But Waid's Empire got good enough reviews and had an intriguing enough premise that I made a mental note to get it when it was collected into a book, and now it has been. And the reviews were right — Empire is great stuff. The basic idea is that the world has been conquered by an armored supervillain named Doctor D— I mean, Darth V— I mean, Golgoth. The last superhero has been... "pacified," I think the usual term is... and resistance is confined to that military powerhouse, Greenland. No Superman or heroic band of rebels is going to bring down the Empire. If the Empire will fall, it will crumble from within, thanks to the internectarine warfare (as the vocabulary-challenged War Minister would put it) of Golgoth's scheming inner circle of torturers and assassins.

With its Minister of War, Minister of Execution, Minister of Espionage and many others pursuing their various agendas, Empire reads not entirely unlike a playthrough of Varicella, minus the obsession with furniture. (For that matter, it doesn't read entirely unlike the daily stories coming out of Washington. Cheney and Rumsfeld and Ashcroft might not wear outfits as outlandish as Empire's Tumbril and Lucullan and Kafra, but who knows how they dress on their own time?) The art by Barry Kitson is often quite good, and though he does have an unfortunate tendency toward misshapen faces that spoils the effect of a few of the panels, particularly those featuring Golgoth's supposedly beauteous teenage daughter — how unseemly! — the intrigue is so absorbing that you might not even notice. Empire is, if not a great work of art, certainly a superior page-turner.

Return to the Calendar page!