EMPOWERED vol. 7 cover, inked

Behold, the finished inks for the cover illustration from 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 3, and arrive in conventional bookstores some time after that. More info here: [link]

You can compare and contrast these inks with the rough-sketch version of the illo here: [link]

One problem that cropped up, thanks to me having to do the cover illo long before the book was anywhere near completion: I drew the wrong g-d Ayakami-clan ninja in the upper left corner. The genin with the long hair wound up being, arguably, one of the least important Ayakami in the actual book... Oh, well. At least the other genin pictured (codenamed "Mr. Eko as Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Inception, but with a kama" when I was working on the cover) has a much more crucial role in the story, I'm happy to report. Still, I'm quite pleased with the piece; this is probably my favorite Empowered cover so far.

Here's the solicitation copy for the book:

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]