[Retrospective]Empowered, Vol. 1
Bobby Derie
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Registered User regular
Volume 9 of Adam Warren's series on the eponymous heroine Empowered was released relatively recently, and that's as good a reason as any to talk about the start of the series, published by Dark Horse as Empowered, Volume 1.
This is a really interesting series to me for a couple of reasons, besides the fact that I really like Adam Warren, both his writing and his artwork. For those unfamiliar with Warren, he got his start on the American version of Dirty Pair, gradually shifting from the more traditional manga-style to his own manga-influenced style and taking over writing duties, showcasing his sense of humor, pathos, and fascination with transhumanism and scantily-clad bodies that bespeaks a lad who was strongly influenced by Shirow Masamune's Ghost in the Shell. From there, he went on to do stuff like Gen-13, Marvel's Mangaverse and Iron Man: Hypervelocity, and one of my favorite of his side-projects, Galacta: Daughter of Galactus.
A word on Warren's art-style: I've mentioned that it is manga-influenced. This is true, but it deserves a little more in-depth. The thing about Japanese manga is that there isn't one monolithic style. Early Japanese comics were heavily influenced by early American comics, but Japanese and American comics developed in relative isolation after World War II until about the 1980s - and like in Europe, Japanese comics developed a different sensibility. Where American comics predominantly shifted to appeal to a children/young teen audience after the enactment of the Comics Code Authority, Japanese comics had genres aimed at kids and adults, and were really closer to expansions of newspaper comics like Prince Valiant and Terry and the Pirates and other adult-oriented fare than strictly kids stuff. What I'm getting at is that there are many different styles of manga, from comparatively realistic historical stuff to the zany kids-and-teens oriented stuff to the really kinky adult stuff - you might compare it to the difference between Donald Duck comics from Disney and Marvel superheroes. And just like in American comics, the Japanese developed visual and writing cues and shorthands that were distinct across several different comics genres.
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Any farther along this line, and I'm going to owe Scott McCloud royalties.
Easy-to-point out characteristics of Japanese manga style include the eponymous "big eyes, small mouth," nosebleeds to indicate lust, more cartoony "chibi" figures for humorous asides, and that kind of thing - some of which have obvious parallels with American comics, some of which are very distinctly Japanese. The different visual rhetoric and unfamiliarity with how manga characters are drawn and stylized compared to American comics characters is one reason why many American comics consumers find manga distinctly off-putting.
Big eyes, check.
On the other hand, Japanese manga rarely feature superheroes as such - the most notable exception being Sailor Moon. Don't get me wrong, the Japanese love some of the tropes of superheroes, but the whole vigilante fighting-crime schtick doesn't have the same appeal - much as in, I might again point out, European comics. The success of the superhero milieu in the United States is kind of an interesting thing, and whether you chalk it up to power fantasies, politics, or just out-performing competing comics genres, it's pretty much our thing. So while many fans of American superhero comics might look askance at Warren's Empowered for the manga-oriented art, fans of manga (and its various Asian counterparts - we silly westerns rarely distinguish, say, comics from South Korea, China, or the Philippines as long as the art looks sufficiently manga-esque to our eyes) aren't terribly big fans of superheroes as a whole. So before poor Adam Warren even gets started, he's got a bit of a hill to climb against the prejudices of both audiences.
Another thing going against it is, ironically, the eyecandy. Warren makes no bones - he talks to the reader directly though his character Empowered in-between stories - that this series started out as a bunch of softcore superheroine bondage commissions that he would do at conventions and stuff. That's actually really interesting to me, because the superheroine-in-bondage is a very old trope as far as American comics are concerned - ultimately going back to pulp fiction covers in the 1920s and 1930s, the so-called shudder pulps, and eventually resulting in the birth of Wonder Woman.
This gets super creepy and kinda complicated really quick, so we won't dwell on it.
So we're not even talking about the kind of fetish you might have - a lot of the bondage subtext left comics as attitudes got slightly more enlightened in the 80s, when people like Alan Moore realized that there was an entirely different crowd into latex - this is the kind of fetish your dad or grandpa might have had. Definitely a throwback. But it's also a very interesting starting point for a superheroine, and one which Warren develops with his aplomb. See, a very common reading of superheroes is that they exist as power fantasies for kids - substitutes that we can project out own insecurities on, to live out the kind of lives where we have the ability to right wrongs and do things we can't do in our everyday lives. Probably there's a bit of truth in that, but stupidly-powerful one-dimensional characters are basically the entire early Image comics line weak and don't often hold the readers' interest. So a lot of superhero characters develop human weaknesses, backstories, limitations - sometimes really apparent, like Superman and kryptonite, sometimes initially subtle and increasing in importance, like Batman and guns. But Superman is still basically invulnerable and Batman is a billionaire playboy. The hallmark of this trope was actually one of Marvel's most successful characters of all time: Spider-Man.
Early Spider-Man had it rough. Hated by the press, perpetually broke, torn between two hotties, suffering guilt over the death of his beloved Uncle Ben, trying to figure out the college life/superheroing balance... Spidey is a character that becomes his most endearing when you can sort of relate to him. Because then you feel sad when he hits set backs, like the death of Gwen Stacy. And you feel excited when he succeeds, like when he marries Mary Jane. And you feel betrayed when editorial decides to abort Spider-Girl and annul his marriage in a completely bullshit deal with the devil that makes you shake your fist angrily at the sky and cry to the gods for revenge...
Seriously, Marvel, this guy deserves his happy ending.
...and it is largely the same with Emp. She is very much largely a woobie. Her powers come from her cruelly revealing, skin-tight supersuit - which rips like it was made of kleenex. And when it does, it takes her powers with it. Which means she ends up getting disabled and captured a lot. She gets a reputation for it. And yet she still goes out and keeps superheroing. That's the kind of dedication which Warren slowly reveals, along with some new powers and some of the secrets of her super-suit, and you get to the point where the few times that Emp manages to actually do something bad-ass, it is awesome.
Some books have more kick-ass-y moments than others.
For this first volume, though, most of the stories are really short vignettes of a few pages. Bad-ass moments are few and far between, and largely reserved for the much longer and more involved stories of the later volumes, particularly volumes four and six.
A word on Warren's writing: As with his artwork, which has a distinct aesthetic, Warren favors very heavy visual aspects on his character designs, and the quirkiness of some of them bleeds over into their characterization and dialogue. In particular, he's invented or possibly mastered some sort of West Coast-heavily-90s-pop influenced dialect which is a distinct cousin of Joss Whedon's Buffyspeak. Not every character looks and acts and sounds like a bit character from a 90s cartoon or an extra from Buffy Season Five, but enough of them do. Also, there is the Caged Demonwolf:
I would love Adam Warren for his lettering alone if nothing else. Well, that and the Caged Demonwolf's stirring rendition of "Baby Got Back."
A lot of this is, you can tell, comic relief. It's a funny book. There's a lot of little jokes, many of the panels are very heavily detailed, with stuff that is called back in later stories or books. Warren does extremely well building up and exploring his narrative universe without ever sacrificing his visual or writing aesthetic. It's not soap opera levels of rollercoaster emotions by any means, but in this book, for instance, Emp picks up both a boyfriend and a female BFF. She gets captured and humiliated a boatload of times. We learn about her struggles with getting paid and her college degree being useless, dieting and exercise and body image. A cosmic pimp tries to add her to the alien emperor's harem. Her teammates treat her like shit. She gets pissed at her boyfriend for a transgression and exiles him to the couch. They make up in a big way. She gets sick. She learns her teammates met in a support group for superhuman STD sufferers....
I could go on. These are pretty hefty books; there's a lot of story in these pages. They're thicker than your average trade paperback, in fact. They cover a lot of ground, even though some of the later ones with single stories seem to rush by pretty fast.
Let me mention one more thing about the art:
Adam Warren draws some of the best action sequences I've ever seen in comics. And there is a tremendous sense of movement in a lot of his panels; the characters are dynamic, there are lots of action lines and cues that show they're in some sort of motion - very, very manga-influenced, but when you compare it to a lot of American-style comics, you see how American superheroes tend to be incredibly flat - every panel a pose. Warren isn't opposed to a good pose, but it's usually used for effect - even standing still, the characters are doing it on purpose, as a positive action, not just a still.
The action might be "fetish baiting", but still.
On the cheesecake - y'know, I went through quite a lot of comics while writing my book, Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos. So I know what a hardcore porn comic looks and reads like, and I know what a softcore porn comic looks and reads like. Despite Empowered's origin as some fetish sketches, and Warren's gleeful fondness for dancing all over the PG-13 line with skimpy costumes and lots of skin, I wouldn't characterize this as a softcore comic at all. Yes, it has individual scenes and sequences - nothing ever explicit, not even a nipple - it's really not wank fodder. I don't doubt that Warren enjoys drawing Emp disguised as a sexy librarian, mind, and he doesn't shy away from adult subject matter (again, not explicit - but wait until you find out about "steel wool"), but it's not brainless softcore writing. He does, in fact, take that kind of objectification to task at times, even while gleefully tapdancing over near-exploitation of his character. That's Emp's particular artistic purgatory: the sexy art seldom stops, but it is also rarely if ever the sole point. A good bit of the writing is, in fact, very clever and as I mentioned the world-building starts out slow but throws nothing away (although we're still waiting for Were-Giraffe-By-Night and the answer to one of the suit's great mysteries, involving the reason Emp can't wear underwear underneath it.)
I think it's a great comic. I'm a fan. And I like that there are publishers like Dark Horse that give this such a lease of life - nine volumes, plus the specials! Marvel seems to have trouble giving a book to a creative team for a year. Imagine if somebody gave Iron Man to Warren Ellis and told him he could have the character to do whatever the heck he wanted with for six years. Can you even imagine what that would look like? So even while volume one has its rough spots - it is, after all, largely the shorter stories that Warren was putting together as he was building up the character - I'm really glad that this didn't stop at volume one. I like that it's continuing on, and getting better as it goes. I like the growth that Emp has as a character, both in this book and across all the books. I want more. And that's about the best you can say of any comic book.
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Thankfully, Mr. Warren doesn't appear to be in any hurry to end the series, even as of volume 8. He even had some of the main characters address the question he gets asked most frequently in interviews about the series, namely 'You do have an ending in mind for this series, don't you?'
'Hey Marvel, how does Spider-Man end? Hey DC, how does Batman end?'
Sex & the Cthulhu Mythos
This series is so absolutely hilarious. And then it rips your heart out. Glad you did a write-up for it.
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One of them stands out as the most abhorrent comic book character I've ever seen but still wanted to keep reading about. This isn't some Saw-knockoff showing up in Batman in a way that just makes me put the book down in disgust. This is a guy who is the absolute worst while still being written in a way that makes me want to know more about him every single time I pick up a new volume. The only other fictional characters anything like him that I can think of are guys like Jody and TC from Preacher, or Seth from Authority. Monsters you want to read about if only to see them finally brought down.
The guy I'm talking about (not for the faint of heart / spoilers):
is called Willy Pete.
He describes himself as 'a goddamn fire elemental'. He's a pyro villain whose body is constantly engulfed in flame. His body temperature is 4 figures. And he's a rapist.
Yeeurggh.
There are some very graphic scenes with him and the unfortunates who happen to cross his path. And just when you think he can't get any more horrific, he ups the ante.
He's the worst and he ties into the main story in some important ways, so we see him more than once and he gets worse every time but I still want to read more about him. Some might want to avoid reading on a full stomach though.
Then there's also turning a character's greatest weakness into one of their greatest strengths by finding the silver lining and exploiting the fuck out of it.
Light spoilers for the (latest) Volume (9).
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Sex & the Cthulhu Mythos
It's a nice alternate take on all the Roberta's and other Battle Maids out there. And I'm pretty sure his secret identity is a rich 'made man' for the pun of it all.
I really liked his special in Unchained.
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In terms of speculation:
We learn in vol.9 where Mindfuck's brother is, and that area is ripe for exploration. It might be too much to hope for that hugely significant events are revealed all in one volume (the pace in Emp books has been kinda break-neck since #6 I feel), but one can hope.
If you do, prepare for a rush. The story hits into high gear and hasn't slowed down once since ~Vol5/6.
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(Censored because the comic loves unnecessary censoring, which is always hilarious.)
Sex & the Cthulhu Mythos
It has the balance between slice of life "what do superheroes do in their downtime" and Kick ass kinetic action. Warren has the ability to make a superhero punch look like a truck hitting a wall its supposed to be. He also has the ability of writing dialog about people bitching about their job/coworkers and make it believable, even when they are superheroes.
The last part is the most fun, because as epic as most superhero stories are, as much as writers try to turn superhero teams into ersatz families and as much intrigue they try to put into that set up; most modern superheroes are just doing a job. The Avengers have had a dozen major lineups, several different teams and hundreds of cross-overs. Are you telling me there isn't anyone that hates a fellow Avengers because they stole the last bagel that one time? Or gossips about Cap and IM's obvious sexual tension when they argue?
Sex & the Cthulhu Mythos
With creator commentary for each page!
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On my sleeve, let the runway start
Do it! The story just gets better and better and better as it goes along. Also, more emotional.
And Warren is a master of foreshadowing and payoff.
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