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. This episode features our heroine outwitting her latest supercaptors, “The Cash Money Clique,” by craftily exacerbating tensions among this team of dumbass supervilains.

 STRAIGHT CASH, SUPERHOMEY (PART 3)

When Money Master returns to the room, sounding happy after setting up my ransoming, events quickly take a turn for the testosterone-iffic.

No point in recounting their conversation in detail, given that it rapidly degenerates into heated exchanges of compound-word profanities.

Kap’n Koin accuses Money Master of cutting him out of an Atrocity Clique windfall. MM: Puzzled and defensive, before going on the offensive.

KK: Escalates the tension first with accusations re: MM's sexuality and maternal relationship, then overt threats of grievous bodily harm.

MM: Responds with similar allegations re: KK's sexuality and maternal relationship, then issues his own counterproposals for bodily harm.

Me: Slowly, stealthily, inchworm-crawling away from the zone of intensifying conflict, hoping to get out the line of currency-related fire.

Counterpoint to the obscenity-laden, ape-tastic chest-beating: Quiet sounds of currency fluttering and coins jingling. Capefight: IMMINENT.

Then, all hell breaks loose as open civil war sunders the Cash Crime Cartel forever, and I hastily try to roll myself away from the mayhem.

I strain my ears to decipher the srsly loud but frustratingly uninformative sounds of a villain-on-villain supertussle's audiobook version.

Whoosh of banknotes, sharp crack of quarter-fed blasts hitting concrete, grunts and roars from both capes, stray coins chiming and ringing.

Money Master screams, gets cut off abruptly, goes silent. Kap’n Koin bellows triumphantly, if incoherently. Card Charger snores, oblivious.

Then, just as I'd hoped, the cocoon of currency enshrouding me suddenly loses all magical cohesion, instantly loosening and falling apart.

$100 bills fall off me en masse as I hurriedly stagger to my feet, brushing off Benjamins and swiftly taking in the scene around me.

Bloody-faced and unconscious, Money Master slumps limply against a projectile-pocked wall, coins tinkling and rolling all around him.

Cursing bitterly, Kap’n Koin swipes at a flinch-y welter of papercuts festooning his arms and face, bloodied bills fluttering to his feet.  

While he's distracted, I dart over to the corner where snoozing Charger sprawls on a ratty couch, and snatch up his cardware's bulky debris.

I'm too flustered and frantic to think of a badass, action-movie line when I run back over and began clubbing Kap’n Koin with the cardware.

Even with all my superpowers gone, I still have a remarkable talent for sucker-bludgeoning goons with foreign objects of the hefty variety.

Note: You can easily pull a muscle thumping hapless bad guys in this manner. If possible, you should try to stretch and warm up beforehand.

Cut to all three members of the Cash Crime Cartel beaten-down, trussed-up, facedown on the floor, gratuitous gags stuffed in their mouths.

While I had no need whatsoever to muzzle these idiots, I still did it out of spite, for all the times I've been gagged for no good reason.

"Have a taste of your own sexist medicine, boys," I plan to crow, once the groggy doofi awaken and begin "mmph"-ing in muffled protest.

I recover Money Master's phone, flop down on the lair’s lone, decrepit couch, and compose a text to the Homeycrib’s rapid response line.

Limiting myself to only a few triumphalist emoticons—okay, a half-dozen—I alert the on-duty Superhomeys that I need a supervillain pickup.

Naturally, I send along a humiliating photo of the defeated, trussed-up Cash Money Clique as proof of my villain-vanquishing awesomeness.

Also naturally, my text fails to mention that I was defeated and trussed-up first—no point in burdening my teammates with trifling minutiae!

(Alas, as I am nothing if not a good girl—SIGH—the after-action report I file that night fully and honestly details what happened to me.) 

After that, I open the camera roll on MM's phone and delete all his embarrassing photos of me, kneeling and dollar-cocooned. Priorities!

Then I spent a constructive few minutes scrolling through his phone’s address book, harvesting any useful-looking names and contact info.  

Phone numbers and email addies for each member of the all-villain supergroup Kollateral Damaj? Why, thank you, Money Master’s Contacts list!

Street addresses for what must be Old Dirty Blaster’s heretofore undiscovered Top-Secret Lair and Quark Queen’s new apartment? Yes, please!

I’m humming quite happily to myself as I tap “Share Contact” repeatedly, emailing oodles of intriguing bad-guy info to my Homeymail account.

Raiding a villain’s smartphone: Less fun than rooftop recon or surveilling from the shadows, but arguably more useful for gathering intel.

We’d be screwed if most supervillains ever thought to set Passcode Locks on their phones—even the Evil Geniuses rarely seem to bother.

Ah, but once I finish my dataharvesting and set the phone aside, the Cash Money Clique’s final—and toughest—challenge suddenly confronts me.

<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. So, who knows what today's post might feature? Could be Life Drawing or Distressed Damsels content (both of which are featured at least three times per month), or something in the Work Stages, Vintage Con Sketches or Design departments, or possibly something entirely new. Golly!

-Adam Warren