Graphic Novel Review: Empowered: Deluxe Edition Hardcover Volume One by Adam Warren

I have just finished reading both the stupidest comic I’ve ever come across as well as the most amazingly entertaining comic I’ve ever come across. That’s not bad considering both experiences stem from one book entirely. Okay, to be completely fair this one book is made up of three other books that are themselves made up of many individual smaller books, but… know what? Never mind. Let’s begin again.

The upcoming deluxe edition hardcover release of Adam Warren’s Empowered is violently entertaining. I say this, by the way, simply from reading an advance PDF of the release, so it could be even better once the ink hits the page. Clocking in at over 750 pages, Empowered: D.E.H. is perhaps the most amazing single fetish joke ever to be extended into a brazenly funny, well-written and amazingly entertaining comic strip in quite some time.

As I was reading this I kept thinking that this is the funniest thing I’ve read since the early years of Poison Elves or The Tick. The fact that the focus of the book is on an amazingly sexy and hilarious female character who seems to be eternally under-or-undressed for most of the issues.. I swear this had nothing to do with my continued interest in this book. Seriously. I was all serious and dedicated in my research and read this simply to get through it and write this review.

Honestly.

Empowered: D.E.H. Volume 1 collects all the material from the first three Empowered volumes plus 40+ pages of extras, which include the very first Empowered stories, sketches, logo variants, story notes, etc.

Whether read as a manga-styled sendup of classic superhero comics or just a supremely hilarious and talented guy’s love-letter to said comics, Empowered is an amazingly entertaining and titillating read. Once you get past the puns and the (ahem) seductive and suggestive artwork (never have I cursed at strategically placed word panels in such large quantities, truth be told) I am completely confident that you will find that at the heart of it all… this is a supremely smart and well-worth reading book.

Buy it when it comes out. I sure as hell will.

(Reviewed copy was in the form of a PDF graciously provided by Dark Horse Comics. Scheduled release date for hardcover edition is February 29, 2012.)