Empowered: Volume 12
by Adam Warren
Adam Warren is one of the true unsung heroes of comic-dom. I’ll spare you the cliché of the “something about his work truly spoke to me as a teen” bit when I first started reading him, and instead I’ll just say that his comics ain’t for dummies. You want comics with phony dynamic art and predictable storytelling, please look to the thousands of boring comics being published today. I’ve been hooked to Warren’s stories and in the decades of my reading him I’ve never been disappointed, which is why I’ve always sung his praises.
And that’s why it’s so hard writing this review.
Empowered started off as the little comic that could. It was smart, funny, witty, sharply written and was yet another highlight of the power of Warren’s art. He did it all himself and still does, which is a punk rock aspect that just endears me more to him. However, as the Empowered comics have progressed, the story has gotten away from the aspects I loved (a Venture Bros-esque examination of the rules and regulations driving the superhero world) and more about Elissa’s personal life. This is fine, but quite honestly, she’s quite a boring character. Somehow, she’s written as being the center of the universe, infinitely capable while everyone else fails, infinitely kind and forgiving, and infinitely martyred. At this point, everyone can’t stop talking about how “amazing” she is to her face, which if course, only shitty friends would do. If she’s fully formed, why develop her any further? It’s never quite clear why Emp does the things she does or why she’s so amazing, and even that climax at the end (look at the cover for a hint) feels confusing and forced. The sexiness is back for sure, but this time I kind of want to look away. The art is still phenomenal and Warren does some funny and interesting things with the story, but it just boils down to another multi-verse slog: a concept that got boring 5 years ago. I’m also a little fuzzy about the events of the previous two books and who some of these side characters are. Maybe the long gap between this volume and the previous one has something to do with it. The book seemed to work better as small self-contained stories.
There are some cool things happening in the final volume of Empowered, but not much. I’ve never once been bored by a Warren book, and it sucks that this final volume wraps up the run of the book with such a whimper. I’m flummoxed.
