We've been big fans of Adam Warren's sexy, funny, and often very poignant superhero series Empowered for a while now. It started almost as a joke - superheroine loses her powers when her costume gets ripped - and has grown into one of the most textured group of characters in comics, including an amazing supporting cast that's just as deep as the lead character. One of those characters, Ninjette - Empowered's best friend - takes center stage in Empowered Vol. 7, which hits from Dark Horse Comics this Wednesday. To find out more about this, the process, and where the series is going, we chatted with creator Adam Warren:
MTV Geek: Let’s talk about this volume of Empowered... Why turn the focus so squarely on Ninjette? What made it time for her turn in the spotlight?
Adam Warren: Well, Ninjette's essentially been a "co-lead character" of the series from the very start, so I had no compunctions about spending a fair chunk of an Empowered volume delineating her ever-intriguing character. In fact, I'd originally planned to devote even more of the volume to Ninjette, as her grueling struggle with the revenge-minded Ayakami ninja clan was initially slated to run for over 100 pages(!) of the book… For good or ill, though, other storytelling responsibilities trimmed down her storyline just a bit.
Geek: It feels like there’s a very slow evolution of the characters in the books, but Ninjette goes through a big one - and starts to force Emp through one too - can you talk about that a bit?
AW: That's definitely true to some degree, especially for Emp, who receives a mildly startling wake-up call about her nature as a superheroine by the end of the volume. Emp, Ninjette, and a handful of Empowered's other main characters are indeed changing and growing, though in a rather incremental fashion. I have to admit, however, that much of Empowered vol.7 dwells on figuring out what makes a few of the characters tick, rather than moving them forward—"evolving" them, if you will—all that quickly. Read More...
