EMPOWERED!!!

by: Ana Bruja-Khayos

From the great mind of Adam Warren who brought you Dirty Pair comes Empowered.  The graphic novel series began in 2004 as a superhero comedy inspired by large commissions request for images of damsels in distress.  This created a world that is inhabited by super heroes, villains and minions that have very down to earth personalities and imperfections.  This makes this story ten times more likeable than your standard graphic novel.  Simply said “ A superhero story that doesn’t take itself too seriously”.

As of 2012 the series has produced seven graphics novels, and is very well love by many of Adam Warren’s fans.  When you see the books it will remind you of an american type manga.  It has some of the anime traits but with Adam Warren’s touch.  The pages are very bold black and white pencil drawings that literally gives it a very unique look with great panel flow.  As you are reading through the pages, at times you will have to stop and take a moment to enjoy all of the little details he hides in the environments, background props, and costumes.  If you love color on your graphics, I guarantee that you will not notices since the story is very unique.

Adam introduces the reader to this crazy world through a new heroine with the superhero name of Empowered, also known as “Emp” short for Elissa Megan Powers.  She just graduated school with a degree in “Metahuman Studies” for an unmentioned college and has just moves to city to pursue a career as a superhero.  Here she teams up with the Superhomies Superhero Group were she’s constantly bullied by the other top notch heroes.  The main reason is because of how her powers work. When she has the super suite on she has super strength, can cling on to walls,  and at times new abilities will appear that she’s not aware about it. However the super suite has a major weakness, it tears very very easily.  At time is described as a tissue paper thin.  The second the suite tears, she reverts to her regular human strength and she is very powerless.  From this scenario she has gain a reputation for constantly being caught, tied up, gagged, and even becoming shoulder candy for bad guys.

Most of us are used to hearing crazy stories on how traditional superheroes get the power from the a horrible accident, horrible experiment, or an alien from another world type scenarios.  In this world here the heroes get their power in the crazies ways like getting STD from screwing an alien chick, mail away powers, or a messed up contract with Satan in exchange for beauty.  The heroes are also emotionally flawed and traumatized by personal experiences, self-esteem issues, egos, and yes even the work office cooler chatter and gossip news on TV.

 

About Emp

Just like any of the other super heroes, EMP has her own hangups.  Her major one is that she thinks she has a “chubby booty” even though she is very sexy.  She’s constantly making remarks on how the suite really doesn’t do much to help her cover up her giant tuckus.  This  self esteem issue combined with her constant bondage and booty smacking issue with the super villains and at times coworkers and acquaintances really makes this young heroine a very unique character to follow along.  To most of her friends and coworkers she seem as kind of a ditzy girl that really should be doing this kind of work, but as the story goes one she actually retains her sweet humility even though her powers continue right under her fingers.

Her Friends

Along the way she has made some great friends, and not so great friends.   The S Superhomies Superhero Group is literally in the not so great friends.  The group is composed of several dozen super heroes, and raging at different ranks.  


but she has made 2 other great friends Thugboy and Ninjette.  The

Thug Boy was originally a minion for hire. He used to belong to a gang with now desist friends who use to robbed super villains blind and resold the stuff for profit.  During one of EMP’s super hero attempts they met and shortly after became  more than just superhero vs generic thug.  While Thug boy is very kind to EMP, he has a very dark past, and couple of misdeeds that are pledging him on the back of his mind and at times fears for his life.  

Nijet (AKA Kozue Kaburagi) is the princes of an an Assassin Kaburagi Ninja Clan.  The funny part is that even though she comes from asian asian type clan complete with asian names, she’s just a white girl from Jersey with a drinking problem.  As you read the story you come to find out that the she’s ran away from her clan because she was supposed to be sold or traded to another clan to be baby making machine for the rest of her life.  Not the future she wants.

There is one more character who comes into play in Emp’s crazy life later on in the story named “The Caged Demonwolf”.  It’s a very powerful immortal demon living on her coffee table.  You have to read the books to find the specs on this one. Bwahahahaha...

All in all, all that I will have to say is that THIS IS AN ADULT STORY and is NOT FOR CHILDREN due to some sexual content.  However this is a very fun, engaging, and at times surprisingly emotional story. I give this story three thumbs up. I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I have.

La Lunatica of the X-Men 2099 series from Toy Biz

(Holos, now in shockin' flavor)

Toy Biz and Marvel, two companies that were nearly inseparable until 2006 when the license was sold off to Hasbro for a multi-million dollar price tag. During their reign at the top of the toy world, Toy Biz made some really awesome figures with groundbreaking articulation and they also made some of the worst figures I ever set my eyes on. In fact to this date, some of those ghastly figures are still the worst ones I've ever seen my entire life. You can't really be angry with Toy Biz though, their progressive evolution made action figures what they became today. I like to look back and say if there's someone to blame, it must be Marvel comics. Look at some of the artwork they had to deal with to attempt to compose a figure and you might just agree with me by the end of this blog.

(tonight's unfortunate choice. To be honest, I always used her as a female version of Lobo from DC Comics)

X-Men 2099 was one of those series that has simply been pushed into the black hole of collective forgetfulness of comic book readers. I have friends that are huge comic fans and they have never mentioned it in conversation, not even to make fun of it. To be quite honest, I had to go back and read a few issues so I'd have some background for this review. Also, this book came out in the mid 1990's when Marvel couldn't wait for an excuse to flood store shelves with yet another book of a futuristic/ alternate dimensional stories that have loose ties to current continuity. This series was full of a bunch of strange creations( both heroes and villains, and sometimes that line wasn't so clear) with such memorable names as Brimstone Love, Halloween Jack, Shadow Dancer amongst many others ( I won't bore you too much, those of you who continued reading past the mention of X-Men 2099 I personally applaud you.).

(behold, Toy Biz and their shameless attempts to take your hard earned allowance)

The basic card for the X-Men 2099 series was a die-cut backer done in blue, purple and gray with the X-Men 2099 logo at the top of the card. La Lunatica comes packaged with a funky silver colored blade that snaps into her hand and runs along her forearm and..........a futuristic jai-lai ball and catcher? (I'm about as lost as you are right now.) I always thought she should have come with a flight stand or something like that. Unless you read the back of the package or the comic you'd never know she's a vampire. A psychic vampire at that, feeding off of painful memories and turning those memories on them to defend herself ( man, this character kinda blows.) even though she possesses super strength as well. Her outfit has been altered to not be as risque as it is in the comic but the black straps painted on make the figure sexier looking than the bare flesh did. This is a tactic Toy Biz did several times during their reign behind Marvel's toy marketing juggernaut, changing outfits or even names of characters to make them less offensive on toy store shelves. This often confused most readers since they found nothing initially wrong with the characters in the first place. Especially myself, when making a quick run through a toy department and always thinking why someone was taking all the Holocaust figures when unbeknownst to me he had been renamed to Nemesis (really Toy Biz?). I was just looking at the name tags, I never looked at the figures because I had to meet my parents in front of the store by the time they finished shopping if I wanted to get something.

(kind of reminds me of Sindel from Mortal Kombat)

(slight resemblance, or maybe it's just the knockers.....it's the knockers) 

(I want to give the custom figure artist credit for this one, because I don't remember where I found this picture and I didn't know anyone had fond memories of anything related to the 2099 story arc)

X-Men 2099, a toy and comic series long forgotten and probably will never be resurected.

At least we hope not.