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Q: Empowered has its dark moments, but it's mostly a comedy, and sometimes, it's a romantic comedy too. Do superhero comics take themselves too seriously?

Adam Warren: Not necessarily, but for me, the issue is more about competence in storytelling than the necessity of a specific tone. I'm none too fun of ludicrous, idiotic material that unreflectively views itself as being a grimly solemn masterwork, or half-witted goofiness that tries to bootstrap itself into deadly seriousness via generous dollops of blood and sex and bloody sex.


On the other hand, I'm also not often impressed by (finger quotes) 'Fun Comics,' in which mash-ups of random pop-culture tropes supposedly trigger automatic hilarity. As in, "Look, it's a (adjective)(noun) on a (adjective)(noun)!" which might translate to, 'Look, it's a Nazi orangutan on a robot triceratops!' or 'a Communist Abraham Lincoln on an Objectivist Grant Morrison!'

Then again, viewed in an unkind light, Empowered might well have much in common with all of the preceding examples (for some online critics, at least). As I've said here before, Your Mileage May Vary.

Q: You've drawn your share of superhero comics. Is there any superhero that you'd love to take a shot at, reinterpreting it your way?

Adam Warren: Not counting Empowered, I've drawn a few superhero comics, but written far more of 'em. As I'm always desperate for some sweet mainstream page rates, I'd be more than happy to write pretty much any superhero title that becomes available, Marvel or DC editors! To repeat the tiresome line so often Twittered by comics writers bleating for Big Two work online: "I'd write the S**T out of (your superhero IP here)."

Q: You have some incredibly inventive fight scenes. Is it difficult coming up with new spins on this? Do you have a favorite fight scene in Empowered?

Adam Warren: No, it's not difficult at all to come up with new riffs and badass moves for fight sequences; the true difficulty, I find, is being able to fit all the awesome action into maddeningly limited page-count. Ninjette's ordeal with the vengeful Ayakami clan in Empowered vol.7 was originally slated to be over 100 pages long, but wound up being cut down to a tragically less ambitious amount. All too many wild feats of unearthly ninjutsu and mind-boggling swordplay ended up on the figurative cutting room floor, I'm afraid.

If you'll pardon the unrepentant floggery, Empowered Vol.7 really does contain some of my favorite fight scenes in the entire series, and it also features a villain-or an antagonist, to put things more neutrally-who really grew on me throughout the volume. That would be Yukiko Ayakami (or "Ayakami Yukiko", as she puts it, for greater Japanese authenticity), a self-proclaimed "motherf**king badass lady ninja" who fights a grueling, reversal-intensive battle with poor Ninjette. By the end of the book, in my eyes she became much more than just another faceless opponent, growing into her own unique, distinct character with discrete motivations and secrets aplenty.

CHECKING IN EMPOWERED'S EMOTIONAL BAGGAGE

Q: Empowered, Thug Boy and Ninjette, and Sistah Spooky have some heavy emotional baggage. The most recent volumes of Empowered seem to veer toward darker themes. Is this a phase they're going through, or is it leading up to something?

Adam Warren: Both, really. Sometimes the lead characters' manifold issues might be explored in melancholy detail, and sometimes they won't. (Like I often say, Empowered is a sexy superhero comedy, except when it isn't.) At the same time, though, rest assured that the characters' individual threads are indeed going somewhere; Sistah Spooky's emotional arc, in particular, is addressed with considerable finality in Empowered Vol.8.

Q: Ah, care to drop any other hints about what you have up your sleeve for Empowered Vol. 8? And uh... wheneabouts are you shooting to have that come out?

Adam Warren: Thanks to the vagaries of book ordering and lengthening lead-time requirements, even if I finished work on Empowered Vol. 8 by early 2013—and that's a stretch, frankly—the book couldn't possibly come out until late in the year.

Q: With each volume of Empowered, it looks like you're always trying something new — taking the characters in different directions, trying different ways of telling a story, exploring different emotional themes. What were you hoping to accomplish with Empowered Vol. 7?

Adam Warren: For one thing, I wanted to experiment with extending suspense throughout an entire volume by scattering the present-tense scenes of Ninjette battling an entire ninja clan amidst a book's worth of lighter-toned flashbacks. My idea was that alternating violent, brutal action sequences with funnier or more emotional material would cast a shadow over the whole narrative, if you follow me. The fractured chronology does get a wee bit complicated at times, but I'm confident that the reader can still follow the storyline. (Your Mileage May Vary, as they say.)

Beyond that, I was hoping to get into some serious character delineation as to what makes Kozue Kaburagi (aka Ninjette) tick... and, in the process, uncover some important issues inherent to the other characters interacting with her. Examples: Emp, the Caged Demonwolf, and Kozue's fellow ninja "F**king Oyuki-chan" are all allowed some highly significant "reveals" during their scenes with Ninjette.

Q: In many manga series, the story comes to an end. Do you see Empowered like a western comics series that will go on indefinitely, or do you see it as a story that will eventually have an 'ending?'

Adam Warren: I do indeed have an ending in mind, but it's still a long, long ways off. (We're still a few volumes out from the end of the first story arc, in fact.) An almost ridiculous amount of extra story ideas that I'll never get to address in the regular volumes have already piled up, which is why I'm hoping to get a whole slate of ongoing Empowered side projects underway-including more Guest-Artist-drawn one-shots and, if things go very well, miniseries. Beyond that, I'm currently nibbling away at a very different form of Top-Secret Empowered Side Project to help address the story backlog. (Ooh, mysterious!)

NOTE: Empowered Special #2 features guest artist Emily Warren (Teahouse)