As we can see from the first sentence of the back-cover text, this would have amounted to a fairly serious SPOILER for the volume, which is why I'm only showing this image now.

Quite the blurb from the great Bruce Timm, eh?  In fact, this quote was from an online post of his that I stumbled across as the volume was being put together; I asked Bruce if we could use it, and the rest was history.  I know Bruce mainly from an ill-fated Batman animation pitch that we both worked on back circa 2000.  Luckily, this potentially disastrous proposal went nowhere, and everyone went on to bigger, better and notably more auspicious projects, such as Justice League and Teen Titans.  (Everyone, alas, but me, as my brilliant career would never again reach such heights of intimidating responsibility.  Oh, well.  Probably for the best, as I do tend to prefer working alone.)

I should add that Empowered has, in fact, garnered almost shockingly good blurbs and reviews in its decade of existence, which many or possibly most potential readers are wholly unaware of; I've considered trying to dig up some of the more glowing reviews in a wan attempt to tell people, "Hey, folks, look—it's okay to read Empowered! No, really!"  Alas, the series has been running for so long that most Empowered volumes and spinoff comics are only rarely reviewed nowadays.  (Then again, that might be for the best, as 2007 was a rather different time than The Current Year.)

I still rather like the Young Spooky image, but do not care for the grown-up Spooky artwork very much.  Her head is too big, her torso is out of line, etc.  But don't sweat it, folks—a .500 batting average is actually pretty good for Decade-Ago Me, in the stern and uncompromising estimation of Present-Day Me!