And now, my latest attempt to paste in an excerpt from the third 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; note that this chapter is an especially long one exploring the art and science of superheroic roofjumping.

ABOMINABLEMENT DIFFICILE (part 4)

Yeahp, sometimes my goofy ol' supersuit, embarrassing and unreliable and enigmatic as it might be, feeds me pure awesome sauce, straight up.

Ah, but what the hypermembrane giveth, the hypermembrane can also taketh away… which ith uthually what happenth, to my dithappointment.

Clearly wary that I'll get too hopped up on WIN, the suit always seems to bring me back to earth—yes, literally—with a strong dose of FAIL.

Shall I spin you a tale of exactly such giveth/taketh WIN/FAIL contrastiness, which happens to involve R2R mishappiness? Indeed, I shall.

Late last month, I'm holding down the Homeycrib fort all by my lonesome, while the other on-duty 'Homeys are off chasing after GammaGibbon.

I'm not at ALL pouty 'n' peeved to be left out of the posse, despite my Defcon Level 2 Frowny Face or the stream of BIG SIGHS I'm issuing.

Not sure what I was doing, but I definitely WASN'T catching up on TOP CHEF when a supercrime alert popped up on the giant Homeyscreen.

Trigger Troll (semi-competent C-List supervill) and Quasarmodo (notorious D-lister) on a rampage? Those two doofi, I can definitely handle!

TOP CHEF—which I totally wasn't watching—can wait! I darn near break an indoor land-speed record running to the nearest Lotus Node gateway. 

A quick dose of solo villain-vanquishing would SO boost my godawfully bad superstats. Hello, Superheroic C-List! (Seriously buzzing, here.)

I'm careful not to fantasize about victory, which is delusional and bad, and instead am VISUALIZING victory, which is aspirational and good.

A Lotus Node portal deposits me on a rooftop two blocks away, so I can sneak up on 'em. (Portaling directly into a battlezone? Bad tactics.)

Dang if the city isn't awash in the "golden hour" before sunset, with warm, angled, Hollywood-y light flooding the scene just like a movie.

For once, positive anticipation grips me. I'm getting the chills—in a good way!—and grinning like a fiend as I sprint across the rooftop.

Asphalt crunches under my feet as I charge to the roof's edge, prepping for an easy 60-foot jump over to the neighboring building's rooftop.

Textbook-y! My last two strides line up perfectly. My footstrike is correctly flat. I launch myself off the roof in a power-sprint takeoff.

For a teeny fraction of a second, I'm golden(-lit), everything's going perfectly, I am an awesomely badass leaping ladycape, then BIRDSTRIKE

Blur of feathers and a blare of squawking and a sudden, fluttering impact as I collide with a pigeon—I think—JUST as I leap off the rooftop.

Instantly, I'm destabilized and tumbling out of control, the city whirling and streaking into a smear of golden light and feathers and sky.

The collision throws off my leap’s arc just enough to make me miss the neighboring roof. I come in low, crash through an upper-floor window.

In a single second—or less, but who's timing?—of stunning sensory overload, a whole lotta violent, noisy, messy impacts batter me around.

Plate glass booms, envelops me in a sudden wash of keening shards and tinkling fragments that tug and tear and claw at me insistently.

Then I'm slamming off a desktop, BAM, going facefirst into a big ol' flatscreen monitor, KRAKK, more keening shards and tinkling fragments.

Then, blinded by a faceful of shattering monitor, I feel crunching, splintering impact as I crash into—and through—the far wall's sheetrock.

Then the roaring stops. Silence, interrupted first by the small noises of skittering debris, then by a puzzled voice. "The fuck was THAT?"

The bitter taste of shattered drywall's gypsum plaster stings my tongue. Coughing, still blinded, I wrench against the crumbling sheetrock. 

Yanking the crumpled monitor from my face, I stagger back out into the ruins of the office, dazed, confused, no longer awesomely badass.

A chubby, white-shirt-and-tie Office Drone is staring at me dumbfounded, before his gaze drops down my body, never to return to my eyes.

I look down, too, and see that my supersuit's membrane has been badly shredded by the window glass, leaving plenty of doughy flesh exposed.

In fact, I'm now more naked than clothed, not that my suit's gossamer film does much to clothe my puffy expanse of body in the first place.

Shreds of my supersuit litter the office's desktop and drift in the blast of air from the open window, glittering brightly then evaporating.

I look up, and Office Drone's cell-phone camera is panning up and down me, stopping to record for posterity that I do indeed have breasts.

Mumbling an incoherent apology, I turn and flee the wrecked office, knowing that Office Drone's camera is now trained on my escaping behind.

Time for my Superheroic Walk of Shame to the floor's elevator, past the gantlet of office workers' gawking eyes and leering camera phones.

As seen on YouTube minutes later, I do make quite a sight: A blushing, half-naked girl trying to cover herself as she darts down a hallway.

Adding to the hilarity: I'm caked in white gypsum powder from the drywall, giving me that extra je ne sais quoi air of comedic incompetence.

At the elevator, I'm so gripped by the prickly heat of utter embarrassment, it's all I can do not to start scratching furiously at my scalp.

The wait for the elevator? The longest of my life. Soundtrack? The office workers' whispers and muttered jokes, the clicks of their cameras.

The elevator ride down? Not much better. It's quitting-o'-clock, so I'm crammed into a car with a very, very amused swarm of Office Drones.

Ladies: Think that being crowd-squeezed in an overloaded elevator is mortifyingly uncomfortable? Try it when you're mostly naked, sometime.

<END OF EXCERPT>

Wellp, if this actually worked, webcomic readers, I’ll try again next week with another excerpt from I Am Empowered, continuing this very long and, eventually, action-packed chapter about superheroic rooftop shenanigans.

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