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Empowered – Comics Review

Empowered – Comics Review

Empowered by Adam Warren

Adam Warren’s Empowered started life as a series of super powered themed bondage sketches that he drew for a select clientèle. But as he kept drawing the same bound heroine in a shredded catsuit the character took on a life of it’s own. Thus Empowered was born.

Elissa Megan “Empowered” Powers is buxom, blond superhero who gets her powers from an incredibly fragile regenerative supersuit. No one else can wear said suit and if she so much as wears panties the suit stops working. She even has to have her “lawn” trimmed on a regular basis lest she parade around in “steel wool”. Sharp edges are her kryptonite. If the suit gets torn she starts losing some powers until it regenerates back up. The more tattered the suit gets the more helpless she becomes.

oh its cheezy but its cool!

oh its cheezy but its cool!

This makes her incredibly easy to capture and truss up. Local henchmen have even taken to posting pics of her bound and gagged on to the Internet. She’s the laughing stock of her Super team the “Super Homies” and is often put on sexy villain bait duty. Oh and her fellow team member Sista Spooky has a deep hatred of blonds and often goes out of her way to humiliate her.

Needless to say she’s a raging teacup of insecurities and fears. To aid her in her fight against evil and humiliating nudity, is Thugboy. A former witless minion in hiding after fleecing one super villain to many, and her best friend is Ninjette. A refreshingly flat chested Asian ninja. She is in many way the polar opposite of Empowered. She’s loud, raucous beer swilling brawler. She too is a raging teacup of insecurities.

"time" to get a new joke?

"time" to get a new joke?

Yet she’s also one of the more competent superheroes around. Because she has to often talk her way out of captivity rather than just fight free. She imprisons a Lovecraftian horror in an alien bondage belt whilst her more powerful comrades were being creamed by it. And she never gives up, even when fettered in fetish she keeps plugging on.

The artwork is heavily manga inspired, but with all the usual Western superhero tropes. Be warned there’s lots of near nudity and bondage in this comic. Some of you more god fearing types may want to head back to Jack Chick at this point. There were a lot of sex scenes drawn in this that while may not draw an R ratings in the movie, would definitely give this a ma-15.

And there is the bondage...

And there is the bondage...

This is a comic written and drawn by otaku to laugh at otaku. From the damsels in distress to the brawling jerk good guy. All of these tropes are dissected and skewered, often in the format of a drunk Emp and Ninjette trolling the Internet for slash fiction.

I would not go so far as to call Empowered a feminist track. This isn’t Strangers in Paradise, the women are all super hot in Hollywood standard way. But it does examine a lot of attitudes that comic writers and readers have towards women. In particular it looks at body image issues for women who should quite frankly, not have any. How easy it is for them to start and what awful monsters they can be to live with.

It underlies how much it would suck to be the object of a fetish. Even a harmless one. Your life would be one humiliating experience after another. And the kicker would be that fetishists won’t see any problems with that.

Go read Empowered. It’s good stuff.

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About The Author

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Born in Sydney, now living in Brisbane, Joel is an aspiring sci-fi and fantasy author who lives with his two cats. Not that there's anything wrong with that. He spends his time reading, writing and procrastinating about writing. For the last ten years Joel has worked as a carer for people with intellectual disabilities. He would very much like to quit, but can't afford to.

Article Information

  • Posted: Wednesday, August 5th, 2009
  • Author: Joel Williams
  • Filed Under: Comic,Review
Tags: , ,

Comments

One Response to “Empowered – Comics Review”
  1. avatar mordicai says:

    My opinions (http://mordicai.livejournal.com/1463413.html & http://mordicai.livejournal.com/1543651.html) of the first three were similar…at the very least, it is interesting. It is a surprisingly complicated take on the subject…that participates in the subject…both as parody & not as parody. At the very least they raise dialogue.

    August 6, 2009 at 8:57 am

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