EMPOWERED's alt costume design

Behold, a commissioned sketch featuring the title character from Empowered, my ongoing "sexy superhero comedy" series published by Dark Horse Comics.

This one's based on the idea that Emp's mysterious "supersuit" has the ability to turn invisible at will; note, however, that only the suit itself can turn invisible, while Emp herself remains all too visible indeed, as far as she's concerned.* Anyhoo, this might well mean that the suit could selectively turn certain parts of itself invisible, and hence produce alternate costume designs like so.** Alas, in current Empowered continuity, our heroine doesn't possess enough control over her suit's functions to actually pull off this stunt... which, as you can see, might just be for the best.

Anyhoo: This illo, and 27 more pages of Emp sketches and stories, can be found in my new(ish) sketchbook dealie, Empowered: Extra Sketchiness, which debuted at the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con. For the untold multitudes of Emp fans who missed out on picking it up at SDCC, the sketchbook is now available for mail-order through Stuart Ng Books here: [link] My first published sketchbook since the old-time doujinshi from back in the day,* Extra Sketchiness is $15 for 28 B&Wpp at a nice, big size (8.25" X 10.5"), featuring commissioned sketches and 10pp of previously unpublished Emp stories.

In closing, I must of course paste in the requisite general-purpose Emp-related floggery... Empowered's first six volumes (and a pair of one-shots in "floppy" comics format) can be found on the shelves of your Local Comics Retailer or bookstore, or online at Dark Horse's retail website [link] or on Amazon.com [link] .

And, as I just mentioned, if you're looking for an even cheaper option, vols. 1-5 (and the aforementioned pair of one-shots) are available for $7.99 apiece (or $1.99, for the one-shots) as downloads in Dark Horse's new Digital store here: [link] Note that we're talking about $7.99 for 208-248 pages of sexy superhero comedy, which is a helluva lot more content (for less price) than you'll find with most digital-form comics....

Update: Note that the most recent Empowered book, the 10 Questions for the Maidman one-shot, is now available in digital form from Dark Horse's digital store, in case you don't feel like dealing with dead-tree media: [link]



<sub>*While this was at first merely a whimsical joke in Empowered vol. 1, the supersuit's disappearing act wound up being a climactic plot point in a later volume.

**While this was the commissioner's specific (and clever) request, I'd already thought of this concept quite a while ago, and had a lengthy story in mind about our heroine attempting alt costume designs using the suit's selective invisibility powers... Maybe I can fit that into vol.8. (Or vol. 9, or 10.)</sub>