the geekocracy

The Gateway Drug to Manga

Now I’ve read enough of these comic blogs to know that eventually they’re gonna do an obligatory post about manga. It often starts with something like “one of the most often heard requests from our readers is ‘Why don’t you guys talk about manga?’” And then it moves into a discussion about a classic piece like Akira or something that’s big at the moment that they might be into like for instance Death Note.

Well I’m actually a fan of manga and anime and I’m not even sure if we have more readers than posters at this point so I don’t feel the need to do an obligatory piece on manga. But I chose one anyway. And it’s not an old classic or even from Japan for that matter. Traditionalists will at best typically ignore the term OEL which stands for Original English-Language Manga. But that’s only because they haven’t read Adam Warren’s Empowered.

If the name sounds familiar it’s because Adam had great success with another OEL called Dirty Pair. If you haven’t heard of Adam previously, check that out and definitely look into the series I’m about to talk about now.

Empowered is the Superhero name of the title character. Basically she’s a blond bombshell who wears a skin-tight suit that gives her super strength. The only problem is that the suit loses it’s power as it gets torn. And it gets torn a lot. Usually very strategically. In fact that’s kinda the problem. When we first meet Emp she’s not very good at the whole superhero thing. She part of a team called the Super Homies and they’re always treating her like crap because they’re always having to rescue her. She gets tied up. Alot. And it does horrible things to her already tattered self esteem. You see Emp has insecurities about her body, which goes really well with her previously mentioned skin-tight costume that gets torn as easily as rice paper.

But along the way she makes friends with another superhero called the Ninjette who has mastered the martial art of binge drinking, meets a hot thug minion who becomes her boyfriend, and shares an apartment with a belt that contains the life-essence of a pissed off demon wolf who loves watching DVDs of TV shows. So needless to say there’s lots of T and A and almost just as many laughs along the way. Adam Warren’s art is a blend of both manga and American superhero comic style art which has given Warren the ability to jump back and forth between projects in the past like Dirty Pair and Gen 13.

As a more than occasional manga reader Empowered has become one of my new favorites, but I think it also serves as a great introduction to manga if you’ve only previously read American comics. So far there are three volumes of Empowered with the fourth volume due later this month. If you’re looking for a funny and occasionally sexy book that both men and women can enjoy, then this is right up your alley.