I AM EMPOWERED, pt. 24: The YEAR ONE prose experiment continues (with DRAFT DAY, pt.1)! (Patreon)

You can check out I Am Empowered's previous installment here, or check out the entire archive of this defunct project here.

In case you'd forgotten, or are a semi-recent Patron and haven't had the time nor the inclination to look back though this site's sprawling archive, I Am Empowered was a short-lived prose project in which I tried to flesh out aspects of Emp's story not fully addressed in the comic proper. I wrote Emp's first-person narration in (old) Twitter-based 140-character format, with the time-jumping narrative taking place roughly around the beginning of Empowered vol.1.

We've hit the point in this loose jumble of episodes that no remaining chapter is complete; all the remaining material from this abortive project is a series of fragmentary sketches that wheeze to a halt in an inconclusive manner.

Just in time for the upcoming NFL draft, here's another incomplete but interesting fragment from the project that depicts a superheroic analogue for pro sports drafting. The only previous hint of this procedure was the panel above from Empowered vol. 1.

I AM EMPOWERED: DRAFT DAY (pt.1)

Every year, the nation's superteams gather at the Tachyon City Heroism Hall for what is formally titled "the Suprahuman Selection Meeting"—

—which is (much) better known to both capedom and the civilian public as the National Superteam Draft.

Decades ago, superteams nationwide recruited members on an unregulated basis, sparking friction between "have" and "have-not" franchises.

Teams that happened to be lavishly funded by billionaires enjoyed huge recruiting advantages over poorer, scrappier franchises.

Teams in fair-weather locales—such as, say, Paradise City's magic-fixed microclimate—attracted more heroes than Detroit or New Jotunheim.

Not surprisingly, this trend led to some parts of the country being perpetually overstaffed while others were left chronically "undercaped."

After years of bitchiness, the top superteams eventually hammered out an agreement to create parity in super-recruiting—in theory, at least.

In reality, undrafted free-agent capes and unaffiliated heroes usually gravitate to the more climatically—and culturally—pleasant locales.

More importantly, so do the nation's supply of supervillains, few of whom show particular fondness for New Jotunheim's never-ending winters.

Bad guys, being bad but not necessarily stupid, "follow the money" to the fair-weather climes where the stealable riches have often settled.

Good guys, in turn, "follow the villainy" to where the bad guys do their thang, in order to put their super-skills to productive use.

Both groups, I've come to suspect, tend to relocate to areas where their off-hours recreational opportunities are also the richest.

That is, cities well-supplied with the best party scenes and the smokin'-est, flauntiest hotties somehow never seem to lack for suprahumans.

(Hence, you see, the strangely anomalous number of supervillains and attendant superheroes infesting South Beach and Further South Beach.)

Anyhoo.

I never received an invite to the main Scouting Combine, the weeklong showcase for the best and brightest new capes to strut their stuff.

The famed Combine is held in the 5-mile-wide, subterranean SupraDupraDome, where the crop-creamiest draft prospects display their elitiness.

Under the watchful eyes of superscouts—and the watchful cameras of HeroNet—the Chosen Superfew weather a varied barrage of drills and tests.

The physical tests are bad enough—the 4000-yard dash, the pumped-gravity bench press, the pan-dimensional shuttle run, the 3-megacone drill.

The mental tests might, I think, be even more notorious, most of all the infamous, hero-humbling "ÜberWondralic" Cognitive Ability Test.

Still, despite the Jupiter-core pressure and high-intensity scrutiny, young heroes often springboard to fame during their Combine workouts.

Remember Sublim8 maxing out the bench press? Jugganaut almost collapsing the SupraDupraDome? BraneBrain overtaxing the ÜberWondralic server?

Many a cape began her rise to fame, celebrity, and all-around awesomeness with a Big, Dramatic, Gaspworthy Moment at her Combine appearance.

Yours truly, needless to say, was not one of those capes.

As desperately, pleadingly, prayingly as I wanted it to happen, the magical—literally magical!—invitation to the Scouting Combine never reached me.

When this year's list of invitees to the Combine popped up online, my own supranym was unaccountably—nay, unthinkably!—missing from it.

Oh, the sorry spectacle of me frantically reading and rereading and re-rereading the list, hoping my name would somehow appear THIS time.

I would dearly love to say that I handled this tragic omission with grace, with dignity, with a Grown-Ass Adult's hard-won maturity.

That, needless to say, is not what happened.

I bawled, I blubbered, I howled "Why not me?" to the heavens. I comfort-gorged myself on cookie dough, then merloted myself into a stupor.

(Followed, shortly thereafter, by me sobbingly, drunkenly horking up a vile stew of undigested cookie dough and red wine into the toilet.)

The next day, head a-throb with a truly dire merlot hangover, I went online and signed up for the nearest regional scouting combine.

Unlike the glorious, notably capitalized main Scouting Combine, the regional combines are a series of workaday, low-key, low-class affairs.

Across the nation, non-elite draft hopefuls drag their becaped behinds to the closest regional to perform for yawning, third-string scouts.

The regionals are superteamdom's means of detecting draft-eligible hidden gems that might have flown under the radar, to strain a metaphor.

(This, I admit, sounds rather more palatable a metaphor than the less charitable "scraping the bottom of the mask-and-tights barrel.")

I'm sickeningly dismayed—in fact, I almost puke again—to discover all the available slots at my city's regional have already been filled.

(I was so sure of an invite to the main Combine—why, I have actual powers, you guys!—that, oops, I didn't deign to apply for the regional.)

I'll have to drive all the way out to the still-open Last Vegas combine if I want to show my super-skillz to the scouts. Cue the BIG SIGH.

Quick-cut montage of me coaxing my ailing Toyota Vegas-ward all night—then gagging down the very worst and very cheapest gas-station "food"—

—then, bloated and logy, red-eyed and exhausted, changing into my supersuit in a pee-smelling Vegas bathroom stall at 6 o' clock in the AM.

Referring to the combine I attended as "a clown show" would, I'm afraid, be a grievous and unforgivable slight to clowns everywhere.

You may rest assured, howeva, that I wound up being the very clowniest of the clowny.

Cut to the inexplicably rainy morning of the Last Vegas combine, held at the run-down practice facility of the mothballed DerringDoDome.

A breathtakingly absurdist mass of superheroic wannabes mills nervously, each cape $200 poorer from the pretender-weeding registration fee.

(Had to pretty much empty my checking account to pay the fee, meaning that making my rent next week may pose a super-challenge all its own.)

Hulking posthumanoids fidget next to pluckily power-free crimefighters. Aging supraveterans pace beside postgrad heronewbs (like myself).

Endless anxieties animate our masked faces, from dewy-eyed, youthful nervousness to weary, faltering hopefulness to middle-aged desperation.

Many of the entrants, I inwardly sneer, have few superpowers beyond the ability to not perceive how they looked in fat-squeezing Spandex.

My sense of superiority fades, though, as it dawns on me that my own suit is easily the most hideously revealing ensemble at the combine.

Hogwild's bulge-intensive latex gear seems entirely flattering compared to the glittering hypermembrane painted over my pudgy, jiggly body.

My supersuit's molecule-thin mercilessness displays all—as in, ALL—of my physical flaws more thoroughly than any earthly textile ever could.

Speaking of mercilessness, it's easy to smirk from afar at the hapless goofs of, say, a TV talent show's selectively edited early auditions.

I assure you, howeva, that it's exponentially more painful and heartbreaking to see hopes being dashed in real time before your very eyes.

(END PART 1)

NEXT TIME ON I AM EMPOWERED: Coming up later in the month, brace yourselves for Emp's Draft Combine experience, folks!

NEXT TIME ON THIS HERE PATREON: No idea, to be perfectly frank!  (I'm prrrrrrobably squeezing in at least one more bonus post this week beyond the usual M/W/F schedule, though.)