Grigbertz

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Empowered Meets Wonder Woman

Captioning on my part would be gilding the lily. And I know better than that!
Permit me to introduce you to the work of GrouchoM, another Deviantart sort of guy (if that is indeed his real name!). His specialty is drawing artwork based on existing animated images and comics. He appears to be a big fan of Totally Spies, but he also does Teen Titans, Drew Saturday, Fantastic Four, various anime and manga ... he goes wherever his sense of humor leads him. His specialty is humorous captions, and as you can tell from this image, he's got a great feel for making his characters' speech exactly match the original, which greatly ramps up the humor. And he also has a nice way of ramping up the bondage and damsel in distress imagery in his art, though he stays within the confines of the original character (i.e., the costumes tend to stay on).

As you may know, I'm a big fan of Empowered and Wonder Woman, so this comic really pushes my buttons.

In this case, Empowered's bumbling foot-in-mouth geek girl style of speech perfectly fits the occasion as she gushes over Wonder Woman but manages to do so in a way that just might infuriate her. Great stuff, and there's plenty more like it on is DeviantArt gallery, so hustle on over there and get some laughs!

Super Friends Logic In Earthquake Weather

Empowered and the Super Friends … add in some Tim Powers and you have something that is so very, very, very … wrong!
OK, because I’m so jazzed about Tim Powers’ “On Stranger Tides” beng the official basis for the next Pirates of the Caribbean (PotC, henceforth) movie (instead of the unofficial basis, as it was for the first three PotC movies) I’ve started reading “Earthquake Weather” the last book in the “Last Call” trilogy.

It’s been hard slogging, to be frank. The best Tim Powers novels (like “On Stranger Tides,” “the Anubis Gates” and “Declare”) grab your brain and hurl it through story so hard and fast that after you finish the book your brain skids for a couple of days.

Earthquake Weather” is hurt by having too many protagonists and by long sections of exposition in which the many portagonists try to figure out the nature of the supernatural problems and perils they keep encountering. Now Powers is famous for doing extensive research for his supernatural stories, filling them with accurate historical details, telling facts, strange but true science and just plain fun, but if you don’t know the basis for all the supernatural background, things can get a little dicey.

It’s a problem because you frequently find characters making deduction and so forth that are not at all reasonably derived from what’s going around … so far as you know. In fact, in Earthquake Weather this phenomenon becomes so pronounced that for me it was a lot like encountering Super Friends logic.

And that’s a harsh, harsh thing to say. “Super Friends logic” is a phenomenon identified by the Internet blogger Seanbaby on the infamous Seanbaby’s Super Friends Page, perhaps one of the most malefic, hilarious examples of Internet snarkery on any topic known to man.

To be fair, the “Super Friends” -- a 1970s Hannah Barbera cartoon based on DC Comics’ Justice League of America series -- is a near-perfect target for snarkery. Badly drawn, badly edited, badly wiitten and badly voiced, it was a truly feeble-minded enterprise that insulted the intelligence of the two-year-olds that were undoubtedly its primary audience. But Seanbaby skewers it with such precisely placed barbs that you find yourself reading the essays on the various character over and over to because you just can’t stop laughing. (Wonder Woman’s travails with her invisible plane and Aquaman’s entire review are my faves … good stuff.)

When the Superfriends were faced with some puzzle or mystery as they fought their arch villainous enemies (also essayed, to hilarious effect) they would of course combine their brainpower to puzzle out the mystery. But because the writers knew the conclusion they wanted the SuperFriends to reach already, and because they didn’t give a damn about how they reached it, the “logic” employed by the SuperFriends tended to be a series of unsupported non-sequiters having no relation to each other at all.

For example:

Superman: All the Fishmonger could say before he died was “Purple monkey dishwasher,” so we STILL don’t’ know where Lex Luthor has stashed Empowered!”

Hawkman: Maybe we can figure it out!

The Flash: Wait a minute! Mountains are sometimes purple … purple mountains majesty … and volcanos are a kind of mountain!

Robin: And … monkeys fear lava!

Green Lantern: And dishwashers spew hot water, just like volcanoes spew lava!

Batman: (Batman always announces the conclusion, the writers undoubtedly hoping you’ll buy it because Batman is “the smart one”) “So, ‘purple monkey dishwasher’ can only mean that Lex Luthor has Empowered trapped inside an erupting volcano!”

And so the Super Friends would go haring off to the nearest erupting volcano and sure enough, there would be Empowered, bound and gagged but not naked because, Super Friends was a family show. Dammit.

This sounds like an exaggeration but really it’s not -- the non-sequiters that the Super Friends actually used in lieu of logic were every bit as ludicrous as the one I just made up.

Tim Powers is on the exact opposite end of the scale from the uncaring hacks who spewed out the Super Friends stories, stories so bad they insulted the intelligence of the toddlers who were its only audience. Yet, surprisingly, the effect of his well-researched, intricately plotted writing is the same. Let me demonstrate with this passage:

Kootie had lifted out of the cardboard boxes an electric pencil sharpener and now the boy carefully unsnapped its wood-grain printed plastic cowl. Underneath, instead of the crossed grinders of a pencil sharpener’s works, a thick stick of yellow chalk was attached to the rotor.

“This middle section is pretty deeply grooved from the last time,” Kootie said, peering at the chalk. “But we can attach the spring to a different section, closer to the motor, and I remember how Edison set it up.”

“I’m not sure Edison himself knew what he was doing,” said Pete.

“I remember how he set it up.” said Kootie.

“Fine,” said Pete. “Good.” He glanced at Cochran and smiled. “That’s our speaker, our receiver -- that pencil sharpener. Most speakers used induced changes in the field of a magnet to wiggle the diaphragm; we can’t do that, because an actual physical magnet would draw ghosts the way a low spot on a pavement collects rainwater. If we did this a lot, I’d hook up a piezoelectric quartz, or an electrostatic setup with perforated condenser plates, but this arrangement actually des work well enough. We’ll soak the chalk with water, and then attach the diaphragm spring to the surface of the chalk, which will be spinning when we turn on the pencil sharpener -- wet chalk is toothy and full of friction ordinarily, see, but it gets instantly slick when there’s an electric current going through it. The changes are variable enough and rapid enough to get decent low-quality sound out of the attached diaphragm.”

Cochran understood that the man was sociably trying to let him know what was going on, so he returned the smile, jerkily, and nodded. “Clever,” he said.

“It was better sound quality than a lot of the headphones out there,” said Kootie.

“I’m not dissing your old orisha, son,” Pete said mildly. In one hand he picked up a rack of glass tubes and in the other a glass cylinder that had a little metal rod rattling in it like a bell clapper. “I’m gonna take the vacuum pump out to the kitchen and hook it to the faucet to evacuate the Langmuir gauge. You might get everybody crowded into the laundry room, Kootie, or out in the back room. Out of this room, anyway.”

Earthquake Weather, p. 116-117.

As you can see, it’s a combination of Amazing Super Science and a kid’s science project, with a smooth patina of supernatural blah-blah-blah. It’s fine in small quantities, but Earthquake Weather is jam-packed with this sort of stuff, and after awhile, your eyes gaze over, if not out-and-out cross, and you start mumbling … pencil sharpener … wet chalk … TV set … jar of penies … bug spray … orisha … Langmir gauge …” of COURSE … THAT’S how you communicate with the dead!

True, it MAY possible to construct a speaker using a pencil sharpener and wet chalk , and you may be able to communicate with ghosts on a TV set if you set up the aerials JUST SO and do the proper chants (I understand this is how EVERYBODY got TV back in the 1960s) but still, jumble enough of that stuff together and what do you have?

Purple … monkey … dishwasher.

Empowered Rocks!

The superheroine known as Empowered get no mercy from Adam Warren in his "Empowered" series. She gets tied up CONSTANTLY. Bondage fans get a very nice read, indeed.
Bondagerotica is updated with a review of Adam Warren's groundbreaking series of graphic novels about a bondage-prone, nudity-prone hottie of a superheroine, Empowered. Warren does a lot of very intelligent things in his Empowered stories, but mostly he's funny as hell. It's not just funny for a bondage-related comic, it's funny funny. A lot of people who aren't all that interested in bondage like Empowered. Those who ARE interested in bondage will absolutely love Empowered. Check out my review right here.

An Open Letter To Adam Warren

Cover of Empowered Volume 4, the latest offence against Ellie Mae. Click on the pic to find out more about this shameful publication.

Dear World:

For several years now, comic artist Adam Warren has made millions of dollars bagging on my cousin Ellie Mae Powers, and I'd like him to stop. (Her real first name is "Elissa" and her real middle name is "Megan" I know, but everyone calls her "Ellie Mae" after her great aunt on the Clampbett side.)

Ellie Mae is fondly regarded in the family as a sweet girl, a bit touched in the head but basically really nice. Ever since she was a toddler she was jazzed about superheroes, wandering around her folks' house with a towel pinned to her back by a clothespin, declaring that she could fly, had superstrength, etc. Her mother bought her Wonder Woman underoos then had to fight her to get her to take them off so she could wash them.

It was always kinda funny and we always figured she'd grow out of it until she went to college and majored in "Transhuman Studies." You want to talk about your useless college degrees! Everybody thought it was a bad idea to let her major in that -- why couldn't she get a degree in something useful, like business management or medicine? But no, her folks said it was the only thing she was interested in or would study (and she did get on the Dean's List and stay there while she was in college) so Transhuman Studies it was.

We figured her folks were just throwing away money on someone who was going to wind up teaching grade school somewhere, but what the hell, it was her folks' money and her life.

But after she found the supersuit in her senior year in college she went nuts because of course she figured it meant she could BE superhuman. Like being Ellie Mae Powers of the Kentucky Powers clan wasn't good enough for her. Her Great Granny Clampbett would have tanned her hide if she'd found out about it. Granny Clampbett would have been ESPECIALLY mad about the way Ellie Mae looked running around in public in that supersuit -- pretty much stark naked. I'm not sure what denomination Granny Clampbett was, but I AM sure it was one of those fire and brimstone ones where if women are the least bit sexy, they go straight to hell. And Granny Clampbett wouldn't let any kin of hers go to hell even if she had to make their lives hell on earth.

Meanwhile, Adam Warren bags on Empowered relentlessly in his weekly comic strip. Now, granted, Empowered has given him plenty of material to work with, god bless her, due to that damn supersuit's unreliability, but Warren seems to take a certain amount of glee in detailing the insults, humiliations, and dire perils she repeatedly encounters. Also, Warren seems to know more about Ellie Mae's relationship with her boyfriend Lee ... er, Thugboy, we all just call him Lee ... than is meet or proper, and he gleefully details THAT in his strip as well.

Now, I dunno where you're getting your information, Mr. Warren (I'm betting the Caged Demonwolf, he would be in a position to know a lot of this stuff with his starspawn powers, and he seems the type to dish the dirt on anyone if the price is right or even if it isn't) but I don't see what good it is bagging on the girl so much.

Surely you can find another female superhero who gets tied up a lot by bad guys and has plenty of foibles to exploit. Hell, look at Wonder Woman, she spends more time in the coils of her golden lasso than villains do. Plus, she's totally in the closet about her bondage proclivities nowadays, even though she was practically out about it back in the 50s, when it was really dangerous to be out about such things.

Wonder Woman would be right up your alley with her twisted psyche and strange past, and wouldn't be nearly so affected by your comments, as her ego isn't nearly so fragile as Ellie Mae's, what with her having been an actual goddess at one time.

We still have hopes that Ellie Mae can return to a more normal life -- we understand that Ellie Mae has somehow picked up some experience working as a librarian during her stint with the despicable SuperHomies, and that Lee, um, Thugboy, has had experience working as an administrative assistant of sorts. And hell, Ellie Mae has always had a real soft spot for children, she could always work in day care, maybe even transhuman day care -- I understand those kids could be an armful.

In summary, Mr. Warren, please stop bagging on Ellie Mae. She's a sweet kid who deserves better.

Yours,

Pat Powers
aka Ellie Mae's crazy cousin Pat