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.

STRAIGHT CASH, SUPERHOMEY (PART 2)

I wake up again in the Cartel's crappy-smelling lair, still cash-cocooned and powerless, sprawled on my side on cracked, uneven concrete.

Quite clearly, the cheapskates of the Crime Cartel aren't bothering to spend much of their namesake Cash on their low-rent, smelly old HQ. 

Nearby, Card Charger moans and Kap’n Koin snorts derisively as, I assume, he tugs the cardware gear off him. (Clank, hardware hits floor.)

Footsteps crunch over to me. "There's a 'Homeysite online reserved for ransoming you, right?" Money Master demands, crouching beside me.

"Mmph," indignantly. The SuperHomeys do indeed have a special site for ransoming captured members, but it's not reserved JUST for me, okay?

(That being said, some Sad Truthiness: In the program's history, I've already been ransomed more times than all other 'Homeys put together.)

When Money Master peels the bills from my mouth, though, I meekly tell him the address and, sniffling, explain the online ransoming dealie. 

Ah, but while I may appear helpless and stammer-y and blushingly mortified, my mind is furiously racing through a hasty but fiendish scheme.

Luckily, I read up on the Cash Crime Cartel's HomeyWiki entry only a few days before, and have even worked up a few villain-whupping ideas.

(Not for nuthin' was "Advanced Strategies and Innovative Tactics in Cape-on-Cape Conflict" my all-time favorite Suprahuman Studies course.)

The Cash Crime Cartel's members thoroughly loathe each other, but stay together to exploit the heightened brand awareness of a shared theme.

(Studies show that theme-based supervillain groups—the Ice Pack or Klown Klan, say—boast higher recognition value than non-themed teams.)

While Kap’n Koin's powerset is the most potent, he still feels disrespected because he controls only the lowliest monetary denominations.

With these crucial factoids in mind, I spring my hastily improvised trap once Money Master leaves the room, leaving me alone with the Cap'n.

I quickly draw his attention with some futile struggling. (Go figure: Writhing, wriggling superheroines always draw male capes' attention.)

I hear him chuckle indulgently as I give up and sag back against my cocooning bonds with a comically deep sigh of utter defeat and despair.

"I knew I was out of my league," I moan. "What chance would I have against a team so badass that the Atrocity Clique is buying them out?"

Kap’n Koin's indulgent chuckling abruptly stops. I hear him stomp closer to me, then growl, "The hell you talking about, superchica?"

Innocently, I explain that I'd been held hostage at Atrocity Clique HQ a week ago (truth!) and heard them discussing his team (untruth!).

"Moustache Magus claimed he'd acquired you guys as a new Atrocity Clique affiliate," I coo, coaxing a sharp intake of breath from Cap'n.

Me: "He said you had signed the contract and gotten the advance already. Kinda sounded like they had to pay out more than they liked, too."

Blindfolded by dollars, I can't read Kap’n Koin's expression, but his increasingly heavy, rasping breathing tells me all I need to know.

Me: "In fact, I remember him complaining about the redundancy of sending such a huge, lump-sum cash payment to, y'know, a cash-based team."

Note: The Atrocity Clique, as one of the most profitable bad-guy groups on the West Coast, really does buy out rival superteams on occasion.

Moustache Magus, howeva, would do a 'stache-ruining spit take at the idea of buying out a group of bottom-rung losers like the Cartel.

Me, knife-twisty: "I'm pretty sure he mentioned talking to Money Master and Card Charger, anyway. Maybe you should ask them about this…?" 

No reply from the Cap'n, but I can hear him fuming—for reals! He's exhaling in such a drawn-out manner that I can barely keep from laughing.  

The only sound missing, here: A teakettle's rapidly escalating whistle. I'm glad I can't see his presumably reddening face, or I'd crack up.

What can I say? As an oft-downtrodden and disrespected heroine, I rock mad skills in the "exploiting bitterness and resentment" department.

Plus, let's face the cruel, insensitive, "don't-say-this-to-their-masked-faces" facts: Bad guys are not always the brightest of folk, okay?

Supervillainy, by and large, is a field with a reverse Bell curve, tending to attract either geniuses or, well, extremely non-genius-y guys.

<END OF EXCERPT >

Wellp, if this actually worked, webcomic readers, I’ll try again shortly with another excerpt from I Am Empowered, which will continue to serialize this final (if lengthy) chapter from the incomplete project.

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