So, I screwed up you guys.
I’d love to blame it on my big job change last year, but honestly by December I was nicely established at the new job, which is a long-winded way of saying I have no excuse for missing the release of Empowered Volume 12 FIVE MONTHS AGO.
Mea culpa. And this is a pretty darned important volume to have missed so let’s jump into a review. Better really late than never, right?
(I’m avoiding the biggest spoilers, but I’m talking a lot about everything else, so if you’d rather go into the book completely unspoiled you should go read it and come back to this review later.)
Anyway, if I had to guess I’d say this book is about trauma, healing, and most of all choices. (And violence and sexy good times, but mostly those first three.) And it’s not just Emp’s choices, but Adam Warren’s as well. It feels like an exploration into the kind of book Adam could have made if he’d gone in a different direction.
We jump into the story right at the weirdest, grossest possible scenario: Emp is pregnant with Major Havoc’s baby and they’re in love EW NO GROSS WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?
It’s also a giant battle with a squid-faced kaiju and a staggering amount of detail. Seriously, between the architecture, the explosions, and all the sound effects each page must have taken weeks to draw.
It doesn’t take long for Emp to realize something’s off (and her expressions of shock and horror are so well done, I could almost get into an Emp/Havoc pairing NO WAIT THAT’S GROSS ADAM KNOCK IT OFF.)
And after that we’re off to the races. Every few pages the timeline is suddenly rebooted and Emp has to figure out where the heck she’s landed. A D&D universe, a reality where she’s the one doing the tying up, a world where she’s absolutely terrifying, and a lot more. Alternate timelines, new power sets, new personalities, and a bunch of “Unused Capetropes” that apparently Adam’s never put into an Empowered story before: “Secret Identity Shenanigans”, “Death Trappery”, “Extended Mid-Fight Conversations”, and “Ping-Pong Dialogue Exchanges” to name a few. Not to mention zombie worlds, a teen hero universe, a Clark Kent-type newspaper scenario, and more.
Some of the alternate realities are kind of fun (awww teenage Spooky, Ninjette and Emp awwwww), but some are horrifying. How about an “Endless Waking” scenario where you thought you escaped from hell but it’s Satan making you think that just to see your expression when you wake up on fire. Again.
There’s an in-universe reason for all this (which I won’t spoil) but there’s an out-universe reason too: Adam’s playing around.
He mentions in the afterwards that his original intention was to “try something new on every g-d page,” and boy did he get close. Not just with alternate universes, but with drawing techniques too. You can see the result of the anatomy sketches he does over on his Patreon, because instead of the solid lines of more traditional comic book art, in several panels we see art with a lot more volume, depth, and pencil details. I started to wonder if he was using that style in specific circumstances, like it’s a coded message: “when you see a closeup of her mouth and teeth drawn like this it means the plot is doing a Specific Thing.” (I don’t think that’s it, I think Adam was just enjoying that particular style, but it’s fun to imagine.)
I could go on forever about the art in general. The level of detail in every page is mind-boggling. I love the high-contrast pages where Emp’s hair floats in the background, it’s like the art is glowing. I love everyone’s expressions, all the emotion just kicks you in the teeth. Each alternate reality is meticulously drawn, right down to the folds in the clothing. Every time I reread it I see something I missed the first time.
Also, as Adam points out in the afterwards, there’s been a parental warning sticker on the cover since the beginning of the series, but this time he made sure the book would earn it. Not just for the sexy good times (and they go super sexy this time, I mean wow) but also the unhinged violence. (Remember the terrifying alternate universe Emp I mentioned? That probably has the most explicit gore of any issue yet, Adam is not kidding around.)
And of course in all these reality-jumping adventures, we get all the cheesecake (and beefcake, Thugboy, yum) that many people use as a reason to write the series off as porn. But that misses the fact that the books have always been about body image, confidence, self-worth, and the nature of sexuality and consent. And this volume takes a very long look at why Emp’s universe has an Unwritten Law of Capes (no rape) but is fine with tying up a helpless heroine and sexually objectifying her from here till next Sunday.
One reason is because there’s douchebags in every universe, but there’s a lot more going on than we realized, and it puts 11 volumes of Emp’s misadventures into a whole new context. It’s a very interesting way of retconning the reason why Emp is sexily tied up all the time (aside from the obvious) even when it’d make a lot more sense to not tie her up.
But back to the story. In between the alternate reality jumps, we also get some flashbacks: a conversation between Sistah Spooky and Emp right after the events of the last volume; one of Emp’s many experiences in being bound and gagged (with someone pointing out how odd that actually is); and ThugBoy and Ninjette as they’re telepathically forced to attack Emp last volume (which has a lot to do with all the alternate reality shenanigans, but I won’t say why because spoilers.)
You have to pay attention to all the jumps, because each segment adds a few pieces to the puzzle, not just for the events of this volume, but volumes 1-11 too.
And some of those reality jumps bring in Thugboy and Ninjette, and here’s where the theme about choices really hits home.
There’s a lot of talk in the real world lately about making sure your relationships are healthy. I’ve heard the “oxygen masks on the airplane” analogy, where you can try to help someone but you can’t help them if you don’t help yourself, and sometimes that means getting out of a relationship with a damaged person so they don’t take you down with them.
But it does overlook the fact that many people choose to be with a damaged person because they love them and they think they deserve to be saved.
To clarify, this isn’t about choosing a toxic relationship, or staying with someone who hurts you. This volume makes it very clear that Thugboy and Ninjette weren’t even slightly responsible for attacking Emp last issue, that was all Neurospear’s mind control, and we get a look inside their heads at how horrifying it was to get that close to killing her.
But Emp knows (and this is true, you can look back over the previous 11 books and see it for yourself) that Thugboy and Ninjette love her and would die for her and have never done anything to intentionally hurt her. She credits them with all her self-confidence and strength, that was their gift to her.
(And sexy good times. Let’s not forget the sexy good times.)
A lot of this story is about what it’s like to love someone who’s struggling, with childhood trauma, or depression, or substance abuse, or any one of a thousand things that make a person imperfect.
And when it’s pointed out to Emp that people who are flawed, in the particular ways that Ninjette and Thugboy are flawed, statistically don’t have a long-term survival rate, she doesn’t care. Partly because her career as a superhero doesn’t have a great survival rate either (and let’s face it, nobody gets out of here alive), but mostly because she loves them.
I mean, last issue when Emp (helpless in front of the mind-controlled Thugboy and Ninjette) flat out said she’d rather die than hurt them any more, I thought that was probably the greatest expression of her love for them. But that’s got nothing on what she tells them now.
Ready for the biggest spoiler?
This is the last volume of Empowered.
Hang on hang on, before you panic, this is the last volume of Empowered in this format.
Adam has a more detailed explanation at the back of the book that you should read, but in short: these huge 200+ page volumes take literally years to write and draw, and the sales aren’t supporting that amount of effort. But this isn’t the end, it’s just a pause. He says Emp will definitely be back, but he’s going to look at other (possibly shorter and way easier to complete) options.
I’m going to hold him to that, because there are several deliberately unanswered questions, and a lot more story to tell. I’ve gotten awfully attached to these characters after 18 years. I’m looking forward to catching up with them someday, and seeing where their choices took them.