Empowered Tp Vol 04

These days, there are very few comic books that shock and surprise me.  Not in the way The Boys shocks and surprises you.  Rather in the way that Scott Pilgrim shocked and surprised me, in the way I was blown away by by reading this delightful comic book that was unlike anything I read before.  I had several people tell me about Empowered by Adam Warren during 2008, and for whatever reason I naively dismissed it, but when I finally sat down and read the first volume, it delighted and surprised.  So much so that I blew through volumes 2 and 3 and I eagerly awaited the next volume, #4 in the series, to come out.

To quickly bring you up to speed, the story is this:  Adam Warren is a very talented American Manga artist.  He was commissioned by a fan to draw some sketches of "A female hero, costume in tatters, tied up."  Who are we to judge what people are into?  So Warren does the sketches, and while he's doing them, a character emerges and he begins to do little, short stories featuring this damsel in distress heroine, named Empowered.  Since that little burst of creative genius, we've been treated to 4 volumes of the saga of Empowered.  The volumes themselves are unlike anything I've ever read.  Black and white manga style, but in a format larger than a digest size but bigger than a standard comic book size. Each volume contains several short stories (or chapters) that can be read on their own but also work together combined to form the total ongoing story of Empowered.

Empowered is a female super hero in a world filled with super heroes and villains.  She idolized super heroes and even majored in them at college.  At some point, she is given her costume, which gives her powers (the limit of which she's still learning) such as strength, invulnerability and invisibility (well the suit goes invisible, but not her body).  But she only has powers when her suit is on, and he suit is made of incredibly flimsy material, and gets destroyed very easily and quickly in a fight.  Often Empowered ends up captured by super villains, her costume torn and tattered and she's tied up and held for ransom.  Her fellow super heroes invariably save her, but because of her instability of her powers, she is frowned upon by her hero teammates and the butt of their jokes.  Early in the series Empowered shacks up with her now boyfriend, Thug Boy, who is a former super villain henchman.  Later in the series, she makes a best friend in Ninjette, a female ninja. The cast is rounded out by The "Caged Demonwolf" a villianous demon Empowered captured and trapped in an alien belt, and now lives on her coffee table and watches too much television.

The entire series of Empowered started off as a parody of the world of super heroes.  All the characters have ridiculous names and powers, and you get the feeling that the whole society of super heroes is a joke.  Additionally, Warren also pokes fun at the sexuality of super heroes (There is a Parental Advisory sticker on the cover, and this book is definitely not for kids), as he plays with the body types and costumes (and lack of costumes), which opens the door for dating and relationship humor that is as outrageous as the powers and situations these super hero folk find themselves involved in.  What has interested me throughout all 4 volumes is that Warren has built off that one note joke of poking fun at super heroes and has expanded it to examine and create humor around every aspect of this type of universe.  Empowered's romantic relationship with a former henchman is fodder enough for humor, but Warren does it in a way that is not only funny but also very clever.  In addition to the clever dialogue and parodies contained in the stories, Warren breaks the fourth wall in-between stories, as Empowered provides updates, clarifications, recaps, and often apologies for the events of the stories.  It's this playful, tongue in cheek vibe that Warren establishes right at the onset of the book that makes Empowered so special.  It's a completely immersive experience that starts at the front cover and lasts for every page of the book.  Warren isn't trying too hard with the humor, it just flows naturally, much like when he originally created the character, and it's that ease of creation that makes this such a fun book to read.

Volume 4 picks up from the end of Volume 3 where Ninjette was captured by her former Ninja clan and Empowered saved her.  This volume starts with the resolution of that story and we see more relationship tension build as Empowered has Ninjette move in with her and Thug Boy, which is a slam dunk for threesome based humor from the Caged Demonwolf (who quickly has become my favorite character, a sexually repressed demon trapped, watching television and completely warped by the entertainment society we live in, with a touch of evil).  This eases Empowered into the main thrust of the story, which is the fact that she's been nominated to recieve an award, one of the annual awards given out by the super hero community, the Caped Justice Awards (or Capeys for short), specifically the "Suprahuman Most Deserving of Wider Recgonition" award.  But it's quickly revealed that her nomination is a joke by her teammates, who want to embarrass her in front of the super hero community by awarding her this backhanded award.  Hijinks ensue and sure enough the awards ceremony is attacked and Empowered is the one to save the day, and of course get none of the credit for it.

With this volume, Warren is making a thinly veiled jab at the comic book industry itself, with it's long, often boring ceremony for the Eisner awards (There used to be a "Talent Deserving Wider Recgoniton" award, until they realized how poorly worded that award was, and changed it to the "Special Recognition" award).  But you don't need to know that in order to read and enjoy this book.  Sure it helps to spot the digs, but ultimately Warren has delivered another send up to the paradigm of the super hero and reminds us how silly and amusing these character in tights can be, but at the same time creating and cultivating a group of characters that live and breathe on the page and you end up caring about.

Empowered was a breath of fresh air for me, showing that creators like Adam Warren can dream up something so unique and imaginative and deliver an entertaining piece of work that could only work in comics.  Poking fun at the genre on one hand, but creating something so wonderfully fresh and original on the other hand is no easy feat.  Like Scott Pilgrim, Empowered is now a book that I can't wait for another volume to be published because as soon as I finished reading Volume 4, I wanted volume 5.  And that, my friends, is exactly what I look for in comics.  For it to be so good that I have to run out and tell all my friends about it just to pass the time until the next volume comes out.  Empowered is definitely one of the good comics out there, even if it's a bit silly and naughty at times, but that's half the fun.

Ron Richards
ron@ifanboy.com

Pick up Empowered Volume 4 at Amazon!