DISTRESSED DAMSELS: "Sticky Situations," pt.1 (Patreon)

With this week's post, we're kicking off serialization of a 2003-ish commissioned story featuring my iteration of Dirty Pair's Yuri that I've actually considered redoing as an Empowered episode, for reasons that will eventually become obvious. 

(Perhaps I should point out that Yuri is canonically 19 years old, and definitely looks so in my version of the character, in response to the warning that's popped up onscreen as I prep this post: "Patreon doesn't allow the featuring of seemingly underage characters in the context of adult content." Not sure if everyone's getting this warning, or just manga/anime-influenced artists...)

Howeva, a few words about the genesis of this story, starting out with the random con sketches that inspired it, starting below:

I can't recall if the commissioner from this 2000-ish con sketch actually requested notoriously goofy Marvel supervillain Paste-Pot Pete (later renamed "the Trapster," disappointingly enough) victimizing the "hot pants & garter belts" version of Kei and Yuri, or id I decided to inflict ol' Pete on an unsuspecting fellow who just wanted a DP DiD piece.

Ah, yes, I'd forgotten the riff that the "smartcloth" of DP's hot pants featured warning messages, however useless those messages might be. 

Anyhoo, another longtime regular patron (though not yet a capitalized Patron) was amused by these sketches, and circa 2003 asked for a longer-form Paste-Pot Pete encounter of some sort. And lo, thus did the longest of all these commissioned, proto-Empowered comics begin— and even more amazing, this wound up being the only such narrative with a definitive conclusion. No, really!

Yeahp, my iteration of ol' "PPP" was rather lazily character designed, in that he kinda looks like my version of Grunge from Wildstorm's Gen13. Note also that the "Pete's Wicked Paste Pistol" bit is a reference to Pete's Wicked Ale, a then-popular(?) microbrew now sadly departed from the craft brewing scene.

During this stylistic era in my work, the dreaded "Mysteriously Intermittent Post-Millennial Torso Glitch" that would later plague early Empowered volumes was in full effect, so expect to see plenty of cartoonishly twisty poses and hyper-stylized, almost Shane-Glines-ian anatomy on poor Yuri in this story.

Wasn't exactly knocking myself out with the originality in this never-to-be-published story that few would ever see, hence the use of the familiar trope of "fleeing heroine triggers somewhat inexplicable steam release valve to mess with bad guy."

Anyhoo, next week the gluey shenanigans roll onward, with Yuri blundering into an even more lazily hacked-out trap. Wheeee! 

TOMORROW ON THIS HERE PATREON:  Er, either I'm restarting serialization of the Twitter-format prose experiment I Am Empowered, or maybe I'll post some recent-ish Empowered vol. 12 pages.