Distressed damsels: Unused EMPOWERED pages (Patreon)

For this week's DiD dump, I'm digging back in the archives a bit, and posting some unused Empowered material. The 2012 sketch above is from an unpublished sequel to the Extra Sketchiness mini-sketchbook, from which I've already posted a few pieces.

Here's another commission originally slated to be (re)used for the nonexistent sketchbook. Note that its text wound up being used as the title for the Empowered Unchained TPB collecting the "floppy" one-shots: 

And here's the illo's rough:

Ah, but starting below, we're jumping way back to 2004 and the first draft of the tossed-off comics that would eventually evolve into Empowered. Here's the shorter, 2-page version of a story that I redrew and expanded to 4 pages for the first volume—but first, some notes I wrote on said pages for Empowered Deluxe vol.1:

At this point, poor Emp-to-be didn't have a name of any sort, as yet. "Superblonde", as J. Random Thug dubs her here, was the closest she'd get to having a "supranym" for quite a while. Come to think of it, she's lucky that I didn't choose to go with Superblonde as the nascent project's title. (I didn't get around to using the archly ironic designation Empowered for these teeny episodes until much later on, and the idea of "Empowered" being her superhero name occurred to me even later still.)  

My apologies in advance for the crappiness of the previous pages, as the only existing version of this file I could find was a sadly low-res jpeg. Note that this is a page layout quite different from the version that saw print, complete with the often-criticized "brokeback" pose in which a cute girl's chest and backside are both fully visible in the same pose. Just for the record, this pose isn't quite as "impossible" in reality as some people think, though it is indisputably crass and obnoxious, which is why I generally try to avoid drawing said pose nowadays.

Next up, a 2-pager that didn't make it into Empowered vol. 1. Note that a version of the hospital scene would end up in vol. 2: 

Note the amazingly primitive incarnations of Capitan Rivet and Sistah Spooky on display in the page above... Have to say, I really, really wish I had spent more than (literally) a minute or two designing these very important characters before I scrawled them down. Note also that Early Emp was often stripped of her mask, something that would be frowned upon under the so-called "Unwritten Rules" I'd later devise to govern interaction between Empverse superheroes and bad guys. 

Next up is another first-draft curiosity, a 3-pager which never appeared in the published Empowered vol.1 (but was reprinted as a bonus in Empowered Deluxe vol. 1). Why, you might ask? Wellp, one of my female friends pointed out to me that this story’s closing rapprochement between Emp and Spooky was a tad unlikely, to say the least.

Specifically, my friend noted from personal experience that “Poor silly [Emp], that stuff never wins you points with the snotty girls.” I thought she had a point, so I wound up spiking this story entirely, and pulling it out of Official Emp Continuity. Later on, I created Ninjette to become Emp’s best friend, as opposed to the possibly friendly Spooky that might have resulted from this story.  

Updating these notes from their first appearance in Empowered Deluxe, I should tell you which friend of mine made that suggestion above: why, none other than Carla Speed McNeil, who would go on to draw the miniseries Empowered and Sistah Spooky's High School Hell 14 years later! And now you know... the rest of the story.

Anyhoo, the Emp & Spooky 3-pager above was the original ending for the first bunch of stories; I went back to work on a paying gig after this, and put this stuff aside for a few months. After getting some positive feedback from artists and editors who saw the early, unpolished jpegs, though, I decided to revisit the budding Empverse, and rest was history. (Note, by the way, another important reason for this story never seeing print: The precedent of Emp so easily wriggling free from bondage was very problematic.)

My rooting through the "Empowered old stuff" also dug up this early, 2-page version of a longer vol. 1 story, which kicks off with an image of Distressed Emp that might seem familiar from a recent vol. 12 preview:

Pretty sure panel 1 above didn't make it into the expanded version of the story. In any event, Emp's hair being long enough to hide her, ah, southernmost naughty bits is a concept that definitely didn't make it into future incarnations of the series.

And to close this surprisingly time-consuming post on a non-DiD note, here's a final, admittedly wonky AF sketch from the "old stuff" folder, featuring a very early version of (eventual) Emp's costume: