What's the story behind the Power Pachyderms, uncle Rog? A Ninja Turtles parody or something more? And when are they coming back?!?

I would guess when hell freezes over.

The original idea behind Power Pachyderms was that Marvel was amused -- or bemused, take your pick -- by the whole Ninja Turtles thing. It was, after all, itself a parody of Marvel Comics -- primarily Frank Miller's work, with a little of Chris Claremont's thrown in. I remember Frank chuckling at one point, saying something along the lines of "if these guys could draw better, they'd be a real threat."

Anyway, at some point early on, someone at Marvel -- probably recalling Not Brand Ecch -- came up with the notion that Marvel could parody itself better than the Turtles crew could. Someone on staff designed the characters -- who, at the time, were going to be called the Adult Thermonuclear Samurai Elephants -- someone else came up with the basic idea for their origin.

I was asked to plot the one-shot, and Klaus Janson was originally supposed to draw it. When Klaus back out, John Byrne briefly considered drawing it, but then he got to busy with something else. So Adam Blaustein wound up drawing it ... which took a while.

By the time the story was finally drawn -- about a year later -- everyone and his uncle had already flooded the market with ninja Hamsters, Gerbils, and what-have-you ... rendering the whole point of the Elephants book sort of moot.

So I suggested that the book be re-titled Power Pachyderms -- with a logo that was supposed to parody the logo of Power Pack -- and repackaged the book in a way that was supposed to parody the format of Classic X-Men, even to the point of suggesting covers by Art Adams. None of that happened, and the book was ultimately released early two years later, sans the feature pages, the funny credits page, the zany indicia, and ersatz "Next Issue" ad that I'd designed .. and several other gags, as well.

But by that time, I'd been exiled from Marvel and was writing Superman ... so I didn't have any say in the matter.

-- Uncle Rog