Panel 1: Past Me was, I think, trying too hard with all the folds and highlights on Ninjette’s long-sleeved T-shirt, which looks more like one of the leather jackets of which I am so fond of drawing. Might have been simpler, and more true-to-life, to just leave those sleeves solid black. I find myself increasingly fond of that approach, especially after seeing how the mangaka Boichi handles the gangsters’ suits in the (serialized on Crunchyroll) Korean-set crime manga Sun-Ken-Rock. Artist and assistants render the always impeccably dressed goodfellas’ white dress shirts and shiny, shiny shoes in great detail, yet most of the time draw the Armani jackets and pants as solid black silhouettes—save for when suitcoats are flapping around in violent motion during the manga’s many excellent fight scenes, that is. Most artists, including myself, get into trouble when trying to draw complex highlights and folds on dark suits, especially when we’re trying to draw ’em without photoreference. The “silhouette approach” avoids this issue, while still making the suits look pretty damn good.

Panel 2: I believe a commenter here mentioned that, to get into her fully intact supersuit, Emp presumably must have to wriggle in through the open face of the mask and the neck hole, as if she’s being swallowed by a snake. (Potential “vore porn” alert?) Gotta say, that is pretty funny; in fact, one of the longer-running bits of elliptical storytelling in Empowered is that I never quite show exactly how she puts the dang thing on.

I’m also not sure that the empty suit’s fingers would be quite as squared-off as I show ’em here, but perhaps you can consider that another oblique Jack Kirby reference, as the bluntly square fingers he’d draw on characters’ gloves were imprinted on me as an impressionable child.

-Adam Warren