Comics Alliance Profiles Empowered

Adam Warren’s Empowered is one of the best superhero comics being made today. Sometimes I think Empowered might end up being one of the greatest superhero comics ever. The elements are all there: engaging characters, a plot that springs from them organically, an inventive setting, and scads of emotion. Its parodical beginnings — based in the jokey premise of superpowered woman Empowered de-powering as her delicate, stereotypically skintight super suit gets shredded in battle — has transitioned smoothly into a darker present, and it’s an evolution that’s been met with little in the way of fan whining for “the good old days.” Yes, Empowered is funny, surprising, moving, and original.

And it’s softcore.

Shrinkwrapped, bondage-based, can’t-read-it-on-the-bus softcore.

You can imagine what it’s like to recommend Empowered to other people. Especially when you’re someone who talks a lot (a lot) about how tired you are of sexy superheroines in sexy costumes being put in sexy situations. Because let me tell you right now, that takes up a lot of Empowered’s eight-volume Dark Horse Comics run. Super-geniuses and hapless goons alike whip out the rope and duct tape upon capturing our eponymous heroine, and hundreds of panels are devoted to her struggling and jiggling near-naked form. The first few volumes especially offer platter upon platter of cheesecake — to the point where, in-story, Emp (as she is known) is derided by other characters as villain “shoulder candy” and a useless “bondage magnet”.

So how can it be that I discovered Empowered on scans_daily, an old Livejournal hive of feminist-minded comics discussion, where it was all but universally loved? How can it be that I, a young feminist woman fed up with sexist superhero tropes, love Empowered? And not just love it, but laud it for its female-dominated narrative?