Panel 2: Wellp, here we go, folks. Welcome to a pretty severe storytelling error on my part, one that I’d have to retroactively “walk back” in future episodes. 

Having a captor feel free to strip Emp naked was bad enough—and that would become a potentially troublesome concept I’d never again revisit—but showing her getting g-d fondled was beyond the pale, both in terms of a bungled narrative tone and theoretically longer-term, precedent-setting, in-universe implications. (As I’ll clarify shortly, this scene ends up being a fairly severe continuity error of sorts, albeit only in retrospect as I further developed the “rules” of the series in future stories.) “Creepy,” “inappropriate,” and “undeniably problematic” are terms that spring to mind as I look at this page now, and are terms that I certainly heard from readers in reaction to it back in 2007. (Well, maybe not “problematic,” as that particular term wasn’t as much in vogue nine years ago.) A very bad call on my part, and one that I’d come to regret almost immediately after publication. The original version of this story blundered even further into wrongness, but I’ll address that matter when we get to the now-edited pages a few days down the road.

A few readers gamely noted in defense of this scene that, 40 pages earlier, Emp was viciously curbstomped by King Tyrant Lizard and damn near got her head bitten off, which would superficially seem a rather more traumatic experience. Ah, but most readers aren’t likely to relate personally to near-decapitation by a giant reptile, whereas vastly more can, unfortunately, relate to violations of personal boundaries like this. Neither, alas, can the defense be legitimately mustered that fictional depiction of behavior doesn’t necessarily equate with the writer’s approval of said behavior. I might not actually have approved as such of Inappropriate Girl’s fondling, here, but I pretty clearly thought this was a goofy if not outrageously wacky little scene, since a fetching lass was doing the grabbing. “Tee hee! Hey, c’mon, they use this girl-on-girl boob-grabbing trope in manga all the time, folks!” Unacceptable, 2006-Era Me.

Also important was that this scene posed some deeply problematic in-universe implications: So, what, any rando in the Empverse can just strip a superheroine naked and fondle her at will? This is allowed? Wouldn’t that mean that the often-helpless Emp is in danger of this sort of thing on a regular basis? After this story, I belatedly realized that no, this kind of crap would absolutely not be countenanced in a superhero universe, which led me in future stories to create the Empowered trope of the so-called “Unwritten Rules.” These ill-defined principles, addressed only obliquely within the series, informally regulate interactions between superheroes and bad guys of varying stripes, from the act of killing to Inappropriate Crap like this story’s events. By choice, I don’t directly address the very likely ugly details of how the Unwritten Rules came to be, or exactly how they presently function and are enforced by the superheroic community—but readers may rest assured that, in-universe, characters are very much aware of the draconian consequences of violating the Rules. This wouldn’t just be a matter of stereotypically paternalistic and vengeful enforcement by male superheroes, either, given that superpowered heroines would easily represent one of the most violent and powerful female demographics in human history. Even the baddest of dudes ain’t likely to mess with a battle-hardened sisterhood whose casually violent members can easily rip offenders limb from limb or blast ’em to constituent atoms. 

Remember also that, within the context of the Empverse, bad guys lack the protection of being corporate-owned intellectual property. The oft-debated issue of whether or not Batman should execute a mass-murdering lunatic like Joker is effectively irrelevant, given that the Clown Prince of Crime represents a valuable, popular character that would never be allowed to remain fallow—or, in this context, dead—for long. Even if a story was approved that featured the “real, not a hoax, not a dream sequence” death of the Joker, he would inevitably be revived by future editors and writers down the road. (I actually rather like the idea that Batman is so g-d awesome that he’s metatextually aware that killing the Joker would be a vain and ultimately pointless exercise in futility, as there’s no possibility that he would remain dead for long.) Ah, but in the Empverse, supervillains enjoy no such security, as any malefactor contemplating Killing Joke-style shenanigans would be well aware that he would face lethal consequences, if not a horrific Fate Worse Than Death made possible by unearthly superpowers. (Side note: I’ve long considered a story in which Emp would “cross over” into a different superhero milieu sharing the peculiarities of the Marvel or DC universes, in which the dire implications of being corporate-owned IP written by hundreds of different writers warps and twists the environment into contradictions, continuity errors and outright insanity.)

Of course, one particular bad guy in the Empowered universe pretty clearly doesn’t care a whit about the Unwritten Rules—and might not even know about them in the first place—but ol’ Willy Pete is an exception in many ways.

One complication, however, is that this page’s offending character takes a somewhat laissez faire approach to following rules, as we’ll see in future episodes of the series. Unlike our conventionally attractive but deeply if not wildly insecure heroine, “Inappropriate Lass” here not only is well aware of her own “hawtness,” but considers it to place her above and beyond the norms of polite society. In her own mind, she truly is “empowered” by her beauty to the point that she’s allowed privileges beyond those of less attractive mortals. But even the rule-bending future Ocelotina (as seen in Empowered vol.3) would, I think, have to recognize that grabbing a naked superheroine’s breasts is Simply Not Done—or, at least, she’d recognize it once I recognized that it was unacceptable behavior within the context of the Empverse. 

-Adam Warren