Distressed Damsels: Unused EMPOWERED 8-page inked scene (Patreon)

DELUXE 8-PAGE DOSE OF HIGH-CONTRAST DAMSELRY!  Woo hoo!  (Most weekly installments along these lines certainly won't be 8pp long, or I'll be outta material very quickly.  Howeva, this story fragment didn't break all that cleanly into halves, so I'm delivering it to y'all in one big clump.  Enjoy?) 

Behold, an unused Empowered scene—can't quite call it a story as such, though "story fragment" might be more accurate.  Drawn circa 2005 or so, it was a semi-direct commission of sorts, as I had one generous regular who wanted an Empowered version of a somewhat infamous Spider-Woman story from the 70s.  As I was messing around with high-contrast Sharpie-marker art experiments at the time, I decided to knock out a brief "harsh B&W" few pages, which staggered out to 8pp before I abruptly pulled the plug.  (Forgot to erase the first page before I scanned it, alas.)

One of the wackier bits about that original Spider-Woman story was that no explanation was ever given for how the superstrong chica was lassoed, trussed up, and carried off by normal-human schmo the Hangman.  This story fragment addressed that issue by establishing the (probably) non-canonical concept that Emp can lose her powers just from getting roped—and that was a precedent I did not want to establish, at least at that time. 

The scene was so overt a reference to the Spider-Woman issues that I didn't even consider using it in Empowered  proper.  However, the Hangman-influenced idea of the deluded bad guy who claims to be kidnapping Emp for her own good would, of course, see print in vol. 10's "Le Chevalier Blanc" DiD story.

Gotta say that some of the high-contrast shots of Emp hold up pretty well for 15-year-old work, especially that very last page.  Whaddaya think?  To be honest, this art style's so time-consuming that I'm not likely to revisit it in "analog" media, but a high-contrast DiD pin-up drawn in Procreate might be a possibility for future art requests