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Description
Behold, a double-page spread from early on (pages 2 & 3) in EMPOWERED: "The Wench With A Million Sighs", the upcoming, one-shot installment in my ongoing "sexy superhero comedy" series from Dark Horse Comics. You can see the luxurious color cover art here: [link]

Yeahp, once again, Emp's sorta-mentor Capitan Rivet gets his metallic behind kicked... Here's the solicitation copy for the one-shot:

Even as costumed crimefighter “Empowered” fights a desperate battle against a functionally invulnerable, grave-robbing supervillain inside a secret underground mausoleum for fallen superheroes, back at her apartment, the alien demonlord imprisoned upon her coffee table spins a tempestuous tell-all tale of the often-struggling heroine’s deepest secrets... The scruple-free storyteller soon reveals how all of Empowered’s many frustrations at work, at home, and even in the bedroom can be conveyed strictly through the vocabulary of her extraordinarily expressive exhalations, thus making her... “The Wench With A Million Sighs!”

To clarify a tad, the story alternates between superheroic action (Emp vs. bad guy) and sitcommish shenanigans (Caged Demonwolf, Ninjette and Thugboy discussing Emp's manyfold sighs), so as to provide a sample of the general EMPOWERED experience for readers both new and old. Or, if you don't mind the use of one of comics' most hackneyed and overused phrases: "Makes for a great jumping-on point!"

Further clarification, for EMPOWERED fans already in the know: Plenty of Demonwolf narration; a wee bit o' sex, but nothing graphic, as usual; for the DiD fans, 3 or 4 pages involving Damsel In Distress imagery (and possibly a wee bit of chloroform?); a cameo by poor Mindf**k, or at least by her gravestone's video message; several concepts are introduced (the superhero graveyard, the "TeknoFetish" group, etc.) that will become of great importance in future volumes; and, oddly enough, the best joke involves a deceased superhero with a rather novel name. (I thought him up too late to put him on the cover, alas.)

Back to the floggery: "The Wench With A Million Sighs" is EMPOWERED's first appearance in conventional-comics format, as a 32-page "floppy" one-shot comic. The issue features a 30-page story, still in pencil-based B&W (as with the previous EMPOWERED trade paperbacks) but on glossy, shiny paper stock (unlike the Emp trades), which should lend itself to improved repro; brief EMPOWERED excerpts in Dark Horse's co-published STYLE SCHOOL books have looked verra nice indeed on such paper.

The one-shot hits the comics-retailer shelves on December 2, 2009; you can look for it in the October PREVIEWS catalog (for comics on sale in December). Or, it can be preordered here: [link]

I should note that, if you want to "wait for the trade" on this one, you'll be waiting for quite a while. The one-shot's story will NOT be reprinted in the next volume of EMPOWERED (vol. 6)*, but will have to wait until vol. 7 (or even later), which won't be out until well into 2011. This one-shot is rather important for future EMPOWERED material, as its sales figures will serve as a baseline for further EMP projects that might be released in a conventional-comics format. So, if this one-shot actually sells fairly well, you might see considerably more EMPOWERED material down the road, and (gasp!) on a far more frequent basis... Ooh, ah.

Anyhoo, the five previous collections of EMPOWERED can be found at Dark Horse's retail website: [link] or on Amazon.com: [link] Or you can ask your local bookstore or comics retailer to order 'em for you; believe me, I have to do that at my local bookstore all the time, due to their rather, ah, capricious approach to ordering manga and American comics.

*So that readers wouldn't get annoyed at having the buy the same damn story again when vol. 6 comes out, which is slated to happen at some point in the second half of 2010. Sadly, this means that my work on the one-shot over the last month or so hasn't contributed in the slightest towards vol. 6's pagecount... Oh, well. Back to the drawing board, needless to say.

Description
Behold, a double-page spread from early on (pages 2 & 3) in EMPOWERED: "The Wench With A Million Sighs", the upcoming, one-shot installment in my ongoing "sexy superhero comedy" series from Dark Horse Comics. You can see the luxurious color cover art here: [link]

Yeahp, once again, Emp's sorta-mentor Capitan Rivet gets his metallic behind kicked... Here's the solicitation copy for the one-shot:

Even as costumed crimefighter “Empowered” fights a desperate battle against a functionally invulnerable, grave-robbing supervillain inside a secret underground mausoleum for fallen superheroes, back at her apartment, the alien demonlord imprisoned upon her coffee table spins a tempestuous tell-all tale of the often-struggling heroine’s deepest secrets... The scruple-free storyteller soon reveals how all of Empowered’s many frustrations at work, at home, and even in the bedroom can be conveyed strictly through the vocabulary of her extraordinarily expressive exhalations, thus making her... “The Wench With A Million Sighs!”

To clarify a tad, the story alternates between superheroic action (Emp vs. bad guy) and sitcommish shenanigans (Caged Demonwolf, Ninjette and Thugboy discussing Emp's manyfold sighs), so as to provide a sample of the general EMPOWERED experience for readers both new and old. Or, if you don't mind the use of one of comics' most hackneyed and overused phrases: "Makes for a great jumping-on point!"

Further clarification, for EMPOWERED fans already in the know: Plenty of Demonwolf narration; a wee bit o' sex, but nothing graphic, as usual; for the DiD fans, 3 or 4 pages involving Damsel In Distress imagery (and possibly a wee bit of chloroform?); a cameo by poor Mindf**k, or at least by her gravestone's video message; several concepts are introduced (the superhero graveyard, the "TeknoFetish" group, etc.) that will become of great importance in future volumes; and, oddly enough, the best joke involves a deceased superhero with a rather novel name. (I thought him up too late to put him on the cover, alas.)

Back to the floggery: "The Wench With A Million Sighs" is EMPOWERED's first appearance in conventional-comics format, as a 32-page "floppy" one-shot comic. The issue features a 30-page story, still in pencil-based B&W (as with the previous EMPOWERED trade paperbacks) but on glossy, shiny paper stock (unlike the Emp trades), which should lend itself to improved repro; brief EMPOWERED excerpts in Dark Horse's co-published STYLE SCHOOL books have looked verra nice indeed on such paper.

The one-shot hits the comics-retailer shelves on December 2, 2009; you can look for it in the October PREVIEWS catalog (for comics on sale in December). Or, it can be preordered here: [link]

I should note that, if you want to "wait for the trade" on this one, you'll be waiting for quite a while. The one-shot's story will NOT be reprinted in the next volume of EMPOWERED (vol. 6)*, but will have to wait until vol. 7 (or even later), which won't be out until well into 2011. This one-shot is rather important for future EMPOWERED material, as its sales figures will serve as a baseline for further EMP projects that might be released in a conventional-comics format. So, if this one-shot actually sells fairly well, you might see considerably more EMPOWERED material down the road, and (gasp!) on a far more frequent basis... Ooh, ah.

Anyhoo, the five previous collections of EMPOWERED can be found at Dark Horse's retail website: [link] or on Amazon.com: [link] Or you can ask your local bookstore or comics retailer to order 'em for you; believe me, I have to do that at my local bookstore all the time, due to their rather, ah, capricious approach to ordering manga and American comics.

*So that readers wouldn't get annoyed at having the buy the same damn story again when vol. 6 comes out, which is slated to happen at some point in the second half of 2010. Sadly, this means that my work on the one-shot over the last month or so hasn't contributed in the slightest towards vol. 6's pagecount... Oh, well. Back to the drawing board, needless to say.