Yeahp, as you might have guessed, Meta Emp’s triumphalist ranting about this volume’s relative lack of “damsel in distress” imagery in the earlier title page wound up contradicted by this story. On the other hand, though, one brief page with a trussed-up Emp is considerably less “DiD” content than she might have feared.

By the way, this page is based off an old Fantastic Four scene, in which the X-Men capture Invisible Girl and leave her stuffed in a locker(?), which seemed an oddly high-school-ish variation on poor Susan’s Emp-like frequent episodes of distress. For the record, I read this Lee/ Kirby story as a reprint back in the 70s; I’m old, sure, but not old enough to have actually read this comic back when it first ran in the 60s. I might well have forgotten about this scene if it weren’t for the fact that, 15 or 20 years ago, I drew a con sketch for a "damsel-in-distress" enthusiast based on this very sequence.

Gotta say, though, that this Empowered page features some tricky logistical issues. The earlier scenes backstage at the fast-approaching Caped Justice Awards imply that the show is about to take place quite soon, possibly even the same day (or night), but would that leave enough time for Emp’s supersuit to regenerate itself from its current, highly tattered state? Hrmmm. Good thing I’ve never given a concrete answer as to how quickly the hypermembrane restores itself, huh? Allusiveness and ambiguity is the storyteller’s perpetual friend, folks!

UPDATE: Only now realized that the backstage scene I mentioned has a reference to “That won’t cut it on Capeys night,” which means it took place at least a day or two before. Oops!

And that's it for "Proud and Delighted," the penultimate story in Empowered vol. 4. Onward to the finale!

-Adam Warren