A tad belatedly, I just realized that, during Emp's experience with Scanning Analytophore Ginny depicted on the webcomic recently, I could've serialized an account of her first scanning by Ginny here in the commentary. Golly!

So, here's the first of a series of excerpts from I Am Empowered, the short-lived but useful Year-One-ish prose experiment I worked on about a decade ago to flesh out and explore the earliest months of Emp's superheroic career, along with concepts and details not necessarily addressed in the Empowered proper. Note that the project was originally composed in old-style Twitter 140-character segments, as the narrative was theoretically Emp's (unpublished) social media account of her Year One adventures; for some reason, I have no interest in writing prose fiction, but don't mind doing so in tweet format. Note also that the entirety of this incomplete project is serialized under the I Am Empowered hashtag on my Patreon.

And now, we join Year One Emp's first-person narration as she meets Ginny—or, here, "Ginnie"—for the first time. (I'll use a different font and size to differentiate the excerpt from my regular commentary.)

A hulking monstrosity only vaguely shaped like an MRI scanner fills the room, a sprawling pile of creepily baroque biomechanical detail.

Then I notice that some of the machine’s disturbingly insectile black carapaces are trembling, a few of its glistening cables quivering.

“Is... is that thing alive?” I stammer, my skin crawling as I realize that I can hear wet, squelching sounds issuing from the biomachinery.

“Yes, of course it is,” the Übernurse says. “But don’t worry, dear, this scanning analytophore is fully tamed and domesticated.”

She taps a glowing extrusion on the beast’s side, and a flat, lumpy mass—like a tumorous surfboard—slides out from its gaping, circular maw.

“Lie down on the scanning bed,” she chirps brightly, patting the slimy, bumpy surface, “and we can get this imaging party started, okay?”

“Um, that looks more like a tongue than a bed,” I whine nervously, eyeing the perceptibly rippling shape with shaky trepidation.

“That’s because this IS a tongue,” the nurse says, with a bored tone indicating that she’s dealt with this reaction many, many times before.

“Be a hero, won’t you, and hop up on Ginnie’s lingual bed before she gets insulted?” she continues a bit wearily, while I’m thinking, Ginnie?

Reluctantly—very reluctantly—I shuffle over to the gently swaying tongue/bed and gingerly plant my rapidly goose-pimpling behind on it.

I barely stifle a scream down to a sharp intake of breath at the grotesque sensation of sitting on warm, wet, undulating alien flesh.

I swing my legs up and slowly, anxiously, cringingly settle myself back, my body stiff as a board and quivering with revulsion and dread.

A strangled little sheep-bleat of terror escapes me as what feels like a hundred rubbery fingers thrust up from the surface underneath me—

—and simultaneously clutch fiercely at the back of my head and neck, at my arms and wrists, at my waist and hips and thighs and ankles.

“That’s just Ginnie’s gripping papillae, making sure you remain absolutely still during the scan,” the Übernurse assures me, unreassuringly.

Stand by for another Ginny-related I Am Empowered excerpt tomorrow, folks!

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. So, who knows what today's post might feature? Could be Life Drawing or Distressed Damsels content (both of which are featured at least three times per month), or something in the Work Stages, Vintage Con Sketches or Design departments, or possibly something entirely new. Golly!

-Adam Warren