Panel 1: Note that Emp is referring to this page from back in Empowered vol.3.

Panel 2: Well, this should set off the foot guys, I suppose. First, the dudes who complain that I draw excessively short feet will weight in, which I can’t really deny; then again, Decade-Ago Me wasn't shooting for hyper-realistic anatomical drawing here, either, so you’re gonna have to bear with my whimsical stylistic flourishes. (Check my Instagram, if you want more reality-based figure drawing.)

Second, no doubt we’ll hear from the commenter who seems bemused by how often I draw Emp’s feet pointed in this manner. I do that because, guess what, that’s one of the few g-d positions in which I can draw a semi-decent foot. (Though, to be honest, this panel’s footsies ain’t all that great looking.) If you’ve done much figure drawing, you’ll soon recognize that the human foot appears as an ungainly, goofy-looking “meat club” from a dismaying number of angles, which is why lesser artists such as myself rely so heavily on the few foot positions we can pull off convincingly.

Panel 3: Sound the Overdialoguing Alarm, folks! (Might have sounded it during panel 2, as well.) Definitely should’ve cut this fairly technical exegesis on BDSM minutiae down to a more reasonable length. And yeahp, as you might guess, this riff was indeed based on real-world info, courtesy of a helpful reader from the BDSM community. She pointed out that, in an Empowered vol.1 scene, I incorrectly wrote Emp complaining about hemp rope being itchier than nylon, when the opposite is true. To quote Prince in “U Got the Look,” my face is red; I stand corrected.

-Adam Warren