So it’s been a couple of weeks since the last post. I have a good excuse, though—kind of. I was sick for one week, and spent the next week getting back to normal. Now, finally, I get to get back to the work of dreaming up cool topics to talk about. I know the whole “book-of-the-month” spiel is kind of overdone right now, but it’s still a good excuse to bring up comics that I like or talk about a comic I really think could use some more publicity. Me talking about these sadly underpublicized titles admittedly has a yelling at the whirlwind type of futility, but so be it. Sometimes, you gotta yell.
This particular BOTM is kind of dangerous to talk about, because it has to do with sex. Lots of sex. Most of it has to do with bondage, but there’s definitely no shortage of people getting it on in the panel, as well as nubile bodies strutting across every page. Usually, when you say a comic is all about sex, it’s pretty much a given that it’s going to have women in cheesecake shots at least every other page, and that it’s going to have all the depth of, say, a pudding cup. Also a comic about sex can’t be about anything other than helping people to get off. Alan Moore writing Lost Girls? Trying to make a literary pornography title? Fuhgeddaboudit! Everyone knows that a comic about sex can’t have a good plot or good pencils!
To the people who think that, I say you obviously haven’t read Adam Warren’s “Empowered.” I don’t know what inspired Adam to try his hand at this, but I’m glad he has, and while I’m not happy that his pitches to Marvel and DC have yet to be accepted, at least it means we get to see Adam Warren unleashed, working with his own creations and telling a story he’s obviously enjoying as much as his audience.
For those who have yet to pick up the books, “Empowered” features the adventure of a bondage-prone superheroine named Empowered, who is more or less gifted with a super-suit that allows her to go out and fight crime. The only problem is, when the suit gets torn, it becomes less powerful. Almost exponentially less powerful, actually, and the suit is so fragile that it gets torn with the slightest effort. Which means that Empowered gets defeated a lot, and since the “unwritten rules” between the superheroes (colloquially known as “capes”) and supervillains (colloquially known as “bad guys”) rule out cape-killing, this means poor ol’ Emp is oftentimes trussed up while her outfit clings to her in tatters.
What separates this book from every other type of sexy superheroine book is that Adam Warren isn’t just telling stories about a bondage-prone superheroine. He’s deconstructing her world as he tells these stories, trying to figure out what sort of people the bad guys are, what sort of people Emp’s teammates are, and most importantly who Emp is. Already, Empowered has become a very Spider-Man like hero, one who is easily more heroic than most of the other “capes.”
This brings me to my next point—character depth. It’s kind of sad that in this half parody half sex comic the characters have more depth than a lot of mainstream characters produced by the Big Two, but there you go. Over the volumes, you learn a lot about Empowered and the other superheroes by what they do and, perhaps more importantly, what they don’t do. You can laugh at Captain Havoc’s fratboy mentality and raging egotism, whether he’s putting the smackdown on the bad guys or trying to bolster his reputation in slash fiction by writing stories about himself. As a side note, even the smallest gags are consistent with the characters. Jeph Loeb could learn a lot from Adam Warren. It’s clever, too—in Volume Six, the big bad is revealed to have a hobby that is almost guaranteed to make you laugh, but given the villain’s power set, it makes perfect sense. That the villain’s hobby is another brilliant bit of superhero deconstructionism is just the icing on the cake.
Finally, Empowered is one of the smartest comics out on the market. Yes, Grant Morrison is still the king of the “out-there” ideas, and yes, when Neil Gaiman deigns to write a comic it almost always has some big idea that resonates on a personal level, such as his two-part Batman story. Adam Warren, however, laces “Empowered” with several polysyllabic seldom-seen words that very rarely feel out of place, regularly brings up cutting-edge scientific ideas and blends them together in ways that just make a lot of sense. The best example of this is an old Gen-13 story Adam Warren wrote concerning the intersection of bubblegum pop songs and memes, but Empowered has its fair share of intelligentsia-only humor as well. Honestly, the only flaw of “Empowered” is that Emp and her friends are written as just a little too aware of their statuses, even when they’re not breaking the fourth wall.
Oh, and one more teensy fact. Almost insignificant, really—“Empowered” is fun. It’s easily one of the most fun comics I’ve ever read. Want an example? Here’s a three-page strip Adam Warren on Emp’s reaction to the pilot of the now-canceled “Wonder Woman” TV show. Here’s Page 1, http://adamwarren.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d3cjrmh , Page 2, http://adamwarren.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d3cjreo and Page 3, http://adamwarren.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d3cjqyc Enjoy. If you don’t wind up laughing, there’s something wrong with you.
So get out there and start reading Empowered. It’s published by Dark Horse, a Deluxe volume is coming out, and it’s really good.
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