Empowered Volume 9$17.99 retail
Empowered comes back after literally going to Hell or at least a version of it and boy...she's in trouble! Empowered Volume 9 sees our most hot Hellraiser on trial for breaking much of the superhero code book for going to places she wasn't suppose to and helping Sistah Spooky, whose one arm-less and gone for most of the book. If you love Ninjette or Thugboy, sorry they aren't doing much other than cameos. From what seems to be a look back during a trail story-arc is a much deeper look back into the character of EMP and how far she's come over the years, though relative to the book it's been just a few months. From a heavy trial to a maddening array of dealing with villains EMP is back and of course bound and gagged in various ways for the male audience.
Miss EMP has to fight a council of heroes. That would be fun if it were just a real battle. No, she has to defend her actions from the last issue, which leads to more problems...I'll explain shortly.
New fun and pun characters are all over this book. The concept of a living bomb serving its queen to a squad of villains based on deep-sea fish as artist Adam Warren brings them to life for a few seconds to get their butts kicked leaves you refreshed in your comics diet. You can miss so much if you're not paying attention, it's not easy to skip a page. When fight happen, the carnage is like where all the money would go into an action movie.
On a character level there's just a naked woman who has blood or venom-like material over her covering her body. It's just a character thought up for the story that just stands out. Design is so nice that I doubt Adam even needs to do these book instead of just do design work for companies.
The butt you're paying to see, EMP's, as always, is throughout every page captured to a hilarious degree. All villains are after the juicy knowledge of a special secret base of ultra powerful weapons that could annihilate the human race that she somehow carries. That's more of the reason why she's on trial, it's for her own protection or at least so the bad guys can't get their hands on those weapons. She's looking to serve time, cause she's too much of potential crisis.
An added layer that is foreshadowed at the start of the book and a great point for long time readers is how useful it is that EMP gets captured. Adam should be congratulated for turning the damsel-in-distress dynamic on its head. Or maybe it's more like bringing back Lois Lane being a journalist, the best journalist, and being captured, cept' now Lois Lane is Superman. She can free herself.
One can say EMP has a bit of Superman in her with how she'll overcome no matter how bad a situation is and usually using her head when all other heroes get beat down. That's become a staple of the series and may happen again in this book.
Older characters comeback for a unhappy reunion. As much as Empowered is a book making fun of the idea of a super hero community and the politics and everything else it can still be very dark and depressing. EMP has made some worthy enemies.
Whatever Adam Warren is doing it's more than just a simple narrative it's a super hero book that doesn't lose itself to idiotic ideas for the character to change costumes or be taken over by someone else. It's a superhero comic that's about the ideal of being a super hero with deep emotions while still having a lot of perverted images of EMP to stare at.
There is a big change in EMP and it's nothing as stupid as a new power or even more of the other mysteries left hanging. It's her way of thinking about herself.
What hurts the most is that it'll be so long until the next book comes out. I hadn't realized it, but the last volume came out in 2013. We got a bunch of side stories since then, but not the main story.
*And that creepy bit side story where it seems Ninjette may die.
Here's to another volume in early 2016!
