EMPOWERED 7's teenaged Ninjette and Oyuki-chan

Behold, a flashback scene from near the end (p.206, to be exact) of the upcoming Empowered vol. 7, the latest installment of my ongoing "sexy superhero comedy" series published by Dark Horse Comics. The book's slated to hit the shelves of your Local Comics Store on May 30th, and arrive in conventional bookstores some time after that. More info here: [link]

Anyhoo, here's the first page of a pivotal flashback to New Jersey's own Ninjette and Oyuki-chan* as teenagers, revealing the true nature of the debt that one kunoichi (female ninja) owes the other. Note that Oyuki uses the honorific "Hime-sama", or "princess", because Ninjette** is a member of the Kaburagi clan's royalty. Had to censor a line of dialogue in panel 5, howeva, for spoiler-related reasons. (Buy the book and the censored line will be revealed unto you, of course.)

Kind of a random choice to post this page, but I thought it would be cute to show 16-ish Oyuki-chan—complete with pixie-cut short hair—as a contrast to her grown-up appearance, as seen below:



Say, here's the book's cover:



And here's Empowered vol. 7's solicitation copy:

While costumed crimefighter Empowered makes a startling discovery regarding her unfortunate status as an all-too-frequent "damsel in distress," her hard-drinking best friend Ninjette confronts her own sordid past, violent present and frighteningly uncertain future as she fights a desperate, single-handed battle against a entire clan of supernaturally durable ninja warriors. Can our two hard-luck heroines also withstand the further perils posed by supervillainous minivans, dueling sets of "daddy issues," doomed-but-still-hot boyfriends, undead karaoke party-crashers, and even "spoiler alerts from hell itself" voiced by diabolically omniscient demonspawn?

In closing, I must of course paste in the requisite general-purpose Emp-related floggery: Print copies of Empowered's first six volumes (and a pair of one-shots in 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] . All the existing Empowered books can be purchased rather more cheaply in digital form as well, via the Dark Horse Digital store: [link]


<sub>*Or "F**king Oyuki-chan" as she's better known, thanks to her use of extreme profanity.

**Actually, "Ninjette" hasn't yet coined the "Ninjette" nickname, this far back; she's just Kozue Kaburagi (or Kaburagi Kozue, for greater authenticity), at this point.</sub>