Customer Reviews

Empowered, Vol. 2

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The sequel to EMPOWERED 1 is, somehow, not as zany and wild as the first book, but still thoroughly enjoyable, with a crazy fight scene or two, more character development and backstory, and extremely amusing dialogue. Adam Warren's excellent artwork is almost too good to be real, the tight pencils better than most inked and colored pages from other comics. The characters are fun and interesting, Emp is great, the villains are amusing, and Thugboy, Ninjette, and the Blazing-Eyed Demonlord are hilarious and fun, and again the art and dialogue are awesome. Great book, highly recommended (even the bondage stuff is treated really well).

The second volume starring the barely clad exploits of an aspiring but less than impressive super heroine who calls herself 'Empowered', writer/artist Adam Warren continues to demonstrate a superb sense of wit, whimsey, and humor that ranges from slapstick to gallows. "Empowered" is a compilation of short (some very short) individual stories of our plucky gal whose powers depend on her skin-tight body suit, a garment that is easily torn (read shredded) resulting in the loss of her superpowers. The result is her almost inevitable capture and bondage by the bad guys (and gals). Humiliation is the result -- and not just from the bad guys! Her boy friend and ninja girlfriend are solidly behind her. Her super team mates somewhat less so. Readers who appreciate a manga style artwork, a wickedly clever short story, a lovely semi-clad female form of the buxom variety, and a rollicking fun read will not only enjoy this second volume of "Empowered", but will avidly seek out Volume 1, and line up at their favorite comic book shop awaiting the arrival of Volume 3!

This is the second volume of Adam Warren's Empowered, which is absolutely one of the best satires on the comic book super-hero genre ever done. It continues the adventures of the main characters introduced in the first volume: the title character Empowered, the "hotness incarnate" yet insecure-about-body-issues super-heroine with the unreliable supersuit that leaves her vulnerable (and nigh naked) at the worst moments possible; Thugboy, her sweetly loyal and supportive former-badboy boyfriend; Ninjette, her fun-loving and totally kick-ass ninja girlfriend, and last but never least, the Caged Demonwolf, a cosmic demonic overlord imprisoned inside an alien bondage belt who offers priceless on-going commentary on the lives and doings of the other three (always referring to himself in the third person and never by the same name twice, and sounding like a cross between Skeletor and the anime-style version of Teen Titan's Starfire). The dialogue, as in the first volume, is frequently priceless, as is seen in this exchange when the Caged Demonwolf has discovered that Ninjette has adopted Empowered's practice of "clear-cutting" her pubic hair:

CD: "Bahh. Enough distraction and misdirection, elusive wench. Speak unto the Dread Doomfarer of your newly depilated downstairs!"
N: (moves hands self-conciously over said area)
CD: "Feign not modesty, she who parades her callipygian posterior about in the shortest of shorts, with her name egregiously emblazoned across the tight-clinging backside!"
N: "All right, all right..." (sits down) "'s not a long or complicated story, all right? Yeah, I was kinda freaked out when I saw her, ah, 'depilated downstairs'. But, then after a while..."
CD: "Yes...?"
N: (blushing) "...I started thinking that it was kinda, well, hot. Maybe because she was doing it, and she's, like, hotness incarnate. Not that she _knows_ she is, of course. Anyway, s'not like 'clearcutting' is uncommon nowadays, is it? So I started doing it myself. The end."
CD: "Hrmmm. Do you employ shaving, or mayhap waxing...?"
N: "Uhm, waxing."
CD: "Indeed? A counter-intuitive choice for a blade-happy ninja. So... might the conqueror of the cosmos not gaze upon your newly nude nether realm, _without_ the supersuit...?"
N: (annoyed) "No, he might _not_!"
CD: "Remember, ninja prude... after losing a foolhardy wager to the All-Knowing Autarch, do you not owe him season three of The Wire on DVD? (heh,heh,heh...)"
N: "I was kinda hoping you'd forget about that..."
CD: "Ha! Like unto Omar Little, the Omniscient Overlord forgets _nothing_, mortal fool! Thanks to the Box Office of Home's accursed and avaricious pricing policies, does that DVD set not cost roughly seventy dollars, if not more? (and let us not even speak of The Sopranos DVD sets)"
N: (frowning) "Not sure I like the direction this is taking..."
CD: "Well, if you satiate the Ravening Shadowking's curiosity prurient... he shall consider your vast debt settled! Are you not still partially inebriated? Have we not already seen that your judgement is grievously impaired? Surely one more impetuous act will not slay you!"
N: (musing) "Jeez, I _really_ wouldn't mind saving seventy-plus bucks, y'know..."
CD: "Behold, your defenses are dropping before the Dark Godling's pressure of peer! Now, let your drawers drop as well!"

Other characters appear as well. Sistah Spooky has a fun episode, "The Aryan Ideal of Shoulder Candy", where she rescues Empowered from would-be kidnappers, turning her fury on them not because of the kidnapping but because of their choice of kidnappee: "You picked her because she's a ****ing _blonde_, didn't you!" Another of my favorite episodes, "The Power of TIME!", shows how truly absurd some themed super-villains really are. We also learn more about Empowered, Thug-boy and Ninjette's past and see them evolving in subtle ways. One of the things I like about this series is that, even though it's satire, the characters do have a history and everything that happens adds to that history. It's an excellent mix of comic satire, romantic comedy and, surprisingly at times, actually serious threats that have to be dealt with.

Anyone who likes comic book superheroes - and likes them sexy and intimate - will love this superb satirical take on them. As will anyone who's familiar with the delights and pitfalls of being in an on-going boyfriend/girlfriend relationship. Highly, highly recommended.

Volume 2 has a lot of the things people look for in this series: comedy, fan service, action, and spoofs of superhero themes. However, this one doesn't give quite as much of the interesting personal info of Emp and her friends as the first volume. Still, it's an enjoyable read and it leads up the awesomeness of Volume 3. Check it out if you love this series.

This series is hilarious. The author has created a fun mix of sensuality and comedy. It had laugh out loud moments and funny jokes that stuck with me the whole day. The artist dances on the border of sexual suggestibility and right when its ready to jump off into explicit (and i'll confess to hoping it would sometimes) he reigns it in. if i had to sum up why i liked this comic in two words it'd be; sexy and funny.

After a great start Warren treads water with this chapter. The water-treading is fun, the art is nice, the jokes are funny, but little progress is made in the plot elements left simmering from vol 1.

It's certainly worth buying through!

I've really come to adore this series, having bought and re-read the first volume over and over again. (I'll never forgive myself for not buying the entire set from Borders when I had the chance!)

The artwork in this really is my favorite part of the volume and I really enjoyed that this was done in pencil and wasn't as slick and all inked up as the Marvel and DC issues tend to be. There's nothing wrong with that, mind you, but the pencil work in this volume really pushes home that this is done by one guy and it emphasizes the differences between the superheroine Empowered and the bigger super heroes. (One of which is that she's considered to be a D-lister, so the lack of glitzy color pages helps to emphasize this.)

The stories in this are decent and I admit that not all of them dragged me in like the first volume did, but they're still pretty good. There's hints of future plots as well as further development with the Willy Pete plot element, which will end up exploding into a huge scenario in a future volume.

This really is a fun volume overall and if you're a fan of the previous volume you'll want to check this one out. In good news, if you haven't read the first volume, you should be able to check this one out. You'll feel like you've missed out on a little story, but overall this is a pretty user-friendly series that is easy to catch up with.

The "Empowered" world develops nicely in this second collection of monthlies - not that Emp-babe wasn't nicely developed already. Cheerful confusion reigns throughout, includeing moments when Ninjette (Emp's BFF) does her a potentially lethal favor, and when empathetic Empowered employs her super-stuff and Red Cross training to save bad guys (twice). As a bonus, we gain some insight into the one-sided rivalry between Emp and her fellow super-homey, Sistah Spooky. And don't miss her deep cover assignment as a librarian. Really.

As super-heroine satires go, Empowered is unbeatable. Maybe that's the only way she's unbeatable, but that's enough.

-- wiredweird

I love this series. I won't bother explaining the plot because the description and other reviewers have already done a better job. What I will do is explain that what I took as a simple Manga style comedy ended up being more. I love the little hints about whether or not Emma's suit really lacks power once it's torn. Someone puts forth the theory that it might be as powerful as Emma's confidence. And yes, she is a terrible superhero, always getting caught and tied up and humiliated. But . . . when she's invested, when her friend is in danger, when it's really on the line, she's the one that saves the day. She suggests the solution, saves her boyfriend and defeats a powerful dark beast (who then ends up residing on her coffee table in a power draining belt talking movie trivia and begging her to let him watch her have sex). This powerful beastly enemy even helps her, when she's in tears and her friend and boyfriend are speechless, it's her ex-enemy that sets her straight. That's not normal for a simple one-note comedy. That's something more.

And that's why I love this series. The art is all pencils, but it's more beautiful and hectic and action packed than any inked job you can find. There are no stagnant pictures here. No full page layouts. This is all motion and humor and the subtlety of the character's expressions is perfect.

I can't wait to read the rest of the series. (I've already ordered them!)

A very excellent addition to the series. It only took 3 days to deliver, and I'm extremely happy for that.