DISTRESSED DAMSELS: EMPOWERED vol.12's "Sacrificial (Not Quite) Virgins" scene! (Patreon)

Behold, the opening page from the upcoming Empowered vol.12 sequence I've informally dubbed "the Sacrificial (Not Quite) Virgins" scene!

UPDATE: As seen at the end of the image gallery above, I just tacked on a side-by-side excerpt image I worked up for promoting this post on Twitter.

Readers miiiiight have been able to guess the true point of the scene if I left Emp's word balloon uncensored (though I kinda doubt it), hence the black block, which will not appear in the published comic.

Note also the pseudo-Lovecraftian Deep-Ones-ish cultists, which marks yet another appearance of "fish people" in this series; perhaps they're the Empverse equivalent of the DCU's seemingly endless stream of ape-based riffs?

Enjoy the exceedingly rare appearance of a thong in my costume designs, folks! (The only other occurrence I can think of would be Kei's swimsuit from 1989's Dirty Pair: Dangerous Acquaintances, which was at least thong-adjacent.)

I nailed most of the page's graphic elements in the initial rough...

...save for Ninjette's feet and legs, which bugged the crap outta me. After a bunch of variant roughs (as seen in the image gallery above), I wound up with this pose:

...which is undeniably quite rigid and stiff, but (IMHO) works in the scene's context of "sacrificial victim."

Anyhoo, back to work on the scene's next page! Note that, early last week, I was briefly ahead of schedule for December after wrapping up Empowered vol.12's "zombie horror with Fetchingly Bepantsed Emp" scene (for which the Bigger Spenders of the $10 & $20 tiers saw an exhaustive Work Stages preview at the end of last month); however, multiple days of work on this opening, full-bleed page for the next scene immediately threw me back behind schedule for the month. Ouch!

NEXT TIME ON DISTRESSED DAMSELS, I'll likely be posting the last pages from that early-2000s linen-finish-cardstock story of poor Rose and Lily's struggles.

NEXT TIME ON THIS HERE PATREON: Not quite sure, at the moment! Could be Life Drawings, or more illos from the Santa's Stealth Elf (or, better, "Stelf") gig, or mebbe more of Unnamed Robot Comic.