EMPOWERED's faux WERE-GIRAFFE BY NIGHT cover

Behold, a fake cover image I'd long ago planned to use as a joke in Empowered, my "sexy superhero comedy" series published by Dark Horse Comics. This illo is a very direct reference to the somewhat infamous cover from Spider-Woman #6 [link] ...wherein Spider-Woman is bound, gagged and threatened by the mindless rampaging of Marvel's horror character "Werewolf By Night", in a provocative image that, um, never actually happens in the comic.*

Anyhoo, early on in Empowered, I'd had the idea to do a parody of the Spider-Woman #6 cover, but featuring an unwieldy weregiraffe instead of a werewolf. Alas, I never quite got around to drawing the joke (until now, that is), but did instead make repeated oblique references to Were-Giraffe By Night in the book; in fact, he's appeared in the backgrounds of pages on several occasions.

Well, I had a request to do a "playful" Emp sketch, and decided there was no time like the present to finally get the Were-Giraffe By Night fake cover out of the way. I broke out the Sharpies, dug up some giraffe images online, and went to town. (Note, by the way, that the "wavy" Empowered logo seen here is actually traced off a variant—and heretofore unused—version of the regular logo, as crafted by ace designer Eugene Wang.)

Anyhoo, the newest installment of Empowered, vol. 7, is now on sale at your Local Comics Retailer Store and/or conventional bookstore, and is also available in digital form via the Dark Horse Digital Store [link] and on Barnes & noble's Nook: [link]
More info here: [link]



Anyhoo, if you've read the book and care to weigh in on the experience, feel free to leave a comment here, in a SPOILER ALERT zone: [link]

And now, further floggery: Empowered vol. 7 can be found at your Local Comics Retailer (or bookstore, possibly), or online at Dark Horse's retail website [link] or on Amazon.com [link] .

Say, here's Empowered vol. 7's cover, without the logo:



And here's the book's back-cover 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]

_{*In fact, the exact opposite happens: In pursuit of the lycanthrope, Spider-Woman bursts in on his human form, who's chained himself to a wall for society's protection.}