Adam Warren: Welp, this series derives from a kinda-sorta dangling plot thread left over from the very first volume of Empowered, back when Sistah Spooky was still mercilessly bullying downtrodden teammate Emp. Spooky’s origin story revealed how she, in turn, was tormented in high school by unnaturally beautiful blondes who had sold their souls for hawtness, only to become a superpowered sorceress herself after trading her own soul for beauty.

One unexplored aspect of that story, howeva, was this: how would her soul-sold high-school classmates react if they ever learned that their former “ugly duckling” victim had become not only just as gorgeously swan-like as themselves, but also inherited godlike powers denied to them? Arrogant and entitled as they were shown to be, wouldn’t they be bitterly resentful about Spooky socially leapfrogging them to glorious superheroine status? Wouldn’t they leap at the opportunity if their demonic Infernal Service Provider gave them a chance to reclaim Spooky’s disproportionate allotment of magic power for themselves? Why, yes, they surely would!

Problem is, I already have too many goshdarned plot threads to address in the regular Empowered graphic-novel series I draw myself, so this seemed like a story idea I’d have to inflict on, say, another Guest Artist -- note the respectful capitalization! -- in a separate Empowered miniseries. And lo, here it is!

I should also add that this is the first Empowered series in conventionally sized comics format, as opposed to the notably "squatter" 6.5-inch by 9-inch format of previous volumes and Guest Artist stories. Honestly not sure that’s really a huge sales point, but perhaps we should’ve plastered the miniseries' covers with blurbs screaming, "NOW WITH 1.25" TALLER PRINTED PAGES!"

How did Carla come onboard for the story? Was it something you’ve been talking about for a while?

Carla was one of the first readers of the goofy little throwaway stories that would eventually mutate into Empowered, back when I was circulating them as jpegs to a handful of friends, and her feedback on ’em was always incisive and valuable. In an interesting coincidence -- or is it a coincidence? -- one of the earliest Empowered stories featured a sudden rapprochement of sorts between Emp and her tormentor Sistah Spooky, but Carla found that to be an unlikely -- and, narratively speaking, unearned -- turn of events. So, after agreeing with her insight, I wound up spiking that early story from the series’ first volume. Roughly 1600 pages of Empowered later, Emp and Spooky did end up reaching such a rapprochement, but this time around I felt the thaw between them was far more believable.

And yeah, we’ve been discussing the idea of working together off and on for a decade or more, so when a rare window opened in her busy schedule, I was quick to suggest an Empowered Guest Artist project. I reasoned, hey, why not roll with a story harkening back to the Emp/Spooky relationship that Carla had already provided input on, a decade earlier?

Why have Sistah Spooky take the leading role, here? What do you think makes this story such an interesting one to follow from her perspective?

Well, I thought that having a book’s eponymous character -- that is, Empowered -- technically be Spooky’s "sidekick" for the length of a story would be a novel approach for me. Then again, for some time now, I’ve felt that Spooky was a compelling, even tragic character, which has been quite a journey for someone who started life as a one-note Mean Girl and bully. Plus, this brings up the question: Do we ever really get over high school? Clearly, this is an ongoing struggle for Theresa (Spooky’s real name), and this question even becomes a bit of a plot point later on in the miniseries.

Tangential side note: Oddly enough, unlike damn near everyone else I know in comics, my high school experience really wasn’t particularly traumatic. Elementary school, by contrast, was my own personal hellscape. (Pardon me as I flinch in recollection.) Alas, I didn’t really feel like writing Empowered and Sistah Spooky’s Grade School Hell, though that might have been funny.

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The title gives us an idea of what to expect from the story. What interested you in going back and exploring her origin story?

In both print and webcomics form, we’ve seen a definite renaissance in the "magical girl" genre of late, but with this miniseries, I was interested in telling a story about mean magical girls -- very, very mean magical girls, really. I like the idea of setting the action in a fun house-mirror version of high school, where all the emotionally heightened, figuratively life-or-death tensions and conflicts of one’s teen years could be literalized as actual life-or-death, end-of-the-world situations via the use of infernal magic.

Come to think of it, one early title for this series was "Empowered and the Mean Magical Girls," but after some thought, I felt that was waaaay too minimizing of Sistah Spooky’s role in what is, after all, primarily her own story.

Will the series be exploring her relationship with Empowered, who is also drawn into the story, or is your main interest in defining Sistah Spooky for herself?

Not to be too wishy-washy, here, but I’d say that both aspects are emphasized. Emp gets to witness -- and, in fact, experience for herself -- the traumatic social experiences that defined young Theresa before she became Sistah Spooky, abuse that would be revisited on Emp herself as her sorceress teammate relived her high-school psychodrama in adult life.

I liked the idea of Spooky and Emp having to work together as real teammates for the first time, as both are largely stripped of their superpowers and forced to run through a grueling and brutalizing magic-fueled gantlet. (Er, not be be confused with a magic-fueled gauntlet, such as Thanos might wear in blinged-out form.) We’ll see how both women are clever, quick-thinking, and resourceful as depowered action heroines—but that still might not be enough to save them from the resentment and wrath of a classroom hellscape swarming with blonde witches. Good luck, ladies!

Empowered was designed with male gaze in mind, as you’ve explored throughout the run. With Carla on board for this series, has that approach changed at all? What does she bring to the design of the series and its characters?

Ehh, I’m really not interested in having any of the great Guest Artists I work with try to imitate my own artwork, male gaze or not. Each of them has brought a unique and compellingly different -- as in, compellingly not me -- artistic take to Empowered, I’m happy to report. With Carla, one element I’m really loving from her pages is the strong delightful degree of emotiveness she brings to the characters’ facial expressions, a quality I prize over almost all others in comics artwork. In fact, throughout the miniseries Emp rarely wears her supersuit’s mask, solely because I wanted Carla to go to town on Emp’s expressiveness -- and go to town she did! Look out, town!

Empowered has switched in tone frequently, often several times within a single volume. What’s the atmosphere in this miniseries? What can readers expect from the story here?

As the school-uniformed Emp and Spooky run through the hellscape’s ritualized marathon of one high-school-themed deathtrap after another, the over-the-top set-pieces they endure are always humorous in nature, but also pretty damn brutal, both emotionally and physically. I’m not one to give my action heroines an easy time of things, and this is doubly -- maybe even triply! -- true of High School Hell’s goofy yet grueling ordeal. You’ll laugh! You’ll cry! You’ll say, "Ouch!"

Speaking of atmosphere, lemme hasten to add that colorist Jenn Manley Lee is doing a hell of a job (ha ha!) with her gorgeous, evocative color art over Carla’s linework. I find her approach to be artful and outside-the-box innovative in ways far beyond my own meager and simplistic ideas about coloring comics. (Not entirely a surprise that my last piece of full-color artwork was done over 20 years ago.)

Do you have any interest in following up this series with other Guest Artist comics set in the world of Empowered? What kind of plans do you have in mind for the future of Empowered at this moment in time?

While I’m trying to get several wholly original, creator-owned projects off the ground right now, I’m definitely still interested in doing more Empowered Guest Artist comics in the near future. In fact, the next one we have tentatively -- OK, very tentatively -- slated may be the most ambitious Empowered project yet attempted, and that includes my own volumes of the series! Lordy loo!

Empowered and Sistah Spooky's High School Hell #1 is available now.