I really do like this page’s “super-stringy” look of disheveled-hair Emp, a visual riff I’ve largely abandoned in later volumes. That’s in part because, starting with Empowered vol. 2, I began featuring extensive action scenes with supersuited Emp, most of which should theoretically have disheveled the hell out of her flowing blonde mane. Rather than committing to Emp’s hair constantly being in disarray, I shrugged and rolled with the “realism”-be-damned concept that her hair somehow magically resets in mid-fight. Even as the action grew ever more intense and grueling in later volumes, I stuck with this admittedly goofy idea regardless. (After the fact, I developed a supersuit-based rationale for why her long hair never snags on anything nor ever gets grabbed by an opponent, but this never-discussed explanation is very much of the retroactive “No-Prize” variety.)

Panel 2: Nowadays, I’d probably script “forging blueberry pancakes” as “crafting blueberry pancakes” instead, but what the heck. This does bring up an interesting point: Is it really credible that blueberry pancakes are indeed the only thing that Emp thinks she can cook particularly well, as she mentioned previously? Seems likely to me that this is something she might have cooked—though not necessarily well—for her father when she was a little girl. (As will become clear to new readers roughly 200 pages from this point, Emp has a considerable and pronounced set of Daddy Issues.)

Emp’s word balloon in this panel might be a bit tough to read, but the “appalling popular music” which she’s crooning is none other than 2005’s “Don’t Cha” by the Pussycat Dolls—as in, “Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me” and so on. And yeahp, she’s sporting Kyoko’s “piyo piyo” apron from the great Rumiko Takahashi manga Maison Ikkoku, as seen in a previous reference to Emp’s pancake-crafting skills.

Panel 3: I really should try to remember that Emp has a Capitan Rivet coffee mug, given that I’m pretty sure that it only ever appears in this one panel. (By contrast, Emp’s Capitan Rivet underpants have made at least two brief—ha ha!—appearances in the series.)

-Adam Warren