Remember that international magical girl infestation a decade ago? Good times, good times.
Creative Staff:
Story: Adam Warren
Art: Karla Diaz
Colors: Karla Diaz
Letterer: Nate Piekos of Blambot
What They Say:
While Empowered struggles with a superhero community turned upside down by rampant romance, her mercenary “magical girl” opponent, the Soldier of Love, escalates her fanatical “down with love” campaign to an apocalyptic new level! Meanwhile, Ninjette wisely stays well hydrated with a beer or three! Or four! (Gotta have priorities, folks.)
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The first issue of this three issue side story arc of Empowered was one that did a lot to draw me into it. While I’ve enjoyed a lot of Adam Warren’s works over the decades (oof), working with Karla Diaz on this was like a breath of fresh air in a way. I thoroughly enjoy the stacked and dense black and white volumes Warren puts out but this color arc certainly is a welcome change from that alone but also Diaz’s style that captures the characters and puts a slightly different spin on them. It’s also not quite as dense and cramped with dialogue – though Warren crams a lot in there even still – so it’s something that feels like it moves more smoothly and cleanly while still sticking to what makes Empowered what it is.
The second installment largely carries everything forward a bit as it does eventually bring the two sides to meet with what’s been set up. A lot of what we get involves Emp, Ninjette, and Captain Rivet trying to determine the cause of all of this and that has some nice breakdowns of who it may be and why in a way that you normally don’t get. Rivet’s almost playing devil’s advocate in a way but it works to get them to talk out the various possibilities and how this mystery person causing so much soap opera romance to be underway could be doing this for someone else or on their own. Emp’s nod to the crazy magical girl infestation of ten years prior is certainly comical and there are a few well-placed barbs here and that that make the expected anime reference. The Yuri on Ice one just felt too recent and fresh though and kind of took me out of things instead of just sticking to terminology.
The other track in this book is a little more problematic. Focusing on the Soldier of Love, we see more of how she became who she is and how she’s working to basically disinfect the world of love. There’s some bad backstory in there for her and she’s certainly intense, using her abilities to make it easy to go far in messing with the Superhomies and gaining access to even the most secret of secrets with the Secret Shield. I love her almost curmudgeonly expressions that we get, especially in contrast to her magical sidekick animal that gifted her the powers, as it’s something that works well with the costume and color overload. What doesn’t work as well once again for me are the heavy shifts to the character’s native language without a translation – leaving you to kind of figure it out a bit but not get everything – combined with the copious amount of song references. They’re cute and do fit in the moment but each time I read one it just took me out of the flow of the story as my brain adjusted to “hearing” that particular track to go with the scenes.
In Summary:
While the story beats are familiar and what we get is very much good Empowered material outside of a few problematic areas, the real winner here once again is Karla Diaz. She’s such a discovery for me with this that I really wish she had a dozen different mainstream projects underway as I want to see her interpretations on other books and characters as well as more original work. And some variant covers. I just adore the style and how well it works with Empowered. The story is straightforward and I’m enjoying the sexytime shenanigans once more but it also feels like it could have gone a bit further than it did as it almost feels a little tame compared to the first installment. The end result is a very fun book overall and one that delivers on the strengths of the creative team in a very big way.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: March 22nd, 2017
MSRP: $3.99
