Empowered - Vol. 1 (edition 2007)

Nope. Never transcends what it is trying to critique. If it is trying at all. Taken as pornography, if you are into what Warren is into, I suppose you would like it more than I did. ( )

This book is worth it, if only for the mad ravings of the Caged Demonwolf. There's a lot more to recommend it, of course, especially if you enjoy superhero stuff that pays attention to the day-to-day lives of superheroes rather than their epic battles with supervillians.

I will confess, however, that I'm never sure how to react to material like this, that simultaneously objectifies women while also directly addressing that objectification. This is pretty far from being a feminist tract of any sort, but it is interesting to learn about the very sexist origins of the comic and how it was transformed into something a little more progressive. ( )

The first volume of Empowered by Adam Warren introduces us to a superheroine with a very naff name (yes, her superhero name really is "Empowered"), a skin tight costume that rips to shreds at the least provocation, and body issues. While I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, I enjoyed it and its meta-textual asides.

At first, I found the mini-story style (more vignettes than real stories) a bit distracting at first (I wanted more!), but then it all clicked rather.

There was a lot of good humour, great minor characters (at one stage she imprisons an alien evil entity - the Violator of Worlds - into an alien artefact, and then gets stuck looking after it; by the end of the book the Violator of Worlds is part of the gang, and demanding boxed set DVDs because they've got it hooked on TV), and nice mangaesque art. ( )

Empowered is one of those works which skirts the boundaries between being exploitive and being a feminist critique thereof. I tend to forgive a lot if it's done self-consciously, but I'm not sure if this work's ironic stance is even enough to make up for the fact that, fundamentally, it's about half-naked women getting tied up so that boys and men (and queer women, of course, but I don't get the feeling they really make up the intended audience) can, ahem, enjoy the art. In many ways, this is the epitome of the comic written especially for the fanboys.

Still, there's a good-intentioned feel to the project, and the story is probably cute more often than sexy--and it does easily pass the Bechdel test (I mean, the female characters do talk about sex and men a lot, but they talk about being superheroes too) without any women in refrigerators (just tied up and gagged), and the main character isn't just an object for male fantasies (or at least, I don't think so) so, overall, from my position of privilege, I'm willing to give it a pass. The humor isn't funny enough nor the satire biting enough to make me want to run out and buy the second (or third or fourth) volume(s), unfortunately, but there are plenty of nice character moments and it was an entertaining read for what it was, and I'll probably turn to it again for a re-read, and the debilitating curiosity as to what happens to these characters may well convince me to want to find out more in the future. ( )