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.
So, a few days into my associate membership as a Superhomey, I’m working the overnight shift at the Homeycrib, as befits my lowly status.
I take a breather from gazing dully at the Monitor Wall’s bajillion screens and head off to the break room, empty stomach gurgling noisily.
I resolutely ignore the temptations of the vending machines, stocked as they are with snacks and junk foods more evil than any supervillain.
Instead, with another BIG SIGH, I dutifully retrieve the night’s meager, calorie-miserly little microwave meal from the break-room fridge.
Say, here’s a unique office-fridge advantage of being a body-issue-plagued worker prone to stocking direly diet-y foodstuffs:
No one in the workplace, and I mean NO ONE, is very likely to poach my 150-calorie(!) Roasted Turkey and Vegetables “Skinny Mini” meal.
In truth, every time I open the shared fridge, I’m hoping against hope that one of my teammates DID, in fact, thieve that day’s Skinny Mini.
Then, gosh, I’d have no choice but to hit up the vending machines for a frosted toaster pastry or some peanut-butter cups or an apple pie.
BTW, those items’ stats: toaster pastry—420 calories, 10 g fat; peanut-butter cups—230 calories, 14 g fat; apple pie—440 calories, 27 g fat.
Jeez, doesn’t all that fat and sugar and carbohydrates and bad stuff sound just horrible? I MEAN, F**KING DELICIOUS. No, no, just horrible.
It’s not as if I might’ve slipped up and wolfed down any of those evil foods and stared miserably at the stats on their packaging afterward.
Anyhoo, cut to my wee little Skinny Mini meal rotating in the microwave, looking tiny and lonely on the vast expanse of the oven’s carousel.
I’m staring glumly at the Mini’s diminutive tray, thinking that a single turkey must provide enough meat for 30 or 40 of these meals, easy.
I hear a crackling sound behind me, and turn to see a brilliantly glowing ball of light hovering in midair above the break room’s tiles.
The unearthly glow intensifies from brilliant to blinding, before a whirly-swirly blur of rippling darkness bursts outward from the glare—
—and resolves into the whipping, flapping, flailing folds of a midnight-black cloak, thrashing open with a spray of glittering sparkles—
—to reveal Sistah Spooky standing with opera-gloved arms crossed, fixing me with an unmistakably sour expression that her mask can’t hide.
As always, her ridiculous and unattainable level of flawless beauty is an almost physical affront to my gnawing sense of bodily inadequacy.
Bared, sculpted abs above clingy, low-rise boy shorts I’d never dare wear—and a perfect thigh gap, as opposed to my all-too-rubby thighs.
Garters and stockings, for that leg-intensive look that practically screams, “I’m hawt and I know it, so why shouldn’t YOU know it, too?”
Plus, thanks to six-inch platform heels, she looms over me like a nightmare vision of an especially contemptuous and sneer-y fashion model.
I doubt her flaunty little costume does much to intimidate bad guys, but it certainly intimidates the hell out of dumpier girls like me.
Come to think of it, I’m fairly certain that’s why she dresses that way. “Behold my hotness, ye poor, pudgy lesser beings, and despair.”
Awkward silence for a full ten-count, frown-y Spooky glaring and unmoving, twitchy me wilting and fidgeting under her gaze.
Cue the microwave beeping that my Skinny Mini is finished—ahem—”cooking” and ready to deliver its 150 deeply unsatisfying calories to me.
“You’re needed on the rooftop,” Spooky declares icily, then whirls around with a casually theatrical billow of cloak. “Follow me.”
I start to say something about my freshly nuked meal, think better of it, anxiously puppy-trail after her with mind racing.
By overtly failing to acknowledge the microwave’s beep, is Spooky wordlessly stating that I might be well-served by skipping a meal or two?
One sign of a genuine Alpha Female: She doesn’t need to say anything aloud, as I automatically hear her hypercritical voice in my own head.
Not every girl could make her platform-heeled footsteps sound intimidating and imperious, but Spooky always manages the feat with ease.
Cloak streaming, she clip-clops authoritatively up the stairs to the roof, with me uncertainly padding after her in suit-stockinged feet.
I stare at her towering shoes in disbelief, unable to grasp how she’s stair-climbing so effortlessly, without even a single ankle wobble.
Since Spooky mainly flies in battle, her footwear’s wild impracticality is usually irrelevant. Right now, I think, she must be showing off.
“Behold my majestic gait in 6-inch platforms! You, oh lesser being, would surely totter and stumble and humiliate yourself in such shoes.”
Again, she doesn’t need to make that pronouncement aloud, as I’m automatically thinking it for her. Superpowered Queen Bee at work, y’all.
Then I think: Is Spooky “cheating” by using her magical powers to allow her to walk in those absurd shoes, just to make an impression on me?
Jury’s out on that one. I could just as easily imagine her practicing for months in those platforms to demonstrate her manifest superiority.
Cue another long, awkward silence as we stand on the Homeycrib’s rooftop landing pad, looking down at the nighttime urban panorama below us.
<END OF EXCERPT>
Wellp, if this actually worked, webcomic readers, I’ll try again shortly with another excerpt from I Am Empowered continuing this chapter of Spooky/ Emp interaction.
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
