DISTRESSED DAMSELS: "THE TROUBLE WITH EMERALD," part 2! (Patreon)

[Link to our previous installment in this series]

Note that I just changed the title of this goofy little pseudo-story effort to The Trouble with Emerald from the previous We Have an Emerald Problem, as I found the former a tad punchier.

So!

I've been trying to think of something to do with the various DiD sketch sets I have kicking around that feature backup superheroine Emerald, who appears as basically a dark-haired, maskless variation on Emp's tattered-suit design (and modern-era  physique) from Empowered. Technically, the character predates Emp as a DiD commission subject by quite some time, but that's another story I'll address at a later date (well, maybe).

Recently, my ever-mercurial muse abruptly informed me of a wacky yet strangely compelling narrative concept into which I could twist and repurpose the Emerald sketch sets. I can tell you, dear readers, that this approach to a suspiciously distress-prone superdamsel will wind up treading rather different teritory than Empowered, though conveyed via similarly heavy (if not even heavier) doses of cheesecake.

Much like some of the earlier Rose & Lily sets, this non-comic story format will feature mostly random DiD sketches slathered on with plenty of new text conveying the narrative proper, such as it is.

Let us continue!

Our previous installment established, via the narration of conspiracy-theorizing supervillain Deathmasque, that distress-prone heroine Emerald was by far the favorite "superhottie" of the so-called "dark-cape community"—to a possibly anomalous if not inexplicable degree. Wellp, with our next two pages of Deathmasque-annotated DiD sketches, we're about to see that something is clearly amiss with bad guys' perceptions of Emerald:

(Note: Adapted this from an old developmental sketch set of a superheroine forced to tape herself up due to a hostage scenario akin to the future Ocelotina's first appearance in Empowered vol. 2.)

Another discordant note is addressed in our next annotated page:

That first image above is a pretty good pose, gotta say; will likely reuse that for The Chaste and the Chained sometime.

Wellp, guess what, dear readers? This goofy-ass premise has already spawned its own set of thorny continuity issues! See, My Stupid Muse started barraging me with a pretty clever series of ideas fleshing out the—God help me, as I type the next two words—Emerald universe.

As a consequence, the next two pages of repurposed sketch sets, which are older efforts dating back a few weeks, have now been overtaken by recent Emeraldverse continuity changes. The closing point that the annotated narrative below addresses is still relevant to establishing what Emerald is up to, but several lines of Deathmasque narration have now been rendered obsolete. I didn't feel like rewriting all the text, though, so here goes the now-defunct sequence:

(This is an old sketch set you've already seen, BTW, albeit without the annotation.)

Anyhoo, DiD cognoscenti will of course recognize that this scene is a callback to several famous Spider-Woman issues from the 70s, which have been the basis of many such damsel-y commissions on my part. That old Marvel scene featured the nonpowered bad guy Hangman inexplicably trussing up a superstrong Jessica Drew, as the text above references in notably similar "Hanging Judge vs. Emerald" form.

However!

Thanks to My Stupid Muse choosing to download unto me useless insights and revisions re: this throwaway goof of a "project," I can now say that a quite straightforward reason exists for how a regular-guy, supervillain-in-name-only Joe Schmo like Hanging Judge can overpower a fully superhuman heroine like Emerald. As you will see in future installments of The Trouble with Emerald, this otherwise vanilla capeverse has been cosmically tweaked with one key, direly problematic difference, which has triggered a long series of sweeping consequences—including the arrival of our mysterious heroine. Lordy loo!

In the meantime, let's wrap up this annotated scene with the continuity glitch, continuing to riff on the Spider-Woman bit:

Note that the closing point of this two-page annotation—that supervillains have an unremarked-on tendency to, well, go away after capturing Emerald—will very much remain in continuity, and will be addressed in further detail by a ranting Deathmasque down the road. Just who is this possibly shapeshifting superdamsel, and what the heck is she up to? How, exactly, is this variant capeverse tweaked, and why the heck did that happen? Find out later, $5+ tier Patrons!

Amazingly enough, I could probably fashion a "real comic" outta this goofy joke's as-yet-unrevealed "full premise," though that would be a comic that would traffic in even more DiD imagery than Empowered (which is saying something). I have no intentions, though, of drawing another g-d comic about a distress-prone superheroine. (A distress-drone Elf Mage? Well, that's a different story.)

NEXT TIME ON THIS HERE PATREON: No idea, TBH, but something should be coming up in the next M/W/F slot. Let's find out together, shall we?