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So, I've spent a lot of my time, lately, getting Ad Astra up on its own web site and that hasn't left me much time to draw. I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly I was able to get all the strips up on the new site, so the long grind I was anticipating with mounting dread has dissipated. Now, I've got to get back into my routine, and it's been hard to get working again.
On the plus-side, however, I've been catching up on some of my reading, and re-reading. Recently, I got the sixth volume of Empowered and with that, I decided to read the series from the beginning. Empowered is, if you're not familiar with it, a sort of amalgam of manga and superhero, with a lot of humor and a level of bondage rarely seen outside of old Wonder Woman covers. It is very well drawn, it is very well written and it is damn sneaky. I like writers who can pull off this kind of sneaky. You know the type, you're reading for fun and somehow, without noticing it, you start to care about a character or three? That's the kind of sneaky Adam Warren is.
Empowered is the title of the book, but it's also the "supranym" of the main character, Elissa Megan Powers, a young blonde with low self-esteem and is extremely self-conscious about her figure, specifically the size of her butt. She has a powersuit that conforms to her every contour (almost) and is, it seems, just as fragile as her self-esteem. As the suit's coverage diminishes in battle, her powers fade and she is often captured and bound, gagged, etc. As the story goes, Empowered grew out of a series of damsel-in-distress commission drawings Adam was doing, hence all the bondagey stuff.
For all her faults and foibles, Emp, as she is known to her friends and close acquaintances, proves to be quite heroic on occasion and inventive. At one point, she throws a car at a monster, only to watch it bounce off. Later, she commandeers a Hummer and crashes it into a super-villain, trusting to the vehicles restraints and airbag, as well as her miraculous suit, to protect her from the high speed collision.
As the series develops and we learn more about the various characters, the complexity of the world he's building comes into clearer view. This world is complex and strange, and largely a parody of Marvel and DC Earths, but has its own unique features. The existence of super-normals is much more a part of daily life, in this world, with HeroNet, a television network for supers, as well as radio stations and fantasy leagues for supers. Most of the heroes, and the villains, are depicted as three-dimensional individuals, with flaws any of us might have. There is only one "perfect" character in the whole series and he's perfectly evil, the "god-damn fire elemental" known as Willy Pete.
As an associate member of the Superhomeys, Emp endures the unending scorn of her teammates in order to do what she has to do. In particular, the ultra-powerful Sistah Spooky who, we learn, sold her soul for superhuman hotness and was accidentally granted awesome magical powers as a result of a glitch in the infernal paperwork.
Emp is repeatedly befriended by people who originally captured her for one reason or another, such as her boyfriend, known to everyone as Thugboy, who was first seen tying Emp to a chair while he was still in the thuggery business. Her best friend, Kozue Kaburagi, known as Ninjette (she has her name emblazoned across her shorts short!) a ninja from New Jersey. Emp and Ninjette first meet when 'Jette captures her for some group of thugs, who fail to turn up to collect their prize. Ninjette releases her, and they go out for drinks. Later, she is captured by a girl she was tied up next to, in her first meeting with Thugboy, who thinks there's money to be made in ransoming superchicas, the same girl later turns up as Ocelotina, a pseudo superhero, who makes superchica bondage videos for sale online. She ends up cutting Emp in on the sales of her apparently, very popular videos.
I guess that's the theme, or something, but the funniest friend of all never captured, bound, beat or otherwise endangered Emp, she captured him, using a set of alien bondage gear, left behind when the recruiter for an alien overlord's harem found her butt just slightly larger than his master's very exacting standards allowed. Using the power-draining alien harness, she trapped the creature known thereafter as the Caged Demonwolf (among other epithets). Unfortunately, the Superhomeys' are not permitted to keep a caged demonlord on the premises, due to zoning restrictions. The fusion-phallused-violater-of-worlds remains trapped in the chain-like device, waxing eloquent in the stentorian fashion of the best, and worst, Stan Lee villains. He is freaking awesome.
After awhile, other characters emerge to catch your attention. We meet, at one point, the sole permanent resident of Joint Superteam Space Station 3, the twitchy telepath known only as Mindf**k. She is fascinating, to me, because I guess I identify with isolated people. Her backstory is quite horrific, and not at all funny, even as dark comedy, but it makes her the most interesting telepath I've come across in comics.
Emp's own tragic history is explored within the framing elements of a present-day encounter with a villain's henchman who, she discovers, has an aneurysm like the one that killed her father. She manages to convince him that she's not simply trying to escape and his life is saved by emergency surgery, and his little girl doesn't have to suffer the way Elissa did. You wouldn't think there could be any funny in a story like that, but there is.
Other characters in the series seem to be analogues of familiar heroes and villains, but with Warren's own sadistic twist on their personalities. Needless to say, they're worth exploring. Even the "douche-capes" like Major('scuse me while I cry)Havoc. [No, really. That's his battle cry.]
On more than one occasion, Emp manages to save the day, usually by out-thinking her opponents, and her fellow "capes".
One word of warning, this is not a series for younger audiences. It frequently features censored salty language, though you can easily figure out what's being said, from the context, as well as frequent sexual references and/or graphic depictions, though naughty bits are always covered. Just wanted you to know, your mileage may vary.
You know, it's an under-rated skillset, but Warren is an excellent letterer. Many of his characters feature their full names on their costumes, and some have entire phrases (Fear the Deer!), and the lettering on their logos is always spot-on. Plus, his hand-lettering of the stories adds another layer to his storytelling, that's missing in most machine-lettered comics. It looks hand-lettered, anyway, I've never seen an original art page from the book, so I can't be sure.
So, what I'm saying here is, all you folks mature enough for the subject matter, and who need a good laugh, and once in awhile, a little cry (end of Volume 5), start reading Empowered.
I thought it would be fun to team up Emp with Invincible. They both tend to end their battles in tattered costumes.
See more of my stuff at . . .
heroblog.deviantart.com
www.heroblog.com
www.adastracomic.com
Copyright © 2011 Joe Singleton
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