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.

MY STUPID SUPERSUIT, CONTINUED (part 2)

Sometimes, my supersuit becomes damaged in a heroically sacrificial fashion, glitteringly expending itself to save me from certain death.

Like, say, if I get nailed by Ray L. Gun's Railgun Supremo, or when Solar Flayer blasts me with his Snack-Size Coronal Mass Ejection dealie.

My suit's sacrifice allows me to survive—unharmed—kinetic and/or thermal trauma that would maul even the supertoughest "brick" of a cape.

Howeva: Afterward, I'm left mostly suitless and entirely powerless, armed with nothing mightier than a rosy, profoundly embarrassed blush. 

I'm still alive (yay), but now I'm utterly at the bad guys' mercy (non-yay). Time for the rope and duct tape and stripcuffs to come out.

My one-time survivability is so well known that supervillains are wholly cavalier about hitting me with otherwise lethally powerful attacks.

Actually killing a superhero is a major violation of the community's Unwritten Rules, inviting massive and vengeful superheroic retaliation.

Thus, many bad guys tend to hesitate before unleashing überdeadly "capekilling" weaponry that would certainly vaporize most superheroes.

That hesitation? Doesn't apply to me. Knowing my one-shot invulnerability, villains happily unload raw kilotonnage on my supersuited behind.

Not kidding about the "happily" part, either. Bad Guys genuinely enjoy the no-consequences freedom of hitting me with their best supershots.

"I love fighting you!" Tachyanni gushes, duct-taping me. "It's so liberating to use max-power blasts without any worries about capekilling!"

So, Emp-savvy villains can let loose with apocalyptic attacks, secure in the knowledge that I won't die—though my powers will, temporarily.

Afterwards, with my suit ruined and my superheroine status revoked, bad guys get the thrill of tying up a pretty girl! Well, a girl, anyway.

Unfortunately, my temperamental supersuit can also be damaged in a fashion that's far from heroic. As in, VERY far from heroic.

Yeahp, the hypermembrane can stop a bullet, or a large number of bullets, or even a 120mm armor-piercing round from a tank cannon (ouchie).

But it is also—paradoxiness alert!—vulnerable to being torn asunder by a rose bush's thorns. (That actually happened, once. Again, ouchie.)

At times, the suit can be so inexplicably flimsy that anything can shred it—a nail, a cat's claws, a minion grabbing a handful and tearing.

When I hear even the teensiest "SHRIPP" of the suit's film rupturing—the scariest sound EVAR, for me—I instantly feel weak, scared, shaky.

When the membrane gets badly torn, and cold air splashes across my bared, pudgy flesh, I feel all my, um, "superness" rapidly abandoning me.

Honestly, I still have no rational explanation for the suit's bizarrely transient fragility. I do, howeva, have an irrational explanation.

I suspect my supersuit somehow directly connects to my emotional state, that it becomes physically brittle when I'm psychologically brittle.

The membrane is only delicate, fragile, and vulnerable at times because I, too, am (emotionally) delicate, fragile and vulnerable at times. 

While I'm trying to be brave and bold-ish and superheroine-y, my latent insecurities and anxieties and self-doubts are always burbling away.

I worry that my innate lack of confidence is undermining my powers, that the suit's flakiness and unreliability are caused by my own flaws.

But I'm not ALWAYS a seething, weepy globule of emotional flux, okay? When I'm superheroing, sometimes I completely forget how much I suck.

Then my self-consciousness drops away, I'm swept up in the hot rush of doing-not-thinking, and the suit and I combine to kick serious ass.

I've occasionally VORPPed villains and superpummeled bad guys despite a badly damaged suit, even though I should theoretically be powerless.

This makes me wonder if I might not be stuck in a disempowering emotional feedback loop, that I only weaken because I THINK I should weaken.

I suspect that, if the supersuit were worn by a truly strong, confident, and self-actualized Elissa, it would have no weaknesses at all.

Sometimes, I despair that I'm the last girl on earth who should wear a mood-sensitive superweapon, given my truly dire emotional volatility.

But while the suit doesn't always work terribly well for me, its powers don't function at all for anyone else who attempts to wear it.

Twice now, I've been kidnapped by wannabe supervillains, aspiring capes who've stripped me of the supersuit and tried to use it themselves.

Both of them—a nice-looking dudebro, and an infuriatingly cute girl—looked much, MUCH better than me wearing the suit, I'm annoyed to admit.

Even with a fully intact membrane, neither wannabe cape could summon any superpowers whatsoever, the poor things. (Cue the sad trombone.)

Side note: Turns out the suit is hilariously, absurdly revealing when worn by a male, making me very, VERY glad that I lack a Y chromosome.

So, for better or for worse, it would appear that only Elissa Megan Powers can be Empowered, as ill-suited—pun semi-intended!—as I might be.

<END OF EXCERPT >

Wellp, if this actually worked, webcomic readers, I’ll try again shortly with another excerpt from I Am Empowered, which will prrrrrobably wrap up this particular chapter.

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