I finally got around to tracking down Mark Waid's oft-praised, early-2000's mashup of deconstructed supervillains and epic fantasy--emphasis on the latter. It's all courtly intrigue, rife with hidden agendas and betrayals and reversals and technology indistinguishable from magic. Characters and situations are depicted in mile-wide brush strokes, and pretty much everyone is...
...wait for it...
...irredeemable.
Thank you! I'll be here all week!
Empire was certainly not a dull read, but it also was not the superawesomeOMGtodiefor book that certain reviewers have made it out to be. It's a tragedy through and through, but it all felt hollow. The last few pages should have broken my heart. Instead, I just shrugged my shoulders and moved on. YMMV.
See also: Neil Gaiman's Miracleman stories, which offer a slightly different take on the superhuman-as-world-ruler premise and, for my money, are much creepier and more emotionally involving.
Buy the book: Powell's, Amazon (affiliate links)
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