And now, my latest attempt to paste in an excerpt from another chapter of long-defunct prose experiment I Am Empowered, a Year-One-ish first-person account from Emp in 140-character Twitter format detailing her earliest days as a superheroine.

DRAMATIC ENTRANCES, FAILING DRAMATICALLY (part 1 of 2)

More Things They Don't Tell You About Caping: A helluva lot can go wrong when you're dropping down on unsuspecting bad guys from on high.

If you jump down from a serious height—100' or more, say—the kinetic energy's so high that you can't possibly stay on your feet when landing.

If you touch down even a few degrees shy of vertical, you ain't gonna stick the landing, sweetie. Hello, humiliating, non-heroic face-plant.

Jump off the average office building, my wannabe cape, and you'll be moving at roughly 115mph when you hit the pavement below.

Regardless of how superstrong you are, at 115mph you'll have (WAY) less than 1/100th of a second to balance yourself upon landing.

Unless you're a tachycognitive speedster, you simply won't have enough to me catch your balance. You are going DOWN, oh showboating cape.

And if you ARE a tachycognitive speedster, why did you bother jumping off a building? Just take the stairs down to street level, dumbass.

The sheer velocity's almost certain to pitch you facefirst onto the concrete, oh Dramatic Jumpy Cape Sadly Ignorant of Kinetic Energy.

Sticking the landing with your masked face: Good for YouTube, not so good for making an intimidating impression on unsuspecting bad guys.

By the way, "kissing the pavement" is often a very literal and very accurate description of what happens when you don't stick the landing.

One time—and I'm blushing at the boneheaded vanity, here—I'd applied lip gloss JUST before trying a Dramatic Drop-In Entrance.

Yes, lip gloss: God forbid that any dirtbag supervillains might perceive my lips to appear anything less than dewy, luscious and shimmering.

So I jump down, end up faceplanting on the pavement. Say hello to the grit, pebbles and cigarette butt now adhering to my Guava Hydrafull.

My Big, Superhero-y Intro Speech: Ruined by me staggering to my feet while spitting out gravel and wiping off my dirt-encrusted lip gloss.

Don't judge me on the lip gloss issue. I have a justifiable, non-superficial—if irrational—reason for wearing Guava Hydrafull into battle.

See, Hydrafull's been my (non-cereal) Lucky Charm ever since high school. I've had nothing but the goodiest of luck every time I've worn it.

I've aced tests, snagged internships, landed a superjob, successfully avoided arrest for public nudity—long story—all while beGuava'd, see?

Careful to preserve Guava Hydrafull's fortunate status, I've been careful to only apply it when I really, truly, absolutely need good luck.

Sniffle time: I may have exhausted the providential powers of my Lucky Lip Gloss, as my last few beGuava'd superhero outings were disasters.

The time before the Gritty Pavement Kiss I'm describing, my shimmery, Hydrafull-y lips wound up sealed—unluckily—by a bad guy's duct tape.

More about the suckiness of duct tape later. For now, I'd best wrap up this rant about the Untold Perils of the Dramatic Drop-In Entrance.

So, jumping down from a great height usually leads to a mortifying faceplant. Useful, if you want the bad guys to be paralyzed by laughter.

The WTF value of a badly botched entrance could, in theory at least, distract the enemy. (Hasn't really worked that way for me, though.)

Even disciplined, well-trained baddies would have a hard time NOT underestimating a superheroine who just EPIC FAILED her Dramatic Entrance. 

For bonus dramatic effect, some capes love to land on the roof of a nearby car. Nice, loud BANG, safety glass spraying from broken windows. 

CapeProtip: Unless you're landing on a villain-owned vehicle, you're just being a dick by pointlessly racking up civilian property damage.

CapeProtip: If you must insist on a Car-Top Landing, make g-d sure that you can tell a convertible from a hardtop before you make the leap.

<END OF EXCERPT>

Wellp, if this actually worked, webcomic readers, I’ll try again shortly with another excerpt from this chapter of I Am Empowered later this week.

Today’s Patreon update: Originally done as a means of scratching out more worktime to complete the long-gestating Empowered vol. 12, I've switched over to a Monday/ Wednesday/ Friday Patreon posting schedule that won't feature the fixed content format I previously used. However, my vast archive of years of Patreon posts—extensive Empowered previews, vintage con sketches, work stages on covers, "damsel in distress" commissions, life drawings & much, much more—remains available for Patrons' perusal.

-Adam Warren