Panel 1: Behold our last page of Major Havoc/dWARf!/Protean yaoi dōjinshi, courtesy of my friend Tomoko Saito. Hilarious stuff, and much more authentic-looking than anything I could’ve worked up on my own. Gotta say, Protean saying “Kawaii yo, dWARf!” in panel 3 of the dōjinshi cracks me up.

Panel 2: “IT’S A TRAP!” Excessive Trapezoid Mass Alert! Really not a fan of the rather bizarre, almost pyramidal shape of Major Havoc’s caped shoulders. Not sure if this was a deliberate stylistic flourish on 2007-ish Me’s part, or just an exaggeration that spiraled out of control. I suspect the latter scenario, given that drawing these g-d pages is much more difficult than I tend to give Past Me credit for, as I’m currently (re)discovering to my chagrin with Empowered vol.11’s increasingly challenging pages.

Long-time Empowered readers should note that, at this time, I hadn’t drawn a character design for the unseen Captain Katana as yet. When we eventually see him in Empowered vol. 4, the Captain is a quadruple amputee with magical Japanese swords as prostheses for his arms and legs, retroactively making Havoc’s line about Katana “doing that to me” a tad disturbing.

-Adam Warren