Characters / Empowered

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Empowered and Friends

Empowered

Empowered, AKA Elissa Megan Powers

The main character. A sweet, beautiful (despite what she thinks) and kind young woman who had dreams of fighting crime from a young age, but got saddled with an unreliable supersuit that showed everything.

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• Action Heroine: Her success average may not be as great as, say, Ninjette or Sistah Spooky, but Emp is still a moderately competent superhero.
• Affirmative Action Girl: Invoked. The Superhomeys are heavily suggested to have made her a member because of some "gender quota", not because she was an awesome superhero.
• Ambiguously Bi: Ninjette has referred to her as "Miss Three-Drinks-And-I'm-Bisexual," and she didn't at all mind kissing Daisycutter.
• Animal-Eared Headband: As Schrodinger's Cat Girl.
• Aren't You Going to Ravish Me?: In volume 1 of Empowered, she is captured by a robot "Pimpotron" that scans her to see if she's worthy of a galactic harem. After deciding her butt was too big, it leaves her behind. She is clearly more devastated by the insult than relieved at her good fortune.
• Ascended Fanboy: Loves superheroes so much that she took it as a college course. Then she became one and found out what most of the 'heroes' in her chosen superteam were like. She still fangirls over the leader of the Superhomeys, to the point of themed underwear.
• Atrocious Alias: She gets a lot of mocking for the name (though few names in this setting are good), partly because it sounds rather clunky and partly because her reputation defies it so heavily.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Often. Though her crowning moment might have been figuring out how Deathmonger could find a newly risen SuperDead.
• Berserk Button: Don't compare her to JLo, or say anything else that might be misunderstood as "you're fat".
• Brains and Bondage: Played with, as Emp is much more into cosplay and roleplaying in bed than bondage per se, but among the roleplaying fantasies that she enjoys is one in which she is a rebellious slave girl whom Thugboy has to discipline. She also tells Ninjette that she likes it when Thugboy is very dominant with her in bed, and that she once provoked him into behaving that way by making a pun on the phrase "tie me up" (she was wearing an apron at the time, and nothing else, but had left it untied in the back). Also, in reference to when she first met Thugboy, Ocelotina later commented "That guy was practically making love to you with that rope!" As a general rule, however, Emp finds being tied up by criminals (super or otherwise) to be demeaning and traumatizing, and in no way a turn on; she is also very dismayed that she has gotten a reputation to the contrary.
• Broken Bird: Played with. Emp's childhood was generally a happy one, and her parents were loving and supportive, but watching her father die of an aneurysm right in front of her deeply traumatized her, and unsurprisingly still affects her to the present. Her relationship with her mother still seems to be a good one, based on what we've seen of it, and she is, in many ways, one of the best-adjusted characters in the series. Her issues are just more apparent because of how much she wears her heart on her sleeve.
• Buffy Speak: Of the "intelligent but ignorant of proper terminology" variant.
• Character Catchphrase: "Jeez!"
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Our best guess for what keeps her going in spite of outright sickeningly terrifying humiliation day after day.
• Clothes Make the Superman: Empowered's powers come from her suit; she's just a normal person otherwise although she might have a Photographic Memory and uses this to save herself in Volume 9.
• Combat Pragmatist: She used Maid Man's status as The Dreaded to distract supervillains by telling them he was behind them and then blast them in the back when they turned in horror. She also demonstrated that, while picking up a car and throwing it at a villain may look cool, driving said car into the villain at 70+ mph is much more effective.
• Combo Platter Powers: Has quite a lot of varying powers that don't seem to have much relation to each other, (though it is repeatedly theorised that they're tied to her personality and self-image in some way).
• Damsel in Distress: Captured and threatened by villains is kind of her thing, poor kid. However she is incredibly brave and has her legitimate moments. Sometimes she can even rescue herself.
• A Degree in Useless: Emp took Suprahuman Studies in college. It's generally considered a crap degree, but it helps her quite a bit in her career as a superhero, once against Crimera, and then again against Animal Style.
• Determinator: It takes a lot for a person to do the right thing. It takes even more to keep doing it even when you're a laughingstock that no one on either side of the law takes seriously, but damned if Emp doesn't rise to the challenge.
• Dumb Blonde: Subverted - Emp talks like a Valley Girl, but is actually quite smart.
• Empathic Weapon: Her supersuit, apparently a sapient being. Also, it's been suggested that her body issues are what keep the suit so fragile, which produces gratuitous nudity and augments her body issues, which obviously doesn't lead anywhere good. As long as it remains intact, it comes with a variety of powers:
  • It gives her Super-Strength and some degree of Nigh-Invulnerability under certain conditions. It acts like ablative armour; bullets and blows tear off bits of the suit but leave her undamaged. If there's at least a tattered bikini's worth left of the suit, she can survive a ten-story fall.
  • It gives her Kamehame Hadoken, which varies wildly in power depending on a number of factors, including how confident she feels.
  • Her mask gives her enhanced vision, enough to spot a burgeoning aneurysm in a man's head. She's claimed that it's not one of her "cool powers", so even though it sticks around after her suit is torn, it doesn't come up much.
  • Suit Invisibility. That is to say her suit turns invisible, but she doesn't, leaving her naked. Again. Which, given what villains know about a "suitless" Emp, has its uses.
  • Gecko-like adhesion to walls and ceilings
  • Full protection from the vacuum of space, even allowing speech.
  • The ability to interface with at least some alien technologies.
• Escape Artist: Not to the point where it would undermine the comic's premise, but spending so much time captured has given her a lot of practice at freeing herself from bonds - something a few overconfident supervillains have discovered to their cost.
• Even the Girls Want Her: In-comic, the girl who'll become Ocelotina. And quite possibly Ninjette as well, if the nigh-omniscient Caged Demonwolf is correct.
• Everyone Loves Blondes: To her dismay.
• Expy: Empowered is largely derivative of the character Social Butterfly from Livewires (created by the same author), which Emp draws our attention to herself.
  • She bears an uncanny resemblance to Jessica Drew, as well, in terms of her costume (which is almost a Palette Swap) and having basically the same powerset (low-tier super strength and agility, wall-crawling, energy blasts). There's even an homage to an old cover featuring Jessica in Adam Warren's gallery.
• Fetish Retardant:invoked Getting tied up in serious situations makes bondage a SERIOUS turn-off for Emp and Thugboy.
• For Halloween, I Am Going as Myself: It's her part-time job - making public appearances with other lookalikes as herself. The "Southern" accent she affects might be an effort to stop the disguise from being too realistic.
• Future Loser: Has this in a kind of Imagine Spot, where kid Emp meets her future superheroine self.
  Kid Emp: Why do I have such a big butt as a grownup...? How did I wind up so old and f-fat...?
  Current Emp: Thanks a lot, younger version of me.
• Geek: She is a Yaoi Fangirl and took "superhuman studies" at college.
• Glass Cannon: Emp can kick major ass when her suit is intact. Unfortunately, just one hit can reduce it to tatters, although later in the series she can keep her powers and continue to kick ass even after losing a good portion of the suit. A literal cannon made of glass looks positively indestructible by comparison.
• Guile Hero: For someone so accident-prone and with so many self-esteem issues, she is surprisingly good at tricking and manipulating the supervillains who capture her.
• Hand Blast: How she fires her power blasts.
• Hartman Hips: One of the things she's least pleased about with her body. Nobody else knows why. Her big butt is a major source of humour and makes almost as many appearances as Emp's face.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: She's blonde, and she's one of the few actually heroic heroes.
• The Heart: Her greatest power seems not to be her suit, but her compassion. It pays off big time with the Super Dead, treating them with respect and kindness.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: It becomes clear fairly quickly that Emp is a significantly more competent hero than she gives herself credit for. After this being pointed out by Ninjette, Thugboy, the Caged Demonwolf, Mind████, and Maidman, she's starting to believe it.
• Hot Librarian: Ends up convinced to dress as one by the other Superhomeys so she can infiltrate the lair of a villain who takes a liking to this style of dress. Thugboy ends up being even more pleased with this turn of events.
• Imagination-Based Superpower: Her suit can do a lot of things but she hasn't figured out all its functions.
• Lethal Chef: The only food she can cook is blueberry pancakes, and even those taste terrible.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Once or twice per issue, Empowered will actually take down a villain, often a powerful or dangerous one, or one whom no other hero can handle under those circumstances. Examples of this include:
  • Her use of the above mentioned car-at-70-mph trick to defeat an enemy the rest of the Superhomeys had been rendered unconscious battling
  • When she defeated Anglerfish and his gang.
  • When she defeats Deathmonger, one of the most feared supervillains in the world.
  • When she blasted those ninja into little specks of carbonized particles.
  • The beatdown she unleashed on Rogue Cape at the end of book 4 certainly does.
  • When she defeats, and cages, the Caged Demonwolf.
  • Even earlier than both of those examples was her effortless rescue of Thugboy in Vol. 1, which was pretty much foreshadowing the above incidents.
  • At one point she completely lost her temper, and nearly killed a villain by ripping off her own bodice and suffocating him with it. She stopped herself in time, and felt horribly guilty after.
  • Her terrifying thrashing of Animal Style, the six members group of supervillains in animal-themed powered armour.
• Living Emotional Crutch: She is this for Thugboy, who has constantly compared her and their relationship to a lifeline
• Lust Object: For several Superhomeys, especially Major Havoc and Ocelotina.
• Masturbation Means Sexual Frustration: Because Elissa's super-suit massively enhances sensation and increases libido, she's constantly horny and often resorts to masturbation to deal with it. She's apparently very acquainted with "Mr. Shower Head".
• Meta Guy: In between the chapters, Emp comments on the story and her role in it. Most prominently when she drew attention to Adam Warren's homicidal tendencies in his previous works and started freaking out that she might be next on the chopping block. 'S all right Emp, your name's on the cover (although even that's not enough to reassure her, as she worries it could refer to the concept of being empowered, rather than the person Empowered).
• Ms. Fanservice: Also Ms. Fanservice in-universe due to the nature of her suit and God, does she hate it.
• Most Common Superpower: Many of her powers are often in doubt. Not this one, to Emp's constant annoyance.
• Naked Apron: Has occasionally worn one while making pancakes. Thugboy is grateful.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: Her supersuit didn't come with instructions, so she is continually discovering what it can do by accident. She even lampshades it. At the start, she comes with the powers listed above. By now, it's an added mix of Power Floats and Power Gives You Wings, X-Ray Vision, which she uses this to save the life of a Punch-Clock Villain, copying thoughtstreams, automatic translation of any text into (bad) English, Grey Goo protection, Interfacing with a nanotech mechanical human's brain by sticking her fingers in to his head, an emergency 'wing mode' that's capable of lethal blasts and powered flight and It even makes phone calls!
• No-Respect Guy:
  • One would think Empowered saving her teammates' hides more than once would earn her a little less outright abuse. Mind you, often they simply don't notice — for example, she rams a villain with a Humvee going 70 MPH, pointing out that this works much better than just throwing it at the villain, only to have the resulting wreck immobilize her and letting her "team" wander off assuming the other heroes and the villain knocked each other out.
  • After the events of Vol. 5, Sistah Spooky might just be warming up to her a bit. Confirmed by volumes 8 and 10, where Spooky says outright that she's kinda proud of Emp.
  • A better question was how she managed to avoid getting respect after one-shotting a world-destroying demon lord that had just wiped the floor with every other superhero combined. She only got respect from Capitan Rivet, who generally treats her with respect anyway.
  • Finally averted at the start of volume seven by the Super Dead who call out the Superhomies for their mistreatment of them and her and appoint Emp as their new representative on the Homies' council. A later chapter shows she does in fact now have that job, which required the Homeys promote her up from part-timer. Even still many of the Superhomies proper don't like her.
  • At the end of volume nine, she calls the Superhomies' overseeing council out on this mindset and, after summing up just what she's accomplished in that volume alone, demands to be made a full member of the team instead of an associate. She might just get it, too.
  • In Volume 10 it becomes official, the team votes and she is officially a full-time member. In the same volume she also gets lots of love from Sistah Spooky.
• One-Note Cook: The only food she can cook is blueberry pancakes. (In a Naked Apron, which is even better!)
• Phrase Catcher: "Sucks to be you". She even says it to her own past self.
• Plucky Girl: Despite constant abuse and suit failures, she doesn't give up.
• Power Perversion Potential: According to her, her suit's Empathic Weapon status also increases her overall sensitivity... which makes it rather fun in bed.
• Reluctant Fanservice Girl: The suit is skin tight and this makes her self-conscious. Well, more self-conscious.
• Samaritan Syndrome: Emp's always wanted to be a superhero; she gained extra motivation after seeing her father die in front of her, though she's since come to terms with that particular trauma.
• Sex Goddess: Though her level of sexual experience is unclear, Thugboy claims he could barely last ten seconds in bed with her early on, and had to beg her to slow down when she first performed oral sex. This is, at least part, due to the sensual amplification of her suit.
• Signature Sound Effect: VORPP
• Silent Treatment: Emp does this to Thugboy whenever he seriously upsets her.
• So Beautiful, It's a Curse: Her central conflict, at least in early volumes. Emp is nearly any man's walking sex fantasy, being a young, gorgeous blonde girl with ample breasts, a shapely rear and a generally voluptuous, desirable body, who dresses in a skin-tight suit which is almost always in tatters. She, however, considers herself ugly and overweight, and would rather have any other power than have to wear her suit. Not only that, but most of the people who find her attractive (Thugboy a notable exception) also have zero respect for her and actively degrade or take advantage of her at every opportunity, fuelling her insecurities.
• Steven Ulysses Perhero: Elissa Megan Powers
• Stripperiffic: Though her outfit completely covers her body, barring her mouth and hair (on the rare occasions when it isn't confetti, anyway), it's so tight and form-fitting that she looks like she's wearing body paint. It was voted Most "Sluttastic"/"Do-Me-Riffic" by a fictional online poll. She's not proud about this.
• Super Mode: Whenever the suit is in real danger, it seemingly takes over and displays startling power. It also erases Emp's memory of any ability it used.
• Survival Mantra:
  • "I don't care...I don't care...don't care..."
  • "I'm okay...I'm okay...I'm okay..."
  • "I'm not scared. I'm a ████ing superhero...I'm n-not scared."
• To Hell and Back: Decided to follow Spooky in her attempt to break Mind████ out of hell. When that resulted in a scam from Spooky's demonic services provider, who was trying to break out by having Spooky take his place, Emp beat the crap out of the demon, fought off the security and broke out of hell, dragging a suicidal Spooky with her.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: The Girly Girl beside Ninjette.
• Trauma Button: Fruity Flakes cereal, which she was eating when her father died in front of her. Even looking at it causes a Freak Out.
• Underestimating Badassery: To this date, only one supervillain did not underestimate her before being thrashed. And many do it even after being thrashed, as they have no idea she's doing it.
• Vapor Wear: Her suit's tightness and fragility means that wearing any form of undergarment, including panties or a bra, renders it not only unsightly but useless. Even further, she has to shave her "nether region" bare to wear it.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: When Thugboy gets captured by his ex-associates, who're sick of him screwing up their plans and angry at his change of allegiance, Empowered kicks down the door and stomps the lot of them.
• Wardrobe Malfunction: A super powered variant. While attempting to show Ninjette and Thugboy her suit's invisibility powers by making her mask invisible, she accidentally ends up making the entire thing disappear... while wearing absolutely nothing underneath. Naturally, she also happens to have both hands stretched overhead as this happens (to hold up a car), leaving her body completely exposed.
• Yaoi Fangirl: Her response to hearing that one of her teammates was gay? Start shipping him with the other men.

Thugboy

Thugboy, AKA Noah

Emp's boyfriend and lover. Ex-minion. Has quite a few skeletons in his closet from his younger days.

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• Badass Normal: No superpowers of any kind, but still more than a match for a lot of capes.
• Believing Their Own Lies: During his argument with Emp at the end of Volume 10, Thugboy claims he's always told her the truth, and that the only thing he's kept secret from her was his return to Witless Minioning. Word of God is that "Thugboy has so thoroughly walled off any thought of the real issue he's hiding from Emp — as in, his anti-cape activities relating to the San Antonio disaster, six years ago — that he's not even consciously aware that this statement is untrue."
• Berserk Button: When he recognizes the cape who killed the Holy Avenger near the end of volume 4, he almost shoots him in front of a hundred other supers before he's stopped by Ninjette.
• Bigger Is Better in Bed: A story in volume 1 briefly featured Emp commenting that he's bigger than any other guy she's been with. This is, apparently, a cherished memory for Thugboy.
• Bullying a Dragon: A consistent weakness of his in his Witless Minions and Capekiller days was that while he's tough and smart enough to feasibly kill or undermine your average superhero or supervillain, he assumed he was good enough to make a lifestyle out of bullying them. Both times, he ultimately picked a fight with someone far stronger than him.
• Cold Sniper: Zigzagged; he can be very cold and ruthless when fighting, but he's quite warm and affectionate with his friends and, especially, Emp. Also, the men he's killed often show up in his nightmares, it's implied.
• Combat Pragmatist: Particularly in his cape-killer days he often uses a cape's or a super villain's weaknesses and flaws against them and will play extremely dirty if need be. A brief flashback in volume 6 shows him giving a step-by-step guide to attacking a superhero funeral that doesn't involve being a suicide bomber. Vol. 7 shows him expounding on the virtues of invoking Kill It with Fire on supers.
• Cool Shades: He even wears them indoors.
• Dark and Troubled Past: He was part of an underground anti-Cape conspiracy who eventually went on a Cape-killing spree in San Antonio; this went about as well as you'd expect and he's the only one involved that we know survived — and that only because the Cape about to vaporise him with an energy blast was so busy gloating he got hit by a bus. He then formed a new gang of minions for hire that secretly manipulated and stole from their supervillain employers, until they tried to pull that trick on Willy Pete. Thugboy was the only one who got away alive, forced to watch as Willy Pete alternately raped his friends in the eyes with his flaming phallus and ate them. Is it any wonder he has nightmares?
• Dark Secret: He's the last known survivor of the Capekillers who were involved in the San Antonio incident. If this got out, every Cape, hero or villain, would probably want to dismember him.
• Didn't See That Coming: Willy Pete during his Witless minion days in the traditional sense, but this also combines with his Too Clever by Half tendencies to form his Fatal Flaw. Thugboy's ability to manipulate situations and stay one step ahead is matched only by his inability to see anything beyond that one step and his general disdain for capes. His inability to look past the short term gains and at the long term consequences has screwed him over three times
  • During his capekilling days he was smart enough to kill multiple heroes and come up with a variety of anti-cape tactics. He wasn't smart enough to see that the capes would heavily crack down on his group as a result, with all of the rest of his group dying and him only escaping through sheer luck.
  • He was a master at ripping off villains during his Witless Minion days, but didn't ever think about what might eventually happen to him if he encountered a villain who caught on his schemes or got involved with one who was actually dangerous. Willy Pete brought his group down under the second condition, but given enough time it's likely word would have spread about a group of minions stealing and killing from villains, eventually bringing them down that way.
  • Finally in Volume 10 his return to Witless Minioning gets found out by Emp, threatening their relationship. The relationship that he repeatedly emphasizes as the best thing in his life, and Caged Demonwolf compares to a lifeline. While working as a minion is at least understandable (he can't get any other job without an education and it allows him to protect Emp), he freely admits that he's doing the part Emp is freaking out about (stealing from villains) because it was easy money he was leaving on the table. He doesn't really seem to have a plan for if Emp ever found out, implying he thought she never would, and his reaction is basically to explain himself and then say this is who he is and asking her if she can love him that way. They're cut off before we can get Emp's side and the argument can be resolved.
• Everyone Has Standards: He's an anti-hero on the best of days and has no problem with working with supervillains to make a living. However, even in his Witless Minions days, he drew the line at any crimes aimed to harm civilians. When the villain Icy Mike announced his intent to detonate a bomb in a populated area, Thugboy bludgeoned him to death.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: After the other Witless Minions got killed by Willy Pete, Thugboy went into permanent "Whatever" mode until he met Emp and let his hair grow out.
• Expy:
  • Take a look at Adam Warren's Livewires. Hollowpoint Ninja looks kind of familiar, doesn't he?
  • And if we go even farther back, he looks a lot like the WWWF Black Ops agent who showed up a few times in Warren's comic book version of the Dirty Pair.
• Face Death with Dignity: When Frank is ready to execute him for his collusion with Empowered, Thugboy describes in detail how happy his relationship with Emp has made him, and unflinchingly tells Frank to do what he has to do. Emp rescues him in the nick of time.
• Fetish Retardant:invoked Getting tied up in serious situations makes bondage a SERIOUS turn-off for Emp and Thugboy.
• Guns Akimbo: Fights like this when he uses the laser-pistols of a cowboy-themed cape, though since the guns need to be cocked by hand after each shot (a stupidity he fully lampshades,) it's less ridiculous than a lot of examples.
• The Gunslinger: Is a mix of A & D, D when it comes to handguns and A when it comes to sniper rifles.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: If he hasn't a Shirtless Scene, as is most often the case.
• Honor Before Reason: No danger will stop him from praising a booty so fine.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: OK, Emp isn't really very tiny, but Thugboy TOWERS over her. Just look in the first chapter of volume 2 where he's carrying her with one hand. Ninjette is genuinely tiny, although she and Thugboy aren't a couple - at least, not right now.
• Kill It with Fire: In the seventh volume, he gives a lecture about how effective it is at dealing with superheroes. As he puts it, even the most fire-resistant costume usually crumbles in the face of thermite or white phosphorus, and capes and long hair are particularly susceptible (and since many costumes are made of synthetic material, they often melt as well as burning). Incendiary grenades also have enough burst to be difficult to dodge in the case of Fragile Speedster-types, and napalm, being sticky, can blind those with fire immunity. It's implied that part of the reason Willy Pete scares him so badly is that these tactics are utterly pointless against him.
• Love at First Sight: With Empowered; he gets taken out of his constant "whatever" state as soon as he lays eyes on her.
• Love Redeems: A criminal and murderer (albeit one with standards) prior to meeting her, he's now firmly one of the good guys (if only because Emp herself is such an angel).
• Mr. Fanservice: Both in terms of looks and personality, and with plenty of sexy scenes which focus on him as much as on Emp.
• Muggle Power: Of the "kill 'em" variation, though he's toned this down, tries to avoid letting it be known he was this way once, and is in love with one of the few decent super-heroes in the business.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Working for Spartan 3000.
• One Head Taller: Than Emp.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: A bonus strip on Adam Warren's DeviantArt page confirms that Emp does know his actual name, he just prefers to be called Thugboy. Revealed in volume 11 to be Noah
• Punch-Clock Villain: What he used to be.
• Raging Stiffie: A problem for Thugboy when sharing a bed with Ninjette. Or Emp.
• Shirtless Scene: Frequently walks around in just his boxers.
• Troubled, but Cute: Oh lord, so much. Physically gorgeous with a dark and traumatic past that doesn't stop him from being a dream boyfriend? He's a textbook example.
• Wham Shot: The end of Volume 10 reveals that he's still ripping off villains. Emp finds out, and after the ensuing argument he uses a Villain's mace to whack her off the roof they're standing on, as he's being mindcontrolled by Mind████'s brother.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Thugboy freaks out at the prospect of getting involved with Willy Pete again. Of course, since Willy Pete is a Nigh-Invulnerable — indeed, arguably truly invulnerable, even being immune to ThugBoy's patented fire-based cape-killer tricks — psychotic monster with nuke-grade fire attacks and a penchant for murderous rape and cannibalism, it's rather an understandable fear. Especially because Willy Pete has a particular grudge against Thugboy for escaping him once before.

Ninjette

Ninjette, AKA Kozue Kaburagi

Emp's best friend and part-time Lancer. Originally introduced to us as a Punch-Clock Villain, she quickly turned into a sparky, confident foil and emotional support for the self-doubting main character. Then plot happened, and we discovered why she drinks so much...

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• A-Cup Angst: Flat as two peas on an ironing board, and knows about her lack of the Most Common Superpower.
• The Alcoholic: As she reveals in "Nine Beers with Ninjette", 'Jette's aware she has a problem, that she can't stop drinking - in fact, she's only been sober four nights since leaving home, which she spent with Emp.
• Ambiguously Bi: It's known that she has a thing for Thug Boy but doesn't try anything because of his relationship with Emp. But the Caged Demonwolf also pointed out a few times when Emp and 'Jette got a little too "playful" while drunk together, like Emp grabbing her butt which 'Jette didn't have much problem with. When she went to leave the room to work off some tension from the conversation, Demonwolf asked if she was going to fantasize about her with Thugboy, Emp, or both at once. 'Jette looked like she wasn't even sure before saying "Wouldn't you like to know?"
• Badass Normal: Almost to Charles Atlas Superpower levels. E.g. can identify people from 20 feet away by scent alone. Able to mop the floor with some Unskilled, but Strong capes and multiple highly skilled ninja.
• Berserk Button/Compliment Backfire: Ninjette doesn't like to be called a "happy, pleasant drunk". Daddy issues, you know. Although she does admit that she is one in "Nine Beers with Ninjette."
  • Don't mess with Emp. In an Imagine Spot, Spooky finds this out the hard way.
• Bust-Contrast Duo: Her and Emp often flirt with this, as she's borderline flat while Emp is fairly busty. This is accentuated in a chapter where the two of them swap outfits, and Emp is practically spilling out of her top.
• Celibate Hero: Ninjette seems to be be enhancing her Mad Ninja Skillz by avoiding sex, although she is allowed... It's more of a Freudian thing, because she dearly wants to, but as a princess in a Hidden Elf Village she was not allowed, and the only other man she likes now is attached to Empowered. The ensuing frustration causes her to focus her attention on ninjaing. invoked
• Charles Atlas Superpower: With a sprinkling of ninja magic on top.
• Combat Pragmatist: Uses decoys, bombs and revealed infidelity against the Ayakami clan in Vol 7.
• Drowning My Sorrows: How she became a Hard-Drinking Party Girl.
• Drunken Master: Probably the most formidable martial artist yet seen, and she actively tries to avoid being completely sober.
• Fate Worse than Death: Averted — before she was rescued by Emp, she narrowly avoided having her hands and feet cut off to facilitate her use as ninja breeding stock. Invoked later, when she tells Emp what could have happened.
• Gratuitous Japanese: Justified. She was given a full Japanese name to make up for the dilution in the bloodline.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: She sometimes demonstrates the disadvantages of heavy drinking.
  Ninjette: Yet another idea that seemed brilliant when I had a buzz on... turns out to kinda suck once I've sobered up a little.
• Highly-Visible Ninja: Her clothes don't exactly lend themselves to stealth. She actually is a Master of Disguise, so it's more or less just because she thinks it's funny.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Type B. Admits to being scared of losing Emp's friendship as her social standing slowly improves. The thought of losing her terrifies Ninjette as she is her first and only friend.
• Informed Attribute: Parodied due to the manga-esque art. Despite her name, Ninjette is Caucasian.
• Intimate Marks: Invoked. She intentionally wears booty shorts with her name across the booty.
• Inverse Ninja Law: Averted in that while she's uber-skilled and can take on 3-4 opponents alone, she has come close to dying several times when she was confronted with any more than that. Which is why she blackmails Oyuki-chan into helping with the rest of the Ayakami and pulls out every dirty trick in the book to even the odds.
• In Vino Veritas: She has a ninja technique based on it: drink in her presence, and she can get you to spill all the beans. She also knows a technique that makes sure it won't work on her.
• Joke of the Butt: Her booty shorts has her name written across her butt.
• Made of Iron: Seems to recover remarkably fast from what would normally be pretty traumatic injury, even without the help of Suprahuman medical science...however...
  • Dented Iron: Volume 8 reveals that much of her supposed recovery is powerful illusion hiding all the bruises, scars, and blunt force trauma she's still carrying, in order to put up a strong face for Emp.
• Master of Disguise: All ninja are taught "hensojutsu", but she's exceptional. To the point where she consummated a marriage whilst disguised as the groom.
• McNinja: Played with; she looks completely caucasian due to her Japanese bloodline being diluted after several generations in America, but her parents tried to actively Defy this trope by giving her a fully Japanese name.
• Mid-Season Upgrade: Captain Katana wills the sword stuck in his head to Ninjette. It's a magic blade that can "cut though just about anything". In training she effortlessly cuts though rock golems created by Cyndablokk.
• Missing Mom: Dead, according to "Nine Beers with Ninjette"; her father blames her for it.
• Mukokuseki: Subverted. Ninjette is actually from New Jersey, and is of European descent.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: There are a lot of things she's learned to do thanks to her ninja training, and every single one has a different goofy name.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Oyuki could not resist noting how akin to her father's combat style the vicious and underhanded tactics she demonstrated in vol. 7 were.
  Ninjette: If you think that I am voluntarily walking into a scenario likely to result in my death and/or dismemberment without first getting good and solidly buzzed... you are sadly f**king mistaken.
  Oyuki: By sheerest f**king coincidence, this humble genin has often heard a remarkably f**king similar sentiment voiced before battle... by Kaburagi-san's own f**king father, interestingly enough.
• Pressure Point: A realistic example; she uses one to paralyse Thugboy's gun arm when he's about to do something stupid (see his Berserk Button above), but in actual combat she's just as likely to rely on brute force and simple Combat Pragmatism.
• Princess Protagonist: Technically, for the stories where she's a protagonist, like "Deflowered and Dispassionate".
• Rebellious Princess: A particularly tragic variant, since "princess" to her clan means pregnancy machine. Hands and feet are considered optional.
• Sex Magic: Inverted. Empowered and Thugboy are both very hot, and constantly shagging. Ninjette can use the sexual frustration created by their failure to have sex with her to boost her ninja magic.
• Stripperiffic: Unlike Emp, she does this willingly with skin-tight short-shorts and a midriff-baring tank-top. Averted in her genin days.
• Supermodel Strut: There's even a secret ninja magic to do it. "You move like a ████ing jungle cat!"
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: The tomboy to Emp's girly-girl.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Her clan and her father constantly told her she wasn't good enough, despite her obvious competence, and she took it to heart. Played with now in that she passionately detests her father for a number of reasons and apparently nearly succeeded in killing him, so has no intention of earning his approval now, but still suffers from residual self-esteem issues.
• We Used to Be Friends: Oyuki and Ninjette were always together back when she was with her clan. Oyuki hated her passionately the entire time.

Caged Demonwolf

Caged Demonwolf, Molester of Worlds

Eldritch Abomination captured by Emp in some alien power-draining bondage gear. He lives on her coffee table and spouts ranting, wordy monologues.

---

• Affably Evil: to the point that, world-destroying Eldritch Abomination or not, he's basically a good guy—being one of the comparatively few people who has a high opinion of Empowered. He certainly doesn't seem to mind hanging out on Emp's coffee table watching TV for the time being. Because to him, it's merely a blip in his immortal existence.
• Confusing Multiple Negatives: Peppers them as part of his long-windedness.
• Deadpan Snarker: Hammy Snarker, more like.
• Eldritch Abomination: Before he was sealed, nobody could match him.
• Expospeak Gag: Fond of these, his unique rendition of the song "Baby Got Back" being something of a world-record in this department.
• Geek: The other Eldritch Abominations never would invite him to their world-wrecking parties. Making him a kind of Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds (not his own, though).
• Greek Chorus: Narrates some of the less clear events of the story, either directly to the reader or to people who are in the room with him, including Emp's suit.
• Hidden Depths: After six volumes of overly wordy monologues, he drops the mask and reveals that not only can he speak normally, he was once mortal and can see backwards and forwards in time, like Dr. Manhattan.
• The Imp (post-sealing) he's mildly annoying at worst, and often quite nice.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's one of the few individuals who respects Emp, and helps cheer her up when she goes through a major depression.
  • He's also respectful and maybe in love with Ninjette, and in one memorable monologue tells Ninjette in a normal voice that as an immortal interdimensional being who will outlive our own universe, he will carry his memory of her with him forever. But he only does this when she's drunk to the point of blacking out, so she'd never remember him saying this.
• Large Ham: Virtually every word he speaks is heavily emphasised, and he uses the most overblown vocabulary he possibly can, except for the one time in volume 7 he speaks normally to Ninjette.
• Lovable Sex Maniac: Excessively voyeuristic and with a very active imagination, he is nonetheless a firm friend and his requests to watch sexual acts in progress are treated as harmless.
• The Nicknamer: Emp is "the Alpha Wench", Thugboy is "the Boy of Thug" (if he's not the P-whipped princeling), Ninjette is "the Ninja Wench" or "the boobless booby", Sistah Spooky is "the mystical Wench", Mind████ is the Sapphic/Psychosensual Wench, and so on. Also counts as a parody of Superhero Sobriquets.
• No Indoor Voice: THE CAGED DEMONWOLF NEVER DEMEANS HIMSELF TO SPEAK BELOW A BELLOW! Except when having a sincere heart-to-heart with a black-out drunk Ninjette.
• Non-Linear Character: As he explains to Ninjette, he's able to percieve each and every moment of his existence, including long after he's finally free of his imprisonment and all of the other main characters, the human race, and even the entire universe are long since dead.
• Odd Friendship: In addition to his friendships with Empowered and her friends, he also has chats with Emp's suit on a regular basis, and often makes her call up Emp's mom, so they can chat.
• Only Sane Man: The threshold for this is not that high. That an Eldritch Abomination that habitually describes himself as "The Caged Demonwolf, Molester of Worlds" gets to be the Only Sane Man in the cast tells you everything about this comic you needed to know in one sentence.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When he starts talking normally instead of his usual grandiloquent speaking style, you know he's about to delve into some particularly weighty matters.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: A friendly Evil, but it's still a good thing he's in a belt.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: With a healthy dose of Added Alliterative Appeal (lampshaded by himself at times).
• Shipper on Deck: Wants to watch Empowered, Thugboy, and Ninjette have a threesome...
• Third-Person Person: Usually refers to himself either as "the Caged Demonwolf" or by one of the many alternative titles he's adopted.
• Time Abyss: He specifically states that he will outlive the universe. It's also one of the main reasons he doesn't make too much fuss about being stuck inside a belt with nothing to do but watch TV all day. To him, this is little more than a very brief inconvenience.
• Yuri Fan: ...and sometimes, only Emp and 'Jette.

Ninja

The Ayakami Clan

The Ayakami Clan

A group of ninjas who tries to collect the bounty on Ninjette.

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• Chain Pain: Ninjette comments on their love of chained weaponry in Vol 7.
• Dark Action Girl: Many of them are women and none of them hesitate to fight.
• Even Evil Has Standards: They consider the Kaburagi as fucked up, and say as much when Oyuki offers to give a hand to a bound Ninjette and then throw her a severed hand.
• Feel No Pain: Their clan-specific jutsu, which makes killing them very difficult and strenuous.
• Killed Off for Real: Ninjette killed the whole clan.
• Malevolent Masked Men: All of them wear Japanese-themed masks while on the job.

• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Against Ninjette, for escaping and killing several of their genin. Run, 'Jette. RUN.
• Would Hit a Girl: Considering they're trying to collect a bounty on Ninjette's head.

Oyuki

Oyuki

A frenemy of Ninjette who's part of her clan. She shows up to repay an as-yet-unspecified favour by dropping off some equipment. We get to see her skills in Vol. 7.

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• Cluster F-Bomb: Combines this ████ing characteristic with Japanese-style formalized language for a f***ing unusual speech pattern.
• Dude, Not Funny!: Impersonating Mind████. invoked
• Exact Words: She stated she'd fight three of the Ayakami and she did exactly that
• Fantasy Contraception: In a Vol. 7 flashback Ninjette performed a jutsu on her making herself sterile so she could be valued for her shinobi skills instead of her uterus, which she may have come to regret.
• Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: She wants Ninjette to suffer, and she will - either by being killed, or crippled and carted back, or having to fight off ever-stronger ninja because her success at fighting them off proves her value as breeding stock.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Mmmmmmmaybe. Consider that at the end of her first appearance, she indicated that she considered whatever debt she owed Ninjette to be paid, and that the traitor should expect no further help from her. A few days later (in comic time) she shows up to warn 'Jette that the Ayakami clan — all of them — are coming after 'Jette. It's possible that she did this because she enjoys Ninjette's terror. It's also possible that she actually cares. We shall see.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: She was (secretly) gloating over Ninjette's fate in vol. 7 because, whether she won or lost, Ninjette is destined to suffer more. Though if Nine Beers With Ninjette is canon, Ninjette at least already knew this.
• Not So Stoic: Subverted when she proclaims her hatred of Ninjette at the end of Vol. 7, only for it to show that that was what she'd like to say, and her expression stayed frozen.
• Sir Swearsalot: Becomes Sophisticated as Hell.
• The Stoic: In her expressions at least. Adam Warren mentions he accidentally gave her some expression in one scene; he'd intended her to look like a doll.
• Stripperiffic: The Kaburagi clan wear this season - almost nothing. Like Ninjette, averted as a genin.
• Wingding Eyes: Sports star-shuriken-shaped pupils.

The Superhomies

Sistah Spooky

Sistah Spooky, AKA Theresa

A demonically-charged sorceress and a senior member of the team. Also a neurotic mess of a woman who continually puts Emp down because she hates and fears blondes. Don't worry, she has a reason. Whatever her other faults, cowardice isn't one of them.

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• A Day in the Spotlight: Emp and Sistah Spooky's High School Hell mini-series focuses on some of her time during her high school days and what she had to endure growing up.
• Alpha Bitch: Spooky's Back Story (and consequent Freudian Excuse) also has her being cruelly tormented by blonde, voluptuous alpha bitches whilst herself a child, hence the chip on her shoulder regarding Emp.
• An Arm and a Leg: Gets her right arm blasted off by one of the worm creatures in Hell, and it's still gone in volumes 9, 10 and 11.
• Attention Whore: A more realistic version but she desperately craves the praise of her fellow heroes and the public and works hard to maintain her image.
• The Atoner: Sistah Spooky starts showing signs of this in volume 5; she knows she's going to hell so she wants to accomplish some good before then.
• Berserk Button: Don't say anything about her race. Don't be a beautiful blonde girl. And so on.
• Big Damn Heroes: Appears at the end of volume 11 to save Emp from Mind████'s brother.
• Big Ol' Unibrow: Before her Deal with the Devil.
• Black Magician Girl:
• Broken Bird: When it comes down to it, Theresa is an incredibly miserable individual who fully understands her misery is partially her fault.
• Character Development: Goes from hating Emp at the start of the series to saving her life in volume 11.
• Combat Stilettos: Goes around in tall platform heels.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Despite her black cloak and general wicked-witch persona, she's a superhero who fights for truth and justice and all that good stuff. A Jerkass Smug Super kind of superhero at times, true, but one of the nominal good guys all the same.
• Dark Magical Girl: Older than the other examples, but still fits the trope.
• Deal with the Devil: How she got her powers. In her case, she originally just wished for beauty but got mystical powers because the demon she made a deal with screwed up the paperwork. This is eventually revealed to be a lie, the powers were on purpose on his part.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • For how much she hates Emp, she wasn't among the ones who nominated her for a Capey Award as a joke, and actually warned her of what was happening.
  • Furthered in Volume 8, where we learn that Spooky is actually responsible for Emp's bondage-magnet status as a result of Spooky actively willing it to happen to make sure no-one else distracted from her own star rising as a top superhero, which was also something she'd wished for. The standards come in when, having seen Emp in tears one too many times and uncertain as to how she kept going with such humiliation, Spooky actively tried to stop the spell that had rendered Emp a bondage and humiliation magnet for supervillains. It just didn't work.
• Evil Is Petty: Spooky considers perma-cursing Emp with bondage-magnetism to be her own personal My Greatest Failure, made worse by the fact that she did it to retain the attention and goodwill of the public. It's... not her proudest moment.
• The Faceless: Initially, we only see her without her mask in flashbacks.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Her feelings about her actions after she Took a Level in Kindness - while she can be forgiven for being afraid of blondes and having an inferiority complex after seemingly every girl in her high school sold their souls to become blonde Alpha Bitches who tormented her ceaselessly, her tormenting Emp the same way wasn't excusable.
• Goth Girls Know Magic: She's quite gothy, and made a Deal with the Devil to use black magic.
• Heel–Face Turn: At the end of volume 5, she has finally accepted that Emp isn't the blonde Alpha Bitch her mind makes her out to be. By vol. 7, Major Havoc has replaced Spooky as her nemesis in the introduction.
• Hypocrite: At least originally; she was bullied by blondes in school, but as an adult, she bullies Emp relentlessly.
• In-Universe Nickname: "Spookums", from Mind████.
• Irony: She fears and hates blondes for good reason. She ends up falling in love with one and the one blonde she tries to exact some sort of Revenge by Proxy on turns out to be Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold.
  • Double irony:Teresa was ALWAYS going to be super-hot as an adult. She just was a late-bloomer in high school. If not for being gifted with magic, Teresa would have damned herself to hell for NOTHING.
• Lady of Black Magic: She's a bitch and powerful gothy superhero who made a hellpact with a demon to use black magic.

• My God, What Have I Done?: Is responsible for Emp's own misfortunes out of jealousy. Realizing what she did is one part of her massive self-loathing.
• Sassy Black Woman: Even after her Heel–Face Turn, she has a very sassy mouth.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: She knew full well that her actions in volume 8 would be the end of her career as a Superhomey, and by volume 9 she officially quits the team.
• Senseless Sacrifice: Tries to pull this, since she's of the firm belief that she deserves to rot in Hell forever. Of course, Emp firmly tells her where she can stick that nonsense.
• Stepford Smiler: Magics herself into one after Mind████ dies. Her Frozen Face goes beyond creepy and into outright tragic.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Come volume 10 she is much kinder to and friendlier with Empowered.
• Trauma Button: Beautiful blonde women in general, which reminds her of how awful her high school was. She masks it in a perpetual Berserk Button, leading to her singling out Emp for bullying.
• Vain Sorceress: Inverted, the powers were a bonus.
• With Great Power Comes Great Hotness: Inverted - she found out that the Alpha Bitches at her school had sold their souls for massive hotness and did the same thing... except her Infernal Services Provider messed up and gave her far more magical power than he'd intended.
• You Are Not Alone: Mind████ wanted to invoke this before her death, leaving a small copy of her mind in Spooky's consciousness to mitigate Spooky's worst memories. Afterwards, the timer runs out and it activates. It helps keep her mostly sane and focused.
• You Are What You Hate: Mind████ takes a peek into Spooky's memories and instantly grasps that her public persona has been subconsciously patterned after the same vain blonde bimbos she was so traumatized by. Both physically (sans actual Blondeness) and personality.

Mind████

Mind████, AKA Hannah

Intensely telepathic super who's been romantically involved with Sistah Spooky in the past. Stays in orbit most of the time to get away from the background thought-stream.

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• Aloof Big Sister: Her opinion of her behavior to her brother before he went apeshit. Ironically, Jacob seemed to see her more along the lines of Cool Big Sis and desperately wanted her approval.
• Big Good: Of Volume 11. As she was dying, it occurred to Mindf██k that her brother would show himself again, no matter what was keeping him imprisoned. So she made sure the last two people she had contact with, and thus, his likely targets, would have SOME form of aid when it inevitably happened. It's her emotional support and later literal mental defense of Emp that helps her weather Neurospear's gauntlet of supers, Rivet's Heroic Sacrifice and lets her get within punching range of Neurospear. Not to mention how her carefully woven shield around Spooky played into her Big Damn Heroes moment.
• *Bleep*-dammit!: Her name actually is rendered as Mind█████.
• Blind Seer: An Invoked example. Her younger brother forced her to remove her own eyes, and most of her tongue, to encourage her to develop her powers.
• Brainwashing for the Greater Good and/or Heel–Face Brainwashing: Does this to herself.
• Did I Just Say That Out Loud??: Talks entirely via telepathy — which means that background thoughts leak out.
• Flat-Earth Atheist: Mindf██k's ex-girlfriend Sistah Spooky got her powers from a Deal with the Devil, and Mindf██k can read her thoughts. But is still agnostic. This becomes tragically ironic because Mindf██k does in fact end up in Hell after she dies.
• Fling a Light into the Future: A left-behind video gives Emp an idea on how to take down a tough bad guy.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: hers differs from Empowered's in that she sees herself as being an effective hero, she just doesn't feel she's as purely heroic as, for instance, Empowered, given that Empowered is a genuinely good person and Mind████ is not because she had to Mind Rape herself in order to not be a sociopath. Whether or not a willingness to Mind Rape yourself is proof of inherent goodness is a matter up for discussion. Volume 11 shows she was never, strictly speaking, a bad person, but she was uninvolved and annoyed with her Nervous Wreck of a brother, which she blames for him becoming Neurospear later.
• Living Memory: After her death, a sort of copy of her sticks around in Spooky's memories (until the end of Volume 8, anyway).
• Lousy Lovers Are Losers: While Mindfuck can use her telepathic powers to have satisfying Mental Affairs, she's shown to be really bad at real sex with her lover Sistah Spooky. It's not entirely her fault - lesbian sex is tricky when you don't have a tongue.
• Mind Rape: One possible use of her powers. Her backstory reveals that she constantly did this to herself to avoid becoming a sociopath like her brother.
• Morality Pet: To Spooky. Post-mortum, she becomes the Morality Chain for Emp and Spooky's not-quite-friendship.
• My Greatest Failure: She believes that her own toxic influence was what pushed her brother into turning himself into the monstrous Neurospear. In Volume 11, we see that she might be exaggerating her guilt; it wasn't that she was overtly cruel to him, only that she tended to tune him out and therefore didn't realise until too late that he was talking himself into something disastrous.
• Noble Demon: As detailed above, this is Mind████'s opinion of herself at worst.
• People Puppets: Used both by her and on her..
• Power Incontinence: Her telepathy gives her trouble with crowds, a major reason she prefers to stay in the satellite.
• Power Perversion Potential: "Mindfriends with benefits". Ask for it by name! Their entire relationship was conducted 'long-distance' with one or two exceptions, since Mind████ is really bad at real sex (lacking most of a tongue didn't help).
• Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic: An odd variant in her telepathy, which appears to be based on stream-of-consciousness thought. She constantly corrects herself midsentence, adds random adjectives and adverbs, and goes off on smaller tangents before moving on to the next topic.
• Sacrificial Lion: She's nice to Emp and even Spooky likes her? Of course she's going to DIE!!
• Samus Is a Girl: Until the end of volume 4, we see Mind████ only in a spacesuit, complete with helmet.
• Sense Freak: Due to not having a tongue, she has to hijack people's taste senses to taste food. Since Spooky is a Big Eater, she doesn't mind much.
• Telepathy: Her power.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: By her account, the reason Spooky broke up with her was that Spooky couldn't accept that a person who knew everything about her could still love her.

Major Havoc

Major Havoc

A super-strong, none-too-bright Jerk Jock. That's about it for his character. Because of this, we can cheer when he gets his just desserts.

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• A Father to His Men: He truly cares for his teammates, just not Emp. His description of trying to save Turbobrain from Willy Pete's fire is quite sad.
• Asshole Victim: To the Chloroformaster. And arguably to Willy Pete.
• Bathroom Stall of Overheard Insults: Spreads some nasty rumors/smears to Heronet about Emp.
• Battle Cry: "'SCUSE ME WHILE I CRY HAVOC!!!"
• Book Dumb: Another superhero states that he dropped out after third grade. He may have been joking, but still...
• Break the Haughty:In Vol 7 while he's his normal asshole self he's also absolutely terrified of another encounter with Willy Pete.
• Butt-Monkey: His stupidity, smugness, and Jerk Jock nature makes him an easy target for this.
• Flying Brick: Your classical bruiser powerset, plus Eye Beams and a Breath Weapon.
• Gilligan Cut: He tries to give a rousing speech when the supers are temporarily depowered, saying, "We're still heroes, aren't we?". Cut to him screaming, "Aaaagh! Get it off me!"
• Godzilla Threshold: Seems to think the fight with Willy Pete qualifies to bring out the big guns and call in the Retirees. All the other Homeys shut him down pretty quickly, though.
• Hidden Depths: When Emp attempts to embarrass him by leaving erotic yaoi doujinshi featuring him (and some of the other male superhomeys) lying around the Homeycrib for him to discover, he's actually secure enough in his masculinity to be flattered by it, being pleased that enough women find him attractive to want to write stories like that about him. It's a surprisingly mature reaction for such a normally shallow, immature jerk. He even convinces the previously freaked-out dWARf and Protean to see it his way.
• Jerkass: In the volume seven recap, he's taken over from Spooky as Emp's no. 1 asshole teammate.
• Jerkass Has a Point: While he goes out of his way to find reasons to doubt Emp's claims of victory, even Emp's allies begrudgingly admit that his arguments aren't totally wrong.
• Jerkass to One: Of the "more Jerkass to one" variety: he's a colossal douchebag, but when it comes to Emp he is outright militant about making sure her life remains a living hell.
• Nigh-Invulnerable: Willy Pete's fire, which has the heat of a nuke, just knocked him out and destroyed his shirt.
• Pet the Dog: In Volume 11, he briefly manages to rebel against Neurospear's mind control when forced to attack Emp.
• Pretty Fly for a White Guy: White as a glass of milk, but he speaks in ebonics.
• Smug Super: He's definitely the smuggest of the bunch.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Book Six is when he turns from an asshole on the same level as the other homies to being actively antagonistic towards Emp, motivated by her hand in the vanishing of dWARf! and the Willy Pete disaster.
• Ukefication: In-universe, a running gag is that whenever we see fan material based on Havoc, he's always gay in it, and he's also usually the bottom. One commentator (an "Elissa P.") went so far as to claim that the Homoerotic Subtext to his actions is core to his appeal. This consistently leaves him confused and angered.
• Unskilled, but Strong: According to Ninjette, he has the fighting skills of a "developmentally disabled third grader."
• The Worf Effect: Have we seen any battles where he didn't get the ████ kicked out of him? Even Ninjette defeats him once (though in his defense, he was at least somewhat drunk at the time).
• Your Costume Needs Work: Much to his consternation, he apparently wrote himself out-of-character when he tried writing fanfic of himself—part of this is due to the fan impression of him being wildly different from his self-image.

Capitan Rivet

Capitan Rivet

The leader of the team. Made entirely of metal. Surprisingly, not a jerkass (he has the decency to at least try to suppress his laughter at Emp's humiliation).

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• Big Good: He's the reason Emp has her suit. In fact he's known she was Elissa since the day she joined the Superhomeys. He picked her as a small child after she came up to him for an autograph, because he saw her dedication, empathy, and kindness and thought she could be the one to save all of humanity from devouring itself under the strain of superpowered criminals and super fights
• The Cape: In a world full of superheroes that range from idly idiotic to actively assholish, Capitan Rivet stands out as a (mostly) genuinely nice guy and heroic figure. This may be why Emp idolizes him to the point of wearing underwear with his logo on it.
• Characterization Marches On: In the first couple volumes he was almost as much of a jerk to Emp as the other Superhomies.
• Chrome Champion: Is a stainless steel golem, and was never human to start with.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: He seems to be either able to regenerate or rebuild himself, because he can't go one fight without being ripped in half or reduced to a metal pancake. Being melted into slag, however, is too much.
• Gratuitous Spanish: It's unclear why he's Capitan Rivet and not Captain Rivet.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Sacrifices himself to save Emp from Mind████'s brother against Willy Pete.
• Knight in Sour Armor: He's been in the game for a long time, and has grown cynical and somewhat apathetic from it. Nonetheless, he still tries to hold himself to higher standard than his peers and is one of the few capes who comes across as a genuinely decent person.
• Nice Guy: He puts on an effort to treat everyone with respect and it's revealed despite all of Emp's issues he truly believes in her and always has, even remembering her as a little girl who once asked him if she could be a hero, too.
• Not So Above It All: Played with in the "Soldier of Love" story; he is the only hero to not get caught up in the shipping obsession surrounding superheroes/villains. However, the ending heavily implies that he was the one who hired the Soldier of Love to launch her attack, precisely in order to discredit the shipping obsession and let them focus on actually being superheroes. The fact that he lost control of her and only narrowly avoided a horrific outcome (which anybody who isn't completely Genre Blind could have predicted would happen when you hire a supervillain,) shows that he is certainly not above making stupid, genre-blind decisions in his efforts to be above some of the other pitfalls heroes are subject to. He also found Emp's humiliation funny, but he did hold his laughter in.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: Not just a hero, he's probably the best fighter and capable of going toe to toe with Willy Pete himself, doing better than an entire squadron.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: For the Superhomeys. He's one of the few members of the team who treats Emp like a teammate and not a joke. More importantly, in Book 9, he's the only person who votes against putting Emp in cryofreeze to keep her knowledge about alien tech from falling into villain hands, and in Book 10, he argues in favor of Emp becoming a full-fledged member.
• Tough Love:As the leader of the Superhomeys, he could possibly have helped, if not stopped, the trouble Emp has with the general public. The reason he doesn't? In Volume 11, it's all but stated that Emp will eventually be a Barrier Maiden for humanity. If she can't persevere through bad press and humiliation, then they're all dead when the actual bad shit finally starts happening. He's incredibly proud of her.
• The Worf Effect: Have we seen any battles where he didn't get the ████ kicked out of him? Reversed in a losing battle of all things when he takes on Willy Pete and manages to do far better than anyone has to date.

Syndablokk

Syndablokk

A man with a cinderblock for a head. One of the few truly sympathetic heroes, he gives Emp some fatherly advice and compliments in his first appearance.

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• Be Careful What You Wish For: Sometimes when a teacher asks you to imagine yourself as a superbeing, he might grant your wish. So make sure you make up a character with hands, or a face.
• Destructive Savior: He tries to avoid using his powers as much as possible because his powers are massive property damage.
• Dishing Out Dirt: More specifically: concrete, pavement, and masonry.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Half-man, half-... concrete?
• Heroic Second Wind: Gets one after Empowered pushes King Tyrant Lizard's berserk buttons.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: When he DOES get serious though, he's quite possibly one of the most powerful supers in the series.
• Mundane Utility: Uses his powers to rebuild the Superhomeys' base whenever it gets trashed. He has had to do this six times.
• Nice Guy: Is very supportive of Empowered and offers her plenty of advice.

• Story-Breaker Power: Theoretically, he could just drop a bridge on someone and be done with it. Probably why he's so nice.

Heavy Artillery

Heavy Artillery

Has only had a few appearances, usually as a background character. In his one speaking part it was revealed that he is gay.

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• The Cameo: He was shown on a holographic display in Volume 10. According to it, he hasn't been around because he's on vacation.
• Head Blast: His head is a large cannon.
• Karaoke Box: Can be seen using one at the Super Homie Karaoke Bar, despite having no discernible lips or mouth.
• Non-Human Head: An artillery piece.

• Unusual Weapon Mounting: Has some kind of a large gun for a head.

Protean

Protean

A human who got infected with an alien STD and turned into a blob. Wants you to know that his name means "ever-changing" and stuff.

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• Blob Monster: He is one, having been transformed after contracting an alien STD after Boldly Coming.
• Boldly Coming: His background story. Apparently gaining powers from alien/robot STDs are relatively common.
• Cursed with Awesome: To some extent.
• Insistent Terminology: Protean, not Protein. No, it's not "Glorpp" either.

Phallik

Phallik, AKA Bob

Wields his mighty Phallospear; has a fondness for smacking Emp's behind (or 'male-bonding' as he calls it) with it. Dies in the fight with Willy Pete, and as a representative for the Superdead, exposes the deads' locations to Deathmonger.

---

• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Read: phallo-spear. It even goes limp when his powers wear off.
• Deal with the Devil: How he got his Phallospear.
• Dirty Old Man: Cant seem to keep his, ahem, "phallik" to himself.
• The Loins Sleep Tonight: In a case of Does This Remind You of Anything?, when his powers are temporarily deactivated, his phallospear goes limp.
• Manly Facial Hair: Voted the most badass of all, in fact, though it ultimately lost the title to Willy Pete's beard of flames. In fact, it may actually not be all hair.
• Phallic Weapon: It's called the Phallospear for a reason; his default stance seems to have it pointing from his crotch, it goes limp when his powers are drained, and it seems to have an interest in female hindquarters.

Divangelic

Divangelic AKA Vanity & Charity, AKA Courtney

A pair of Conjoined Twins; the twin on the right is Vanity, a devil, wielding a whip; on the left, we have Charity, an angel wielding a kind of morningstar. The mind boggles how they manage to live with each other. Actually a single girl who was split into two people by some kind of unknown 3rd party masquerading as her teacher. Dies in the fight with Willy Pete.

---

• Angelic Beauty: Charity is dressed as an angel and is quite attractive.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Sometimes when a teacher asks you to imagine yourself as a superbeing, he might grant your wish.
• Carry a Big Stick: Charity's weapon.
• Flat-Earth Atheist: In her case, justified to a degree; she's not actually a demon or an angel, just a transformed girl.
• Good Wings, Evil Wings: On both sides.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Upon being transformed, Charity's first words were "What the H-E-double-hockey-sticks?" Vanity, on the other hand, went for "What the ████?"
• Hot as Hell: Vanity is dressed as a devil and is quite attractive.
• Literal Split Personality: Courtney explained her first drawing of Divangelic as representing her "good girl and bad girl sides as separate but connected entities". After the transformation, Vanity and Charity live up to the concept.
• Whip of Dominance: Vanity, the "devil" side is Dressed Like a Dominatrix and wields a bullwhip as her weapon.

Mechanismo

Mechanismo

Once a normal man, he was infected with a lady-bot's nanotech STD after sleeping with her, and turned into a mecha. Still acts as much like a human as possible, to the extent of sleeping.

---

• A Day in the Limelight: Emp has to team up with him in the full color one-shot Hellbent or Heavensent.
• Latin Lover: He was this before he got robotized.
• Meaningful Name: Is very chauvinistic. And a machine.
• My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels: He was transformed via alien nanotech, and as such all the options in his cyberware inteface are in the same incomprehensible alien language and alphabet, though it's fairly intuitive regardless. His tendency to just click through all the options nearly leads to a Grey Goo scenario.
• Put on a Bus: He appeared a few times with the rest of the Superhomeys in Volume 1, then disappeared until he made a small cameo in Volume 10 which revealed he was "on assignment", then disappeared again until the one-shot.

"Kirby helmet girl"

A superheroine who wears a massive, towering helmet covered in gadgetry.

---

• Eye Beams: The main useful superpower she's been seen using.
• Lack of Empathy: When Yummy Mummy expresses distaste at what she's reading (yaoi featuring her recently deceased teammates getting raped by Willy Pete) she makes it clear she never liked any of the dead capes, and adds "consent's overrated."
• Never Bareheaded: Is never seen without that helmet.
• No Name Given: After numerous chapters, we still don't know what her actual supranym is.
• Required Secondary Powers: One of her superpowers is being able to hold her head upright despite the weight of that helmet.
• Shout-Out: Her design largely exists as an homage to the artwork of Jack Kirby, who was very fond of his enormous techno-hats.
• Signature Headgear: Her giant helmet.
• Yaoi Fangirl: Likes reading Real Person Slash featuring her male teammates.

Other Heroes

Maidman

Maidman

A Batman (or Robin?) expy who seems to be the most decent, well-adjusted hero so far. The full French maid dress, stiletto heels and fishnets (with garters) he always wears could be thought of as an endearing character trait. He's introduced to us as The Mole.

---

• Agent Peacock: He stands out even among the other superheroes with their costumes.
• Atrocious Alias: While he more than makes up for it in skill and intimidation, even Maidman admits that a French maid is a fairly ridiculous persona to use, but brushes it off by suggesting it's a deliberate ploy to confuse criminals (or possibly just an inordinate fondness for women's underwear).
• Badass Normal: Maidman has no powers. He relies on intimidation, martial arts and a few gadgets to get the job done. Judging from his status as The Dreaded he's probably the most effective hero in the city.
• Batman Parody: Well, yeah. It's implied he's specifically one to Christian Bale, given the comments on his voice.
• Combat Pragmatist: As he assures Empowered, when she uses Look Behind You to fake out a bunch of criminals, despite his commitment to cleanliness, he sees no problem with fighting dirty.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Takes down Blitzcraig on national television with a vegetable dumpling that has some of Wet Blanket's power-draining essence (with Blitzcraig depowered, Maidman unleashes a martial-arts sequence that causes others to retract their snark at Maidman once he wins).
• Drag Queen: Downplayed. Despite his very feminine costume, Maidman makes absolutely no effort to look like anything other than the square-jawed, hairy, muscular man he is. The only people who could mistake him for a real French Maid would be people who are almost blind and deaf, or on the verge of death through alcohol poisoning.
• The Dreaded: Supervillains are so terrified of him that merely mentioning his name will have them turn in horror (conveniently exposing their back to Emp, who called him out just for this). A magazine once did a survey among supervillains and he was voted as the guy they'd least like to arch-antagonize. He's suggested this is partly because of his maid theming; it's one thing to get beaten up by a terrifyingly powerful superhuman, not so much a guy with no powers aside from feeling secure about his identity.
• Fan Disservice: Part of why he's The Dreaded: he wears lace panties under his skirt, and uses no Magic Skirt.
• Fantastic Racism: He thinks furries are beneath contempt, and looks down on Animal Themed Superbeings as being barely one step above them.
• Good Is Not Nice: Part of what makes the Supervillain community so terrified of him. He happily admits in an interview that he's not interested in amassing a Rogues Gallery and will readily resort to traumatizing or permanently maiming villains with career ending injuries to ensure that they don't come back. He follows this up by saying he does have a no kill policy, but quickly backtracks on that by saying he just doesn't kill often.
• Hypocritical Humor: He thinks Animal-Themed Superbeing costumes are "silly" and "embarrassing". This coming from the man whose costumed identity amounts to being a French Maid Drag Queen.
• Made of Iron: Rattles off a ridiculous amount of injuries during a self-diagnosis, and proceeds to shrug it off like he was speaking of a stubbed toe.
• Nice Guy: To Emp, being on the few people in the hero community to treat her with any respect, and even stand up for her and give her props for saving the day when the rest would rather cover it up in order to save face.
• Ninja Maid: Sort of.
• Real Men Wear Pink: He wields an explosive broom, throws doily shuriken, fights in stiletto heels with little bows on them and villains are terrified of him. The only male meido as badass is Kogarashi.
• Split Personality: Apparently, his civilian identity, while aware of his alter ego's exploits as Maidman, does not approve of them. Or know how to get bloodstains out of clothing.
• Stealth Pun: Based on how he acts and dresses, Maidman's secret identity appears to be a Made Man.
• Superhero Sobriquets: The Garter-belted Gladiator, the Dark Knight Domestic, the Delicate Cycle Detective, the Hard-hitting Hygenist, the Sanitary Sentinel, the Iron-handed Immaculist, the Manservant of Steel, the Squeaky-clean Samurai, the Corset-clad Crusader and the Velveteen Virtuoso of Violence.
  • And simply, the Goddamn Maidman!
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Maidman dresses in a classic French maid's outfit, complete with too short skirt that leads to lots of panty flashing, and he is probably the nicest hero Emp meets.

Ocelotina

Ocelotina

A former kidnapper of Emp who saw the interest in the market for a Stripperiffic heroine that was constantly getting Bound and Gagged, then used it to great financial effect to become a softcore idol.

---

• Cat Girl: "Nyaan!"
• Everyone Has Standards: "Inappropriate, I'm not into breathplay ^note a BDSM practice of denying the bottom air, jackass."
• Exact Words: Empowered is gagged from talking about what happened at the superhero awards (other members of the Superhomeys aren't and start spreading nasty rumors about her), so Ocelotina invites her on her show and duct tapes her head so she can't talk so that Ocelotina can say how awesome Emp was.
• Faux Action Girl: Her persona is this, based on Emp - a supposedly competent superhero who keeps getting tied up and humiliated. The series proper makes it clear that even that's just a persona.
• Informed Ability: In-universe: she claims to be an Animal-Themed Superbeing, whose powers get deactivated by her Weaksauce Weakness of her hands being tied with her tail. ^note  A nod to the original Wonder Woman comics. As Emp points out, she never actually demonstrates any of these powers, as in her videos, she always gets conveniently incapacitated before she can bust them out.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She respects Emp and considers her a true hero. Is it sad that, even though she has humiliated Empowered in public and over the internet that she is legitimately magnitudes nicer to our heroine than anyone on Empowered's team?
  • Possibly her attempt to become The Atoner: Due to 'unwritten rules' defining villain/hero interactions, experienced villains generally don't rape or brutalize captive heroes, and expect a certain level of restraint when the shoe is on the other foot. During Ocelotina's short stint as a villain, she didn't know the rules, and discovered her own bondage fetish in the process of tying Emp up. Thus, she was the first villain who ever actually sexually assaulted a bound Emp (implied to include digital penetration). She'd thought she was playing into Emp's (wrongly assumed) bondage fetish, and was horrified to discover the actual situation.
• The Load: "Please save me... because I'm really, really cute!".
• Ms. Fanservice: This is all she is.
• Sexy Cat Person: She is a parody of all the heavily-sexualised feline-themed characters in superhero comics, since she's basically just a porn star.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: She's very open to Emp that Emp's popularity as a bondage magnet was her inspiration to become a hero. Emp is never pleased at this.

The SuperDead

The SuperDead

Many superheroes gain powers through bargains with supernatural entities. Every so often, when such a hero dies, they simply keep going, as the power refuses to leave their body. These heroes continue on as the SuperDead, their existence kept secret from the public. Notable "surviving" members include HardKore, Rubberneck, Plutonium Blonde, Mother Tongue, Strapping Buck, Daisycutter, Unibrow, Gnu Metal, and Gooey Samaritan.

---

• Animal-Themed Superbeing: Strapping Buck and Gnu Metal, with the former being an anthropomorphic deer and the latter a cyborg themed after a wildebeest.
• An Arm and a Leg: Several of them are missing at least one limb, including Daisycutter and Plutonium Blonde. Mother Tongue gets it particularly bad; pretty much everything below her ribcage is gone.
• Attention Whore: Daisycutter was quite the philanderer when she was alive, but seems to have been doing it mostly because she just liked the attention. She even says she doesn't mind no longer being able to have sex, as long as she can still get eyes on her and flirt.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Emp consistently treats the SuperDead abnormally well, which is much of the reason they befriend her.
• Blessed with Suck: They may be basically immortal as long as their brains survive, but it's also hardly pleasant; they have to live in secret and are generally pariahs in the community, not to mention being zombified carries a lot of attendant baggage. And while they don't age and seem to be preserved, it's noted that they will one day crumble to dust. It doesn't help that they're considered prime targets for Deathmonger, who builds her career off enslaving them.
• Body Horror: While the level of damage they've taken varies (Hardkore and Plutonium Blonde look practically alive aside from the hole in Hardkore's chest and Plutonium Blonde's missing left arm), some of the Superdead are in absolutely horrifying shape. Daisycutter is a charred corpse, Unibrow's face appears to have been either burned or rotted down to the skull, Mother Tongue is just the upper half of her torso and head attached to her long pseudotongue (which gets torn out of her mouth when Deathmonger strikes with the rest of her being discarded like trash), and that's not even getting into the state Phallik was left in when Willy Pete was done with him (it makes Daisycutter look like a supermodel)...
• Can't Have Sex, Ever: A notable downside to being dead, much to the consternation of HardKore, is that it apparently makes it impossible to get an erection.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Despite their grotesque appearances, they're pretty friendly once you get to know them, as Emp finds out.
• Deal with the Devil: How they got their powers, which keep them going even after death. Capitan Rivet points out that their bargains usually prevent them from revealing they made a deal, which is why no one knew Phallik was a bargainer. It should be noted that despite deals with literal devils being a possibility in the setting (like Sistah Spooky's situation), SuperDead-causing bargains doesn't have to be with anything infernal, or at least it doesn't have to have been apparent as such to the bargainer before or after the deal.
• Death by Woman Scorned: HardKore thought his relationship with his archnemesis was an open one. Let's just say he doesn't have a heart-shaped hole in his chest for no reason.
• Epic Flail: Rubberneck's main combat tactic is to use his head (and the accompanying giant spiky helmet) as one.
• Foil: HardKore serves as one to Major Havoc. They're both combative alpha-male types with Super-Strength and quasi-leadership roles, but while Havoc is a regular old Jerkass, refuses to learn lessons, and is Unskilled, but Strong, HardKore shows off a genuine soft side, is willing to grow from his experiences, and manages to successfully train Emp to be a better fighter.
• Having a Blast: Daisycutter's main power is to create explosions (being named after a slang term for a Vietnam-era bomb).
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Most of them, but particularly HardKore, who seems to be the unofficial spokesman of the group—at first, he comes across as little better than Major Havoc, but once Emp's intentions become clear, he quickly warms up to her. The main exception is Rubberneck, who is a nice guy from the start.
• Not Using the "Z" Word: They find it offensive.
• Remove The Head Or Destroy The Brain: Destroying the brain is noted to be one of the few guaranteed ways to keep them down, though even that doesn't remove their powers from their bodies. Phallik was able to keep moving and fighting even with a badly damaged brain, but seemed to be mostly in a state of frenzy.
• Revenant Zombie: They fall into this category; they fully maintain their intelligence and all their superpowers, though many of their biological processes have halted and they don't seem to be capable of healing.
• Rubber Man: Rubberneck, as the name implies, which he mostly uses to smack people with his head.
• Speech Impediment: Rubberneck has a near-constant stutter.
• Sympathetic Adulterer: Daisycutter is shown to have had fairly regular affairs when she was alive, which she attempted to pass off as mind control (very unconvincingly). It's basically treated as a gag.
  Oh, honeybunny, l'il ol' Daisy only hooked up with Horsepower and Slamma Lamma again 'cause that creepy ol' Browbeater was mind controlling all three of 'em at once...! Not buying it this time, are you?

Makro

Makro

Small, cute and wide-eyed superpresenter of "Superdirty Jobs".

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• Little Miss Badass: Able to tangle with all kinds of aliens, demons, and anything else the superhero life can throw at her, due to her invulnerability. Her show is about showing off the absolute toughest superhero jobs, and she shrugs it all off with a smile.
• Nigh-Invulnerable: She looks like a vulnerable little girl next to the beefy superdudes who work the jobs. But shrugs off fresh lava to the face.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: She's based on Mike Rowe, the host of Dirty Jobs.

Ghost Writer

Ghost Writer

A superhero who also works as a ghost writer. He writes most of the celebrity books released by various superheroes.

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• A Darker Me: Mightier Pen, his character in his Self Insert Fics (and when he is moonlighting as a villain).
• Author Appeal: in-universe example - he's really into spanking, bondage and Damsels in Distress.
• Blatant Lies: Very poorly tries to cover up that not only does he have a huge fetish for spanking, he's also the fanfic author behind several poorly written fanfics about Emp.
• Jerkass: His "book proposal" for Emp's book deal was little more than a fetish softcore book about her being tied up and spanked. When she called him on it, he insulted her and said that all she ever would be was a sexy joke so she might as well embrace it and try to profit off it.
• Mad Libs Catchphrase: "A [noun] — no, a [adjective] [same noun]" and "[verb] — no, [different verb]"
• Mills and Boon Prose: His writing is positively full of this, with words like "girlflesh", "pert", and "nubile" being used far too often and a general excess of adverbs.
• Stylistic Suck: His writing in the first volume is a rather wonderful duplication of an ineptly written smut fanfiction, with incredibly Purple Prose and some rather bafflingly out-of-character behavior. Emp muses at one point that he somehow managed to make an adverb form of "nubile."
• Unusual Euphemism: "humidly inflamed", which is what clues Emp in on him also being the author of an erotic fanfic about herself she found earlier.

Villains

Willy Pete

Willy Pete

A man who was turned into a fire elemental, and consequently gained the appetite of fire — i.e., insatiable. At least, he's presumed to have once been a man; there are quite a few question marks concerning Willy Pete's origin. He was the Witless Minions' (and thus Thugboy's) last employer until Thugboy goes back to Witless Minioning in volume 10, which is how he makes money, so they've got some history between them; it's the kind of history that usually starts with "The rivers ran red with blood..."

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• Art Evolution: Sometime in between his first and second appearance, Warren apparently got much better at drawing fire.
• Artificial Human: According to Mind████, he doesn't even have a true mind. Volume 11 reveals that he was created by Brainbow AKA Mind████'s brother: the powerset was so unstable that it required a new mind that could handle it.
• Asshole Victim: He's been on both sides of this.
  • He is killed by Neurospear, one of the few other characters who match him for depravity and hatefulness.
  • He killed Kid Anglerfish, who used his powers to get laid, (read: rape people).
  • Also pulls this on Major Havoc, wiping out his team and knocking him a full state away.
• Atrocious Alias: Yeah, Willy Pete is a nickname for white phosphorous, but why not call himself White Phosphorous then? Willy Pete is still a pretty dumb name. Given his love for rape and murder, and how his name was one of the reasons why the Witless Minions tried to steal from him, it's likely to lure future victims into letting their guard down.
• Beard of Evil: Sports a long fiery beard.
• Bestiality Is Depraved: He's mentioned that he's had sex with animals before.
• Blessed with Suck: Though he doesn't think so, a drawback of being a "fire elemental" is that he takes on the same properties as fire. In other words, he's insatiable for more things to consume, even though he doesn't actually need to. He's perpetually horny and hungry, but can't eat or have sex normally.
• Depraved Bisexual: He rapes people to death while burning thousands of degree Celsius hot. His victims' gender doesn't actually matter — anyone unlucky enough to get caught is fair game. Oh, and he prefers to rape them through the eye socket because the skull is one of the few parts of the body that isn't incinerated too quickly.
• Eating Optional: He has stated that he doesn't need to eat, but he still likes to. However, he burns so hotly that almost anything he tries to eat turns to ashes when he tries. He gets around this by cannibalizing superbeings, because their flesh is just cooked nicely by him.
• Elemental Personalities: He's a wild, destructive and passion-driven villain whose body is covered in fire hotter than the surface of the sun.
• Evil Is Burning Hot: Made of fire; possibly the evillest character in the comic.
• Expy: Very reminiscent of a Batman villain named "Dr Phosphorous". "Willie Pete" is military slang for white phosphorus, and they have the same power-set, the same Power Incontinence and the same general personality, though Phosphorous lacks Willy Pete's degenerate rapist streak.
• Eye Scream: His signature. He likes to skull-fuck people to death.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Played with — he was always powerful, but simply not known.
• Full-Frontal Assault: He is nude under all the flames.
• Hero Killer: Wipes out a significant number of Superhomies with terrifyingly little effort, finally (and unintentionally) catching the attention of the Super-community.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Pete eats the flesh of people sturdy enough not to be instantly reduced to cinders by his touch, despite not needing food to survive. By his account, he's developed a taste for it.
• Implacable Man: That's what ultimately triggered Thugboy's "whatever" mode: he is only alive because Willy Pete hasn't found him yet.
• Karmic Death: Neurospear created him artificially so the superhomies would have a "mind" to control a powerset. Neurospear is the one to kill him.
• Knight of Cerebus: His first confrontation with superheroes finishes with a great deal of them dead despite the pretty upbeat tone of the comics.
• Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex: A variant. The main danger isn't super-strength, but rather the fact that he's constantly burning white-hot. It's noted that even his preferred method of sex still usually vaporizes the brain in seconds and blows the skull apart if the person doesn't have some form of invulnerability.
• Meaningful Name: "Willy Pete" is (US) military jargon for White Phosphorus.
• Nonstandard Character Design: The only (non-robot) character that doesn't look even slightly Animesque.
• Playing with Fire: He is constantly burning thousands of degrees Celsius hot.
• Power Incontinence: Willy Pete cannot turn off his flames, supposedly leading him to the depraved acts he's known for, since he can't have normal sex nor have a normal meal. It's implied that he doesn't have a normal body under the flames — and might not even be human at all.
• Serial Rapist: Willy Pete has raging, wild desires — sexual and otherwise. However, since humans are too fragile for him, he targets superpowered beings so he can both rape and eat them since they're strong enough to take it.
• Sense Freak: According to him, his main motivation; he doesn't need to eat or have sex, but he still feels the sensation and has an appetite for it. This causes him to seek out the only things that he can eat or have sex with — namely, superpowered individuals tough enough to endure his presence for long enough for him to eat them or rape them (often both).
• Tom the Dark Lord: Seems this way until the Meaningful Name is pointed out.
• Uncertain Doom: He is seemingly destroyed by Neurospear, but all we see of that is a distant explosion.
• Villainous Valor: Actually manages to resist Neurospear's mind control, refusing to continue hurting Empowered simply because he commanded him to. He manages so well that he tracks him back across the city, forcing Neurospear to banish him.
• Your Head A-Splode: Even though a person's skull can survive his loving for a few seconds, it's not long before the brain turns into superheated gas, at which... well.

Fleshmaster

Fleshmaster

A former member of the Superhomies, until he was publicly humiliated (Carrie-style) at an awards ceremony, then disappeared.

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• Biomanipulation: His power. Initially, he was too anxious to use his powers on himself, until his humiliation motivated him to reinvent himself.
• Casanova Wannabe: Before he vanished, he was mostly well-known for his disastrous attempts at picking up women. A common joke about him was that "he was the master of no flesh but his own."
• Chekhov's Gunman: Both played straight (to a degree) and subverted; Fleshmaster is mentioned several times during Volume Four as part of the Capeys' debacle that could prove to be Emp's eventual fate if she wins anything - since it's a proven fact (and alarmingly, Sistah Spooky seems aware of this) that the suprahuman community is a bunch of dicks - but we never meet him. Turns out he was under their nose all along as dWARf, which is revealed in a stellar scene mentioned below. Ironically, dWARf sets himself up to be found out by Emp.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: In his fight with Emp he uses his bio-editing powers to become a monstrous giant...which doesn't even get one hit in before Emp pounds him into the floor.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Emp defeats him very quickly. She does not even let him take advantage of his powers.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: He was happy to be one of the cool kids and a popular superhero for a long time, but when Emp got a joke nomination, he jumped without much worry into sexual extortion and mass murder. Once he'd been imprisoned by Manny, he just got worse.
• Kick the Dog:
  • He promised to spare Emp's friends if she gave him a blowjob at his moment of triumph. Emp didn't take kindly to that.
  • And then there's what he did to poor Manny...
• Killed Off for Real: Vaporized on panel, courtesy of a lotus node portal, an alien superweapon and a very pissed off Emp.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Tries to pull this on Emp, pointing out how horrifically their superpeers have bullied and disrespected them. Lets say he underestimated Emp's legitimate herosim.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: As dWARf!
• Revenge of the Nerd: Gender-flipped; he redesigned his body as such.

Manny

Manny

A Littlest Cancer Patient who met Emp thanks to the Grant-A-Wish Foundation in order to tie her up. His greatest dream was to become a supervillain. Through a strange series of events he managed to attain superhuman intelligence and (possibly) cure himself.

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• Affably Evil: To an extreme degree. The mad respect he has for Emp makes for a jarring contrast with the disrespect her own teammates show her.
• Anti-Villain: Of the "villain in name only" type, for the most part: he's polite, helpful, kind, and seems to mostly be in the supervillain business more for the aesthetic than to hurt anyone. To date, the only onscreen crimes on his record are stealing the stuff that gave him his Super-Intelligence and kidnapping someone who could cure him. He is on good terms with Deathmonger, though; it's anyone's guess as to how.
• Chivalrous Pervert: Although his request was to tie up Emp, he genuinely respected her, and was infuriated when the media took photographs of it and humiliated her.
• Death of Personality: Fleshmaster causes his Mayfly-mutated brain matter to expand out of control that his consciousness falls into an inescapable feedback loop, an essential brain-death.
• Face Heel Door Slam: His ultimate fate, thanks to Fleshmaster.
• Friendly Enemy: He's indebted to Emp and worships her because he could finally play "Ropehappy Supervillain" with her.
• KidAnova: Manny has a bit of this. See Precocious Crush.
• Littlest Cancer Patient: Played with, in that he legitimately has cancer and is quite precocious, but willingly subjects himself to worse via Mayfly to cure his original cancer, and is only tangentially killed by his disease courtesy of Fleshmaster.
• Mecha-Mooks: Last seen with an army of robot henchmen... that he named after Emp.
• Precocious Crush: On Emp. He grows out of it.
• Super-Intelligence: It was noted that he could build a combat mecha through nothing but hospital equipment.

Deathmonger

Deathmonger

A necromancer-style supervillain who preys upon vulnerable supers no one wants to admit exist.

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• An Arm and a Leg: Loses her left arm and and left leg and gets her right leg gruesomely mangled during her fight with Emp. She appears to have them back in volume 9, either through prosthetic replacements or some other unexplained means.
• And I Must Scream: The fate of any SuperDead she captures.
• Demonic Possession: is used as a mouthpiece by the devil that accidentally gave Sistah Spooky her powers. After the conversation ends, Deathmonger regains control and notes that she "lost a few minutes."
• The Dreaded: Scares the shit out of every cape when they see her, for very good reason. Especially those knowledgeable about the SuperDead.
• Due to the Dead: Ha, no.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Enacts a temporary truce with Emp in Vol. 9, because she's THAT fond of Manny, and likely realized she was the only way to bring the poor boy to peace at last.
• Evil Genius: Was a superscience savant before becoming a criminal. And before she died.
• Foreshadowing: Warned by Manny himself, to not take Emp lightly.
• The Ghost: Deathmonger was mentioned in the very first story of volume 1 as the villain the Superhomies were arguing over how to defeat. Later in that volume Deathmonger was described as "a popular sell out supervillain" and an "overhyped jackass" by a disgruntled Big Iron. She was the central villain of the chapter 'Diseased Wench' with an army of "scythebots", but since Emp never made it to the battle, nothing of her was seen. After volume 1 she dropped out of the series until volume 6—where she finally appeared after having been reimagined as The Dreaded that she was. Even then, her mask still left her as The Faceless.
• Hero Killer: Has personally offed several well-known capes in order to see if they'd be SuperDead candidates.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Several:
  • Emp lassos her with a Super tongue she severed, causing smokey, sparkly teleporter Ubiquitease, a SuperDead she enslaved, to leave without her at just the right moment.
  • She sets Tommy Tokamak's carcass, which is powering her facility, to detonate her Collapsing Lair... And it does, with her inside thanks to Emp... although it appears that teleport sparkles are appearing around her before the explosion. Sure enough, come volume 9...
• Necromancer: Dresses the part to the T. And while she isn't the one to bring them back she has the tech to turn any SuperDead into her personal puppet soldiers.
• Night of the Living Mooks: Literally. The SuperDead, as a result of their abilities, are aware and helpless to do her bidding.
• Our Liches Are Different: Considering that she claims to be dead herself, she could be considered the technological equivalent to a lich, using science rather than magic.
• Retcon: From her early mentions in volume 1, nothing about Deathmonger suggested that she was anything other than a death-themed supervillain commanding an army of "scythebots", although in the first chapter Emp mentioned her drawing power from a "pan-dimensional link" which she suggested the Superhomies try to cut off. When she reappeared in volume 6, she was reimagined as an actual Necromancer who commands armies of the superdead. This could be purposeful on her part as the cover story on the subject benefits her activities, but the apparent difference was never addressed. However, in volume 6, a bunch of robots with scythe limbs are also seen around the lair, so this may not be as big a retcon as we think.
• Samus Is a Girl: Revealed to be female in volume 9.
• Skeletons in the Coat Closet: She wears the skull of the superhero Impakt as a mask, although unusually for the trope her eyes don't go in the sockets.
• Unexplained Recovery: We never do find out how she survived that explosion.
• Villain Respect: Came to seriously respect Emp after their first encounter.

Ninjette's Father

Ninjette's Father

This so-far-unnamed ninja is the leader of Ninjette's ninja clan, the source of her issues and a complete bastard.

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• Abusive Parents: Volume 7 reveals just how horrible he is, and the living hell she was raised in as a result.
• Action Dad: He's Ninjette's father and kicks lots of ass.
• The Alcoholic: It runs in the family.
• Archnemesis Dad: To Ninjette.
• Ax-Crazy: Sometimes there's just no excuse other than this.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Full scale war with an allied clan over your kid chucking her virginity at one of their princes? Yes, it wrecked a potential alliance marriage with a third party (the clan head in question insisted on a virgin teenage bride) but now you're further in the hole.
• The Faceless: We only ever see his body, his facial profile with his hair obscuring his eyes, or his hand either holding a beer or reaching for Ninjette...
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Only a human, but is one of the most vile characters in the series.
• In Vino Veritas: The same technique of Ninjette. Justified because it's a Clan Kaburagi technique. Also, his fifth beer of the night makes his real abusive personality emerge.
• Perma-Stubble: Always unshaven, adding to his sloppy, abusive drunk image.
• Perpetual Smiler: Of the little we actually see of his face, his expression is always a humorless sneering grin.

• Terms of Endangerment: Refers to Ninjette by her first name with the "chan" honorific attached, which tends to make whatever he's doing while calling her this even creepier...
• Villainous Valor: In an interesting way. In preparation for her final battle with the Ayakami, Ninjette drinks, explaining that she won't walk "into a scenario likely to result in [her] death and/or dismemberment without first getting good and solidly buzzed...." Oyuki responds that Ninjette's father often says something very similar before going into battle. It reminds us that, evil though he be, Ninjette's father is still a man, who feels fear, and possibly other human feelings. That one moment renders him easily the most human of the villains in the comic (save, of course, for Manny).

Infernal Service Provider

Infernal Service Provider

The demon Sistah Spooky sold her soul to for supernatural hotness, and due to a misplaced decimal point, was granted massive magical power as well. The ISP tried to correct the error quietly, but Spooky's hero actions made this impossible, and his superiors caught wind of the monumental mixup. He has no intention whatsoever of letting Spooky off the hook for this.

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• Batman Gambit:
  • Granted Spooky and several others too much power on purpose, so he could eventually force one into taking his place. Only Spooky took the bait.
  • He also claims to have had some sort of involvement in Mind███'s death somehow.
• Big Bad: Of the "Emp and Sistah Spooky High School Hell" mini-series in which he pulls Emp and Spooky into a Hell based on High School and intending to have the the the Ashelys, the same girls who tormented Spooky back then, kill the two and take Spooky's powers for themselves. It backfires as the the duo end up defeating all of them, mostly due to Spooky's understanding of spells. With the last Ashely killing the one that was leading them then self-imploding due to her own self loathing (As said girl was actually black when she made the deal and in the same boat as Spooky ironically). And in the end made Spooky even more powerful after taking not only back her magic but those of the Ashleys, who quickly pummels I.S.P for all the crap he put Emp and her through.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: By the end of the High School Hell mini-series, his attempts to have the Ashleys kill Emp and Spooky backfire and wind up giving Spooky more magic by the end of it. Spooky even lampshades as such before she crushes him.
• Ironic Hell: His existence is one. A salesman who hated his job when alive, a salesman who hates his job while dead.
  • He tries to subject Spooky to this in "High School Hell" mini-series by making a construct based off her high school and filled with all the blonde girls who bullied her.
• Faux Affably Evil: Calls Sistah Spooky "Sunshine", and claims to be moved to proverbial tears over her reuniting with Mind███, but it's painfully obvious he doesn't have a sincere bone in his body.
• Taking You with Me: When Sistah Spooky gives him the complete thrashing he deserves, he calls for Hell Security to kill them all.
• Villainous Breakdown: By the fifth issue of the "High School Hell" mini-series, he becomes frusterated at the Ashley's inability to kill Emp and Spooky. Yelling at the Ashleys to stop playing around and kill the two already. Even morso when it just comes down to one of them and she has more then enough magic to kill the two ten times over but instead keeps opting to gloat.
• Villains Never Lie: Played with. He lied about the transaction mishap being a mishap, and seemingly lied about Mind███ being in Hell. But the latter was unfortunately very very true.

Mind████'s Brother

Brainbow/Neurospear

Mind████'s younger brother, who used his telepathy on himself to become a better superhero, but turned into a ravaging murderous lunatic. He then forced his own sister to cut out her own eyes and tongue to force her to rely on her telepathy more, thus (in his opinion) making her stronger.

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• Alas, Poor Villain: When he is eventually killed by Sistah Spooky, his inner dialogue clearly implies that his former, much nicer, self is still present and scared of what it is happening to him.
  Brainbow: Hannah help me. I'm still in here.
• And I Must Scream: It is implied that his original persona is still conscious and sentient inside the sociopathic personality that he has brainwashed himself into.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: According to Mind████, he was overcome by fear and confusion thanks to constantly reading the ickier thoughts of everyone around him, and altered his own personality so that he'd never fear anything again. This, unfortunately, turned him into a complete sociopath.
  • Volume 11 reveals that this was a partial lie: he was driven to despair by the darker things he was forced to do by the Joint Superteam Council and by the knowledge that he gained from reading their minds and wanted to turn himself into a man who was able to make the "hard choices" that, according to the Council, were necessary to meet a future unspecified catastrophe.
• Chekhov M.I.A.: He appears on-panel only in a Flashback Nightmare, but he casts enough of a shadow over the series that he's pretty certain to appear at some point. Volume 10 ends with a cliffhanger, revealing that he has escaped from his confinement. He serves as the primary antagonist of Volume 11.
  • His Cryopod briefly appears in Volume 10, but we don't get to see inside it. We do, however, get to see his supranyms as both hero and villain: Brainbow and Neurospear.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: He's one of a particular type of Anti-Hero, the "hard man making hard choices." The first "hard choice" he made was to kill his empathy, but it was actually due to his own fear of guilt and stress over whatever he understood about the Joint Superteam Council's fears about a massive threat to the world, plus his own self-loathing over being a meek and kind-natured person. Afterwards, he ends up being the kind of person who never actually considers the moral consequences of his actions and looks down on everyone as weak, aka an immature, misogynistic bully who is a massive threat to the world.
• The Faceless: We never see his face in the present. He essentially exists in silhouette. In non-traumatic flashbacks, he has eye obscuring bangs.
• Fatal Flaw: He edited his own mind to remove everything he saw as a weakness holding him back, resulting in him being really terrifyingly effective. However, he is still prone to getting impatient and jumping the gun, since he didn't see being "a man of action" as a weakness. This proves his undoing.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: He decided to use his telepathy to make some slight changes to his personality so that he could perform his duties as a Superhomie more effectively. Instead he has turned himself into a ravaging lunatic completely indifferent to the suffering that his actions cause, even to his loved ones.
• Human Popsicle: He's kept in a cryofreeze prison until the end of Book 10.
• Karmic Death: The man who tormented his sister gets killed by his sister's lover.
• Knight Templar: After having modified his personality he becomes an extreme and utterly insane version of this.
• Known Only by Their Nickname: Known only as Brainbow, Neurospear or rarely Mind████'s brother. His real name is Jacob.
• People Puppets: This is his favorite tactic. He used this power to force his sister to cut out her own tongue and eyes and mindcontrol Thugboy into knocking Emp off of a building.
• Psychopathic Manchild: His 'improvements' have come at the cost of leaving him severely emotionally stunted. This is what gives Emp a fighting chance against him in Book 10. Having taken control of almost the entire superhero population of the city, he could have easily just overwhelmed her with numbers alone without having to lift a finger. Instead he insisted on treating it as a game and keeping it 'fair', meaning she just needed to outlast them all until he inevitably lost his patience and went to deal with her personally.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Sistah Spooky interrupts his ranting about how she failed to save Hannah by pointing out that he tortured and mutilated Hannah, so it's a bit late to be protective of her now.
• Spell My Name with a "The": Always refers to himself as The Neurospear.
• Telepathy: Neurospear is a powerful telepath capable of reading minds, controlling people like puppets and even editing his own psyche.
• Testosterone Poisoning: Has shades of this, calling himself "a hard man who makes the hard choices" and "alpha" and referring to his meek former self as a "soyboy".
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: A Flashback in Volume 11 shows that he was a sweet shut-in kid. Unfortunately, he grew into an insecure and immature man, who mistakenly believed that he had to telepathically edit his personality to be a real superhero.
• Voice of the Legion: His text bubbles as Neurospear have backwards Es and often have non-caps versions of his dialogue underneath his words when he's shouting.

Frank

Frank

A senior member of Thugboy's former gang, who remained friends with him after the latter's Heel–Face Turn.

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• Deadpan Snarker: Has his moments.
  Frank: Sounds brutal, T-Boy...You're subjected to hot, crazy monkey sex with a superfreaky superchica. So far, I ain't seein' the "drawback" part, yet.
• Mook Lieutenant: Gives out instructions and orders from above to the gang.
• Nothing Personal: Thugboy colludes with Empowered while still with Frank's gang. As a result Frank has to execute him, only for Emp to rescue Thugboy, blasting Frank in the face in the process. Neither man appears to hold a grudge against the other, and they have talked and eaten together a number of times since.
• Sexless Marriage: Implied to be in one. Compared to Emp and Thugboy's relationship, at least.
• Threat Backfire: When Empowered is curb-stomping his gang, Frank tries to hold her off by pointing his gun at Thugboy's head. Since he was about to execute Thugboy anyway, this doesn't even slow Emp down.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Thugboy. As you might expect from a couple of hoodlums.
• Your Little Dismissive Diminutive: Suggests this as a way Thugboy can compliment Empowered's rear end without making her self-conscious. Emp soon catches on but doesn't complain.

Wet Blanket

Wet Blanket

A wimpy villain with a potentially devastating power: he can negate other supers' abilities.

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• Anti-Villain: Quite possibly the most soft-hearted criminal ever. One wonders how he ended up as a villain.
• Personality Powers: He's a wet blanket both power-wise and socially.
• Political Overcorrectness: Goes with his Personality Powers.
• Politically Correct Villain: His defining trait.
• Power Incontinence: His nullification power is always on.
• Power Nullifier: Cancels out all powers within 25 feet of him. Any cells separated from his body retain this power.
• Uncertain Doom: It's never made clear if he survived Fleshmaster's mutilations.
• Verbal Tic: "'kay?"

El Soldado Del Amor

El Soldado Del Amor

A jaded Spanish-speaking magical girl turned mercenary. Her powers allows her to manipulate the love in people and wants to rid the world of love.

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• Ambiguously Brown: Given her numerous references to guerrilla tactic and lingo, "international revolution", and possibly Che Guevara; along with her brown skin, she might be Central American.
• Love Freak: Deconstructed. At first she believed in love and started making people fall in love with her. Unfortunately, all it does is to make them little more than slave robots enthralled only with love. Worst of all, with her powers she can see that all kinds of love naturally withers and putrefies over time even under her powers, And she's immune to her own powers so she can't accept her own lies. Eventually she begin to see love as a huge tumor growth sprouting on people, devouring their brains.
• Magical Girl Warrior: Her uniform even looks like a soldier uniform. complete with military vest and a beret.
• Mentor Mascot: A pangolin.
• Power of Love: She has the ability to manipulate the love of others, amplifying it to levels that prevents them from doing anything else. Ironically, she sees love as a disease and wants to remove it from the world.
• Universal Translator: When she's in magical girl form, she speaks the Universal language of Love.

Blitzcraig

Blitzcraig

A former enemy of Maidman who went by the name of Gotterdammeruffian. He changed his identity and became a talk show host.

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• Faux Affably Evil: He pretends to be a charming talk show host, but he's actually a villain.
• Flying Brick: He can fly, has the strength of fifty men and is Nigh-Invulnerable.
• Gratuitous German: Both his names are puns off of German words. It was what tipped Maidman off to his true identity in the first place.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: He's a former supervillain who escaped justice and reinvented himself as a talk show host. His Karma Houdini status lasted only as long as it took Maidman to confirm his true identity.
• Mad Libs Catchphrase: He likes to add "super" to random words.
  Interesting. No, super-interesting.
• Underestimating Badassery: He makes the mistake of believing that he can beat Maidman. He learns the hard way that he cannot.

Le Chevalier Blanc

Le Chevalier Blanc

A self-proclaimed "male ally" who tries to protect poor, innocent superheroines like Emp from a world that exploits and objectifies them... by kidnapping them and putting them in suspended animation until the day when he's managed to fully eradicate sexism.

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• Gratuitous French: His speech is full of this.
• Human Popsicle: The fate he intends for Emp. He ends up suffering it himself instead.
• Hypocrite: He wants to protect women, yet sees nothing wrong with kidnapping them.
• Knight in Shining Armor: His appearance, and clearly also how he sees himself.
• Politically Correct Villain: He's all about combating sexism, and he will tell you about it at length if given the chance.
• Straw Feminist: A rare male example, serving as a parody of clueless would-be "white knights."
• Stylistic Suck: His mangled French is absolutely terrible. As the occasional scenes where Emp speaks French have shown Warren could write better French if he wanted to, suggesting it's Le Chevalier himself, not his writer, who's getting it wrong.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Well, presumably he's well-intentioned. It's implied that his beliefs are more than a bit self-serving, though.
• With Friends Like These...: Emp does not appreciate his efforts to "help" and "protect" her, to say the least.

The Ashleys

The main threats in the "Emp and Sistah Spooky's High School Hell" mini-series — the Alpha Bitch clique from Spooky's old high school. Like Spooky, they all made deals with the Infernal Service Provider for beauty and basically became a horde of blonde bombshells all named some variation of "Ashley". The reason why Spooky hates blondes in the present day of the series was because of how they mercilessly bullied her. In the miniseries, the I.S.P eventually came to collect them all for a new scheme to take vengeance. Specifically, lure Spooky (and Emp by proxy, just out of spite) to Hell, and have the Ashleys each attempt to kill the two, gauntlet style, in a realm based on Spooky's high school, with the promise of the mystical power Spooky wields going to the surviving Ashleys upon her death.

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• A God Am I: Once the head Ashley take the majority of power for herself, she says as such, citing herself a Goddess right before her number two stabs her from behind.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Spooky actually sympathises with Ashlee upon realizing she was orignally a black girl who changed her skin color in her deal after being bullied, having suffered similar bullying herself. Before Ashlee is killed by her own magic, Spooky asks what her name was.
• Alpha Bitch: One in life, even moreso in Hell. The one leading them is even named Ashley and the Queen Bee among them.
• Bad Boss: The main Ashley who leads the others. In Issue 3 of the mini-series, one of them suggests to her to use more girls in their traps. Ashley responds by blowing up her head for questioning her. Though not surprisingly her strategy of going one on one is being done on purpose and essentially a win-win for her. If the girls kill Spooky, then no skin off her back. But if they fail, more magic for her to absorb. Once Spooky and Emp take out a good chunk of them, Ashley decides to just kill the majority of them off save for her number two and take their magic herself. Ironically she ends up back-stabbed in the final battle by said number two.
• Beta Bitch: Ashlee-with-two-'e's, the Number Two for the Queen Bee Ashley — even when she kills all of the other remaining Ashleys to take their power, Ashlee is spared.
• Break Them by Talking: A few do attempt this in conjunction with some of their power sets and, considering Emp and Spooky's low self esteem, it nearly works a few times. Ironically, the final Ashley is beaten like this herself when Spooky gives her "The Reason You Suck" Speech after figuring out something crucial about how she made her deal.
• Deader than Dead: Each one defeated is "Expelled", turned into a student I.D card and burned to nothing.
• Deal with the Devil: All of them made one with the Infernal Service Provider to become beautiful blonde women while in high school just as Spooky had.
• Entitled Bitch: All of them think Spooky doesn't "deserve" her power (which I.S.P purposefully keeps encouraging) citing it unfair she got more in her package then they did. Granted Spooky agrees but naturally knows that it wasn't her fault.
• Evil Gloating: What leads to a lot of their downfalls. They just can't resist the urge to talk smack, especially if they have the duo at their mercy, giving time for Spooky and Emp to counter them. Even I.S.P lampshades this in the final fight, yelling at the last Ashley to kill the pair already when she has them at her mercy.
• Home Field Advantage: I.S.P tries to help them a bit by giving them domains in the construct to use their magic more effectively while nerfing Emp and Spooky's powers. However, they are dumb blondes to a fault and one slip up during their gloating is usually all that's needed for the two to turn things around on them. Likewise Emp and Spooky are superheroes and have more than enough experience dealing with bad guys.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: A few get done in by their own powers being thrown back at them. The final Ashley ends up killing herself as taking all the magic power within herself ended up imploding her due to the magic reacting to her self loathing. Spooky states she's had more than enough practice coming to terms with her self-loathing to keep this from happening to her (Though having Emp by her side doesn't hurt either).
• Identically Named Group: Downplayed. The Ashleys got their name because the most important members all had a name that was a variation of "Ashley". When necessary, Spooky distinguished them by the way they spelled the name — for instance, "Ashlee-with-two-'E's" for the Beta Bitch Number Two of the clique.
• In the Back: The head Ashley ends up stabbed from behind by her number two.
• Kids Are Cruel: Pretty much their motif. All are catty girls who were trying to fit in and turned to the Infernal Service Provider to be more beautiful, bullying others who didn't follow their ways. This is reflected in how each one attacks the pair which in turn is an experience Spooky had to endure while going through high school: Texting, art, frogs from science dissections assignments, graffiti on bathroom walls, mirrors, etc.
• Orcus On Her Throne: The head Ashley usually spends most of her time on her throne carried by other Ashleys while her number two, Ashlee, orders the others on her behalf. The only time she really does anything is when she kills one of the Ashleys for questioning her, killing the others to gain their share of magic through a fire trap designed like a Pep Rally and the final battle where she tosses around Emp and Spooky for most of it before being killed off herself by Ashlee .
• Power Incontinence: How Ashlee is defeated; after Spooky realizes she was originally black but talked by the I.S.P into a Race Lift as part of her deal, Spooky dredges up her own self-loathing, and with it, a suicidal impulse. Since at the Physical God levels Ashlee was at at the moment, her powers respond and start undergoing a Superpower Meltdown before she could regain control.
• Personality Powers: Each of them has a power set themed around high school bullies and how they mistreated Theresa/Spooky. The girl who sabotaged her science project can animate lab frogs as giant undead monsters, a girl known for her Death Glare has Eye Beams, while the two who cyberbullied her can conjure text bubbles and emojis as weapons.
• Power Parasite: They have the same pool of magic Spooky does; the less of them there are, the more they can steal her powers.
• Sadist: The Queen Bee Ashley admits she took the deal for the express purpose of abusing and terrorizing her fellow students. She specifically enjoyed seeing the fear in their eyes. Unfortunately for her, her Number Two quickly realizes the QB will never kill her if it means depriving herself of a victim/audience and backstabs her when they're the last ones left.
• The Starscream: Ashlee, the number two of the bunch. She succeeds in killing the head one off to gain the majority of magic the Ashleys were using.
• Shout-Out: One Ashley named Angela is designed like Holli Would from Cool World.
• You Are What You Hate: The final Ashley, Ashlee or as she was originally known, Joslyn, is revealed to have been a black girl herself, bullied just as badly as Spooky. However, where Spooky took the deal but kept her original race, look and identity, Ashlee went completely Caucasian. Spooky uses this against her in the final battle, filling her with such self loathing that she implodes.

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