Empowered is a series that has been running for a few years, since 2007, written by Adam Warren and with art by Takeshi Miyazawa, described by Warren as a “sexy superhero comedy”. Nine Beers with Ninjette is basically a background summary for Ninjette, Empowered’s alcoholic, ninja best friend. It’s serious, more serious than I’m taken to believe the series usually is, but it’s an appropriate choice for a background montage.
The great thing about this comic is that it works even without a background in the overall series. Empowered introduces the reader to the barebones background, just enough that you know the main characters from the series and how they connect to one another. Ninjette and her drinking habits get introduced in more length obviously. I found this part interesting in part because while the main story is done in traditional manga style, the intro looks more like the sketches before they are cleaned up and finalized. It’s unusual to change styles in the course of a comic like that, but with the placement it works.
The other unusual thing that works here is that the story is almost entirely told in flashbacks, but the narrator, Ninjette after the intro concludes, narrates in the flashbacks. That is to say the narration is done not in voice overs, but in speech bubbles coming from the past version of Ninjette. It’s different, but I really liked it. It doesn’t seem like it would work, but the dialog in the flash back is less than important, so it ends up working just fine.
As for the story itself, the clever approach used is to tell the memory that’s brought up by each beer as Ninjette works through her usually nightly binge. It follows a logical, albeit non-chronological sequence, but not following the chronological order makes it seem more natural. You don’t normally get to know someone starting with their earliest recollection and working your way towards the day you met them. Likewise, we start with the stories she’s most willing to tell and as she get’s more tipsy/drunker, she becomes more willing to tell the more personal stories.
I recommend this comic to anyone who likes the series or wants to look at a different way of telling a character background. It’s not really a story for enjoyment, that is, it’s not really a story meant to be read for the plot, but it is quite well done, and as I have repeatedly mentioned, rather unique in its style. For $3.99, it’s your call as to if it’s worth it.
Matthew Bryant, a.k.a. Baker Street Holmes, is a writer and lead editor for the Red Shirt Crew and would love to tell you the stories that come to his mind with each drink on those occasions when he does drink. Maybe that could be a podcast some day… If you want to follow him on Twitter, you can find him at @BStreetHolmes, or email him at HMCrazySS@gmail.com.
The Red Shirt Crew Blog and Podcast Network 