For clarity’s sake, the previous page’s concluding panel featured Emp narrating, “Every time I go to put the suit on, I have to delude myself into believing one thing:”—and cue this page’s cavalcade of remembered bondage trauma.

In the upper left corner: Behold, the lone intersection of Empowered and the “tape drone,” a high-tech bondage riff I originally created for the Dirty Pair—as seen in the 1999-2000 Run from the Future miniseries, in particular—that was later popularized by the fine “damsel-in-distress” artist We-R-Nomad on deviantART. In the decades since, the tape drone has become a generic and ubiquitous trope in DiD fan art, it seems, but I’m not terribly interested in claiming any credit for theoretically pioneering the concept. (In fact, the idea’s so obvious that I’d have to assume that other iterations have appeared elsewhere in Western or Japanese pop culture of decades past; I just never saw ’em, if so.)

In the lower right corner: Okay, so applying duct tape to cover up Emp’s exposed breasts would definitely veer into violation of the Unwritten Rules governing interactions between bad guys and superheroes; then again, leaving her exposed would be a bit of an issue, too. On a related note, the Twitter-format prose experiment I Am Empowered established that, as the supersuit loses surface area, the hypermembrane allocates its dwindling resources to cover up her, ah, “swimsuit areas” as much as it can, so full exposure of her chest seems unlikely. (That said, her mask, gloves, and “socks” take priority over “naughty-bits” coverage, per I Am Empowered.)

Today’s Patreon update: As it’s a Wednesday, time for the $5+ Patron tiers to get their weekly dose of commissioned damsel-in-distress content! (No idea what as to exactly that might be at this time, though; these commentaries are written much further out from posting than are my often last-minute Patreon updates.)

-Adam Warren