Empowered is Adam Warren’s “sexy superhero comedy” series of graphic novels/short story collection.
Adam Warren is probably best know for his American comic remake of the Dirty Pair back in the late 1980′s. The first series Biohazards is one of the earliest examples of an American comic done in an Japanese Manga art style.
Empowered is a twist on the old super hero comics. Our heroine gets her powers from her super skin tight suit (so skin tight in fact that she can’t wear undergarments) and while the suit gives her super strength and will stop bullets it is more prone to getting snagged and ripped then a cheap pair of pantyhose. And, once the suit gets damaged the powers stop working. Which usually end up with Empowered captured, bounded and gagged by the bad guys. Giving enough time the suit will repair itself, usually after the other members of the of the group she belongs to The Superhomeys show up and rescue her. Now your would think that she should wear something over the suit to protect it, but if she does that the suit stops working all together. The suit also only works for her, others can wear it but for them it’s just a really tight unitard, and as of volume 2 it hasn’t been shone where she got the suit. Her constance defeats plus Emps body image problems leads her to being considered the lamest ‘cape’ in the Super Hero community. Tho the pictures of Emp all trusted up, in her now barely there costume are very popular on the internet.
Empowered Vol 1. is a series of short, as little as two page stories, mainly used to introduce all the characters. The main supporting cast includes. Thug Boy Emps boyfriend, and former Witless Minion, they meet while he was doing freelance henchman work. Her best friend Ninjette a ninja who once captured Empowered when under contract, but when the pick-up crew failed to arrive let her go and took her drinking instead. Then there is the The Caged Demonwolf, an extradimensional being whom Empowered imprisoned in an energy-draining alien bondage belt, and now sits around on Emps coffee table and watches DVDs all day. Empowered’s nemesis among the Superhomeys is Sistah Spookey a mystically powered hero of color who’s dislike of Emp stems from her own insecurities after being taunted by blonde hotties in high school.
The many of the story title pages of volume one have Emp breaking the forth wall and talking to the audience. These interludes are use by Adam to explain how the idea of Empowered came about and some of his views of the whole superhero genre.
Volume 2 tends to have fewer and longer stories (20 or so) as compared to vol 1 (around 40) and really starts to move the various subplots from vol 1 along. Volume 2 also tends to have more charter development story lines, thou Adam throws the occasional story that’s just an excuse to see Emp in a skimpy outfit (see Sexy Librarian above). Vol 2 also give us a small glimpse into Thug Boy’s and Ninjette’s back stories and their dark pasts may mean trouble for Empowered in the future.
The art style of both book is more of Adam’s later manga style more remensent of SimHell then any of his earlier works. The female characters have pronounced lips and almost no noses. There is also more of what I call hyper marketing. All the Heroes (except Empowered) and most of the villains have their name’s brazened across their chests or in Ninjette’s case her butt. Even Thug Boy’s first appearance had him in a leather jacket with a Thug Boy t-shirt. The over all look of the books is very dark with the panels separated by black, instead of the normal white, this black also bleeds all the way to the edge of the pages. Thanks to computer printing techniques the art is direct reproductions of Adam’s pencils with out inking or screentones.
I would highly recommend Empowered to any fans of Adam’s earlier works. Some new reader may be put off by Adam’s art style at first but you should definitely hang around for the story. The value of the books is also very good Amazon has Volume 1
and Volume 2 
While I have Vol 4 in hand I haven’t read it yet; because, vol 3 is out of stock at Amazon so it’s on backorder. So once I got vol 3 in my grubby little hand expect a review of them. So go check Empowered out you’ll be glad you did.
