.
While forcing teen heroes into public service would still have been dark, it would have been way less traumatic than training them to kill and be killed on SHIELD's say-so. Iron Man dreamed of superhuman ability, but as a weapons-designer to his core, his plans were tainted by his own biases and fears, and he ended up ignoring the many different ways in which superhumans could better the world. While Iron Man may feel his Civil War folly is behind him, Power Pack #5 reveals that despite being a genius, Tony Stark doesn't have every angle covered, and the future can't be patterned after one man's vision, hero or not, without playing out his deepest flaws on a grand stage.
