DISTRESSED DAMSELS: First-draft EMPOWERED pages, pt.2 (Patreon)

Following up on last Wednesday's post, behold two more very short stories from the very first version of Empowered (long before the nascent project acquired that title), drawn in July 2004 in place of a bunch of damsel-in-distress pin-ups that  were boring me to tears. 

A few words, as we kick off with "No Safe Place," a two-pager featuring a quartet of distressing situations for Emp:

Panel 2 above features an early version of Empowered vol.2's eventual "Project Slappy," you'll note.

Apparently, g-d superheroes guard office supply stores in this very early version of the series. (I hadn't bothered with any—ahem—worldbuilding with these tossed-off joke pages as yet.) And lo, Emp's mask is off again!

And now we move on to a three-page story, "Lofer," that was the original ending of the initial bunch of stories featuring our still-nameless heroine:

Some whimsical Mysteriously Intermittent Post-Millennial Torso Glitching visible in the pages above—but then again, these pages were never intended for publication. Their torsos almost certainly wouldn't have been quite so wonky on a "real" comics job, judging by the Livewires pages I was drawing that summer. (I wound up drawing about half the pages from issues #4-6 of the Livewires miniseries, by the way.)

Brace yourselves for the shocking finale below:

Yeahp, in this early version, Emp had already become adept at escaping bondage, a trait that wouldn't become pronounced until later volumes in the series.

As I said, this three-pager was the original ending of the nascent project, as I'd drawn enough pagecount to cover the commissions that these stories were replacing. Ah, but within a few weeks, I thought of other things to do with the character, and started cranking out longer and longer stories as I began expanding the scope of these goofy "non-comic," as I saw it. (As in, hello Thugboy!) Wheeee!

Anyhoo, hoped you enjoyed an early glimpse at largely unseen iterations of Empowered, folks! (In fact, some or most of these pages saw publication as bonus material in the long-out-of-print Empowered Deluxe vol.1 hardcover.) 

TOMORROW ON THIS HERE PATREON: Not really sure, TBH, but something will go up on Thursday, I assure you!