Panel 2: Enjoy the (aforementioned) slightly complicated rendering scheme seen in the highlights on the brunette chica’s hair, here, as the riff abruptly disappears after this page, hereafter to be replaced by the default penciling scheme I normally use. Would really love to recall where the hell this minor but puzzling artistic flourish was derived from, but I have no recollection whatsoever about what might have inspired it.

Panel 3: ’Tis true, Treacherous Girl did indeed appear in the background of the early Empowered vol.1 story that first introduced Emp’s future boyfriend Thugboy. Must say, back in the freewheeling, devil-may-care early days of the series, I never bothered to figure out precisely what circumstances lay behind her appearance in that particular story, which do seem a tad unsavory on further reflection. Why did the vaguely and ambiguously criminal gang led by Thugboy’s buddy Frank—who was seen only a few pages earlier, you’ll recall—have a girl stripped to her underwear and tied to a chair? Panel 2’s earlier line of dialogue, here, implies that very “very ex-boyfriend” somehow got her into trouble, but I never worked out the specific details of what that statement meant, exactly.

Enjoy also a rare Empowered use of quotation marks within this panel’s captions, which is an approach I’ve used rarely—possibly never—elsewhere in the series. Note by the quotation format seen here—as in, the dropped “close quote” at the end of caption #1—that I’m considering each caption to be the dialogue equivalent of a text paragraph. (Issues like this are another reason to not bother with using quotation marks in comics captions, needless to say.)

-Adam Warren