It’s still not easy being Emp.
Creative Staff:
Story: Adam Warren
Art: Adam Warren
What They Say:
The laser blasts fly as costumed crime fighter Empowered battles a series of puzzlingly rage-fueled supervillains, each one armed with a bigger and more destructive “supergun” than the last. Ah, but might our long-suffering heroine’s own buried resentments and repressed bitterness prove to be her deadliest foes? (SPOILER: Yes, pretty much.)
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Though I’ve been unable to keep up on the main ongoing Empowered series, I find myself enjoying the standalone specials. Part of that comes from the fact that a lot of Emp at once isn’t a bad thing but there’s only so much I can handle before it just gets to be overpowering. I love black and white artwork and Adam Warren’s in particular, having enjoyed his material since the 90’s, but Empowered just does me in with all the detail in the backgrounds, the expressiveness of it all and the almost hyperactive elements of it. It’s a fantastic book I can’t recommend enough yet I find myself enjoying these kinds of standalone tales better simply because it’s a bit more compact.
This special marks the seventh one in the series so far and is definitely a good bit of fun all around. Emp’s arc is a slow but steady one of growth from how we first met her all those years ago and seeing the way she is now is heartwarming. She’s got a bit more maturity about her, letting things bother her less, and just doing the job as need be. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t get annoyed though and who could blame her since she’s been kept out of the latest Herofuel commercial that the Superhomies are involved in, coming at a time when they’ve lost half their membership to a host of things going on in the main series. So her frustration with it is part of the subplot of the book as a whole that kind of lets her anger and frustration boil regularly until it can explode.
She gets two really fun fight sequences in this book as it works through all of this. The first has her being the only one that can go off and help Uparmor as he’s activated the apocalypse alarm. And it is one, for him, as a cape he was fooling around with as a fling has gone off the rails after he shared some naked pictures of her. There are some really fun elements to this that could be explored more, but it focuses more on her throwing shade on Emp, who is just doing her best to help out and keep Uparmor alive. He naturally doesn’t do himself any favors here and just comes across as scummy in general while trying to play it cool and you really, really – really, want Emp to just deck him as he deserves it very much.
The other action sequence involves another villain going bigtime crazy at Hypervigilante and she’s called in to help once again. The book wants to focus more on the why of it and that works well, as we see the connection between the two sequences and hints that it’s been going on longer. Emp’s ability to grab the details of it is pretty fun since she usually has time to check out villain’s lair since she’s captured and bound quickly. The best though is her multipage anger-logue as she goes off about the state of things and just lets it all hang out in a righteous rant. The egging off of the technology for her to do it is pretty well balanced and I love the actual twist of it all as it progresses. Even better is that Emp doesn’t end up in either fight nearly as stripped down as she often does, nor does it feel like there’s as much in the way of big fanservice kinds of moments for her with her looks. They’re there, and commented on by your background characters, but it feels less the focus than it usually does. And for the better for this special.
In Summary:
While I love Warren’s character designs and sense of kinetic energy in the fight sequences, the intense amount of detail and tight layouts just overwhelms me. I find it a lot more manageable on my part in a shorter special like this and what we get here with Pew Pew Pew! is just a delight. While there are more areas it could go to try and say more about various situations, it’s used more as a plot point to show how Emp is maturing and holding up alongside the overall storyline and growth of the character from the main book. I had a lot of fun with this issue and can already see myself re-reading it sooner than later to enjoy it again.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: November 25th, 2015
MSRP: $3.99
