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Empowered: Ten Years Of Adam Warren's Super Sexy Goofiness

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Ten years ago, Adam Warren, previously best known for his American adaptation of the beloved anime series, Dirty Pair, brought us his take on the super-hero genre: Empowered.  Over the years, he has added numerous characters to his Empowered pantheon, and his titular heroine has grown and overcome many obstacles both personal and villainous. With the debut issue of the latest mini-series, Empowered and the Soldier of Love (DEC160079), being offered this month by Dark Horse, Adam took some time out of his busy schedule to talk about Empowered, where its been, and where it’s headed in the future!

Empowered and the Soldier of Love #1 (DEC160079) is in comic shops February 8.

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PREVIEWSworld: Hello there, Adam Warren! We’re excited to have you. Could you please introduce yourself to our readers? Which of your projects might they recognize?

Adam Warren: Time for a little cutting and pasting from my bio, folks! I was one of the first writer/artists in American comics to integrate the artistic and storytelling techniques of manga into my own work, debuting in 1988 with an original, English-language adaptation of the Japanese SF property The Dirty Pair. In the years since, I’ve worked as writer and artist on comics projects ranging from Gen13 and Titans: Scissors, Paper, Stone for DC Comics to Livewires, Iron Man: Hypervelocity, A+X, and Galacta: Daughter of Galactus for Marvel Comics. Most recently, I wrote and drew a back-up story for the 2016 Deadpool Annual.

PREVIEWSworld: Ten years of success with Empowered—that is incredibly impressive. There’s certainly plenty of folks who know just how awesome your work is, but how would you describe your main character and your series to a new reader?

Adam Warren: Well, here’s my oft-repeated tagline for the series: “Empowered is a sexy superhero comedy, except when it isn’t.” The series follows the trials, tribulations, and workplace absurdities of Empowered, a plucky but vulnerable C-list superheroine who struggles with wildly unreliable superpowers and toxic teammates, as well as her own body-image issues and nagging self-doubts. Ah, but as her story progresses, our perpetually underestimated heroine overcomes her insecurities and triumphs over both super-villainous evil and super-heroic douchebaggery with the help of her ex–Witless Minion boyfriend, her hard-drinking ninja bestie, the bellowing cosmic warlord imprisoned on her coffee table, and a vibrant menagerie of other unlikely allies she befriends during the series’ two-thousand-odd pages.

PREVIEWSworld: There’s a world of indie capes out there; some have got clear roots and homages. Empowered, on the other hand, seems to push out into some fresh territory. How’d you get started with your super story? What were your inspirations?

Adam Warren: Well, it’s no secret that Empowered blossomed from notably dubious origins. At a time when my career in comics had bottomed out, I had to support myself by drawing commissioned sketches, many of which were in the always-popular category of—ahem—damsel-in-distress images depicting trussed-up superheroines. I quickly grew bored with cranking out repetitive pinup illustrations of ladycapes laid low, so instead I began drawing goofy little stories from the point of view of such an unfortunate young woman. How would a sensitive individual cope with the mortifying experience of repeatedly being “damsel-in-distressed,” as many such characters often are? Wouldn’t at least one superheroine be plagued by body-image issues over having to wear the wildly revealing costumes so common in comics?

Before long, though, these tossed-off, short-form comics began building on each other, gaining complexity and fleshing out a bizarre little world and an ever-expanding supporting cast for our valiant but long-suffering heroine. Lo and behold, what had started as merely a series of throwaway jokes gradually transformed itself into a real comic I could eventually be proud of, even if the project had evolved from an unsavory and unpromising beginning.

Part of my inspiration for Empowered was revisiting character types and superhero concepts that I’d previously enjoyed writing. During my time working on Gen13 for WildStorm/DC, I first explored the idea of a deeply insecure young superheroine with Roxy “Freefall” Spaulding. (In a way, Emp began life as a blend of my interpretations of Gen13’s goodhearted Fairchild and self-doubting Freefall.) Now that I could no longer get work at the Big Two, Empowered presented a fine opportunity to play around with superhero tropes and poke fun at “cape culture” assumptions without the limitations and editorial strictures of working on a mainstream title. Other inspirations were negative, in the sense that, a decade ago, little was being done with female superheroes at Marvel or DC that interested me—remember, this was long before the modern superheroine renaissance of characters like Ms. Marvel, Captain Marvel, Squirrel Girl, and Batgirl. So, I figured, hey, I might as well roll my own, if you will.

Plus, whatever its often-discussed flaws, one of the great virtues of the superhero genre is its surprising flexibility—it may, in fact, be the most malleable and versatile of all pop-culture genres. At various times, Empowered allows me to freely shift narrative modes from romantic comedy to science fiction to martial-arts action, from raunchy sitcom to disturbing horror to tear-jerking melodrama. That represents a degree of storytelling freedom that I’ve never enjoyed on any other project, so I’d be a fool—a “witless fool,” as one Empowered character often puts it—not to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by the genre.

PREVIEWSworld: Empowered herself is definitely a subtle character—what’s your favorite thing about her?

Adam Warren: I like the idea that Emp’s real superpower isn’t her maddeningly fickle and embarrassingly revealing supersuit, but instead her effectively superhuman level of resilience and perseverance. Despite her rampant insecurities and chronic lack of self-confidence, she bounces back from one humiliating setback after another with an irrepressible buoyance that, to me at least, constitutes a unique form of heroism. Many of the other cast members seem superficially tougher and harder than Emp, but they’re also emotionally brittle and ultimately fragile in a way that our seemingly soft heroine isn’t. I love the idea of an action hero who embodies such a sense of soft toughness—or tough softness, if you prefer.

My second-favorite thing about Emp is that her other superpower is her intelligence, that she possesses a “tactical savant” ability to outthink and outmaneuver her enemies, regardless of whether or not her flaky supersuit happens to be functional. The idea of the clever and resourceful action hero(ine) is one that seems downplayed, nowadays, in favor of pandering, tension-free power fantasies of inexplicably unstoppable badassery. The effectively invincible hero—or heroine!—who nonchalantly breezes through hordes of hapless foes with a smirk and an invulnerable suit of “plot armor” bores me to tears, so perhaps it’s no surprise that I’d invest so heavily in a quick-witted but undeniably fallible action heroine.

PREVIEWSworld: You take great pains to develop her friends, her foes, and her frenemies. We get to know them all fairly well and see them repeatedly throughout various story lines—which are your three favorites and why?

Adam Warren: One unanticipated favorite would be Emp’s initially hostile teammate and queen-bee nemesis Sistah Spooky, who gradually developed over the series from a straightforward, contemptuous bully to a more nuanced character hiding her own history of social torment to a tragic figure desperate to overcome her own disastrous choices. Not bad for a character I first sketched out as little more than a superpowered mean girl picking on our hapless heroine! 

The bombastic and blustering Caged Demonwolf—a godlike entity imprisoned in a set of power-draining alien bondage gear on Emp’s living room coffee table—is another favorite, if only for his orotund and grandiloquent and thesaurus-straining speech patterns. What writer wouldn’t relish the chance to frequently use the phrase “sniveling jackanapes,” after all? Ah, but even this seemingly one-note character turned out to have unforeseen depths, as an emotionally charged conversation with Emp’s BFF Ninjette in Empowered Volume 7 revealed some surprising consequences of his alien—and, importantly, immortal—point of view. 

And speaking of Ninjette, she would be my third favorite character. Her shinobi background gives me plenty of opportunities for not only my beloved martial-arts choreography but also a never-ending cavalcade of unlikely ninjutsu skills, such as sōsuijutsu (rapid inebriation magic) and kyonyūjutsu (enormous breast magic). More than that, though, Ninjette allows me to explore yet another vision of an imperfect but, I hope, relatable action heroine, one who’s fully as damaged and insecure as Emp, but flawed in an entirely different manner. 

All three of these characters represent one of the best parts about working on Empowered—that is, the organic, freewheeling, and spontaneous way in which the series has evolved. I didn’t start out with sweeping, long-range, big-picture plans for them, but slowly puzzled out deeper and more complicated facets of their characterizations as the pages rolled onward.

PREVIEWSworld: With all the years that Empowered’s been with us, she never seems to have the same adventure twice. What is your favorite story arc that you’ve dropped in her path? What made it exciting for you?

Adam Warren: Easily my favorite story arc was one that grew spontaneously from a minor, unambitious plot twist early on in the series—the revelation that the seemingly blonde-o-phobic Sistah Spooky had a superheroine ex-girlfriend fitting exactly such a description. This plot thread soon wove itself into a critical—and cruelly tear jerking! — element of a climactic disaster in the subsequent volume of Empowered, then expanded further into an almost operatic tragedy over the next few books. This slow-burning arc reached its emotionally charged apex with a long-form, one-hundred-page story in which Spooky and Emp brave the very depths of hell itself in an ill-fated attempt to rescue her lover. Gotta say, working on that particular epic wasn’t just the arguable high point of the series so far, but the high point of my entire career in comics; I’ve never had a work experience even remotely as gripping and immersive. I should add, though, that I’m hoping to outdo that peak experience when the arc’s sole remaining plot thread resolves itself in a similarly epic fashion in Empowered Volumes 10 and 11.

What excited and surprised me was how a relatively minor bit of character delineation could take on a life of its own and unexpectedly build into a defining—and devastating—Empowered moment. Then again, “magically bootstrapping itself into complexity” is a phrase that describes the entirety of the series’ free-flowing evolution. If I might paraphrase a description I heard recently online, “Empowered: Come for the goofy humor and cheesecake, and stay for the deepening characterization and wrenching emotionalism!”

PREVIEWSworld: You’ve been great fun! Are there any new announcements we should know about?

Adam Warren: Well, as 2017 represents the tenth anniversary of the series’ first release, Dark Horse and I are planning to release an ambitious slate of Empowered material throughout the year. The three-issue miniseries Empowered and the Soldier of Love, written by me and featuring full-color artwork by guest artist Karla Diaz, represents the first salvo in this barrage, with the release of Empowered Volume 10 following shortly afterward. That’s about all we can discuss right now, but I can assure our readers that more — no, considerably more — Empowered goodness will be hurtling their way during 2017’s anniversary year.

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CATCH UP ON EMPOWERED WITH THE (ALMOST) COMPLETE BACKLIST!

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EMPOWERED VOL. 1 TP (MR)

MAR168961        $17.99

EMPOWERED VOL. 2 TP (MR)

AUG118200        $16.99

EMPOWERED VOL. 4 TP (MR)

JUL148413           $16.99

EMPOWERED VOL. 5 TP (MR)

AUG138245        $16.99

EMPOWERED VOL. 6 TP (MR)

MAY100032        $15.99

EMPOWERED VOL. 7 TP (MR)

JAN120091          $16.99

EMPOWERED VOL. 9 TP (MR)

APR150023          $17.99

EMPOWERED: UNCHAINED VOL. 1 TP

NOV140075        $19.99

EMPOWERED DELUXE EDITION VOL. 2 HC

APR120045          $59.99

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