Adam Warren had some ideas that didn't make it into the pages of Empowered proper featuring our klutzy, hench-bait heroine. Empowered Unchained collects the one-shots he wrote and other artists, his friends, drew. Well, technically he added his art a bit to each story and sort of micro-managed each. Seems like more work for letting others do one-shots. The collection features short stories about EMP and her friends, shedding some light on them and even a possible dark spoiler of what's to come. For a fan of the series, like myself, it's so much easier to pick up than every comic that came out over a year. For new readers, start with Empowered proper.
What stories are told in this collection of our heroine and her judging of her own butt that we all admire? Rented animal-mecha suits at a different chronal reality car chow; Nano component sexy angels and demons come to life via a virtual reality wank fantasy. A cross-dressing super hero wailing on others; A pay-off from the use of TekNoFeTish...oh wait that doesn't happen. A few stories bring up the evil organization supplying villains with cutting edge villain tech. Warren looks to be building up to some confrontation with the organization. He never does, at least not in Unchained.
A high-end villain tech company that treats customers as badly as a real phone service provider with added spam populates the writing and world Warren makes. EMP's stories are like reading hardcore sci-fi ideas like that of living spaceships and boiling them down into porn jokes or video game missions that EMP has to solve. There's a few stories that are just about the characters like the analyzation of the "sighs" of EMP and a little more back history of Ninjette, her hard drinking female best bud.
The art from other artist, like Brandon Graham is a nice little jaunt, but I'd rather have Adam Warren doing it all.
The ending story had me worrying about a certain character's future. It could always be a different timeline though, maybe?
If you want the "Extras" feature on your Blu-rays then you'll want Empowered Unchained.
Reviewer was given copy by publisher for review purposes
