So, this week I'm looking to commence serialization of decade-old, defunct prose experiment I Am Empowered here in these very commentaries. First, though, I thought I'd post my lengthy preamble re: the project's origins from my Patreon:

<A quick introduction from the — ahem — author: So, anyway. 

Six or seven years ago, I picked up a superhero-related prose novel that seemed to have a premise ominously similar to Empowered; false alarm, luckily, as the similarities were superficial at best. Howeva, what did startle me about the novel (which will remain unnamed, I hasten to add) was the fact that, despite its prominently displayed bounty of positive blurbs from reviewers, the book's prose was shockingly bad, its characters poorly defined, its plot a complete mess.

I wound up thinking, "Man, I don't even wanna write prose, and I could do better than this inexplicably praised piece of crap." 

Now, I didn't then—and still don't—have much or any interest in writing prose as such, but  I do enjoy writing in a Twitter-based format, for reasons I can't quite explain. Case in point would be the Twitter account for Galacta, Daughter of Galactus, where I worked out most of the concepts that appeared in the later Marvel short stories about the (sadly out of official continuity) character.

So, I kicked off a tweet-based experiment telling the story of Emp's very earliest days as a superhero, an Empowered: Year One narrative of sorts, told in the first person from Emp's point of view. I had once intended to start posting this material from an Emp Twitter account akin to Galacta's, but never got around to doing so.

I wound up writing a few rather lengthy chapters of this goofy project before it stalled out a year or so later, never to be revisited. Even though the "novel" proved to be an abortive failure, it still proved extremely useful for me in working out background details about Emp and her world, many of which would end up appearing in actual Empowered comics. (I even worked up an abortive Guest Artist miniseries that would've been based largely on content from this project.)

A word of warning for long-time Empowered readers, though: I Am Empowered portrays an early version of Emp, circa the very beginning of Empowered vol.1, at a time when our heroine is still paralyzed by overwhelming self-doubt, severe body-image issues, and brutally low self-esteem. With the story set in a timeframe well before she meets Thugboy or Ninjette, Emp is depicted as completely alone with all her crushing insecurities. For readers who have followed Emp's long, painful journey to (some degree of) self-acceptance and genuine badassitude since the series' debut in 2007, jumping back to this hyper-insecure, "larval iteration" of Emp may be rather unpleasant.

I'm not quite sure how I'm gonna serialize this puppy, as I've got about 110-odd pages worth of "Emp tweets" in the failed project's Word document; the first chapter alone is 13 pages long, which seems a tad excessive for Patreon-post format. 

And now, without further ado, brace yourself for Year One Emp's first-person narration, folks:>

...which will kick off in tomorrow's commentary, okay? In the meantime, all of I Am Empowered's incomplete narrative can be enjoyed(?) at the project's hashtag on the account below:

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