Panel 1: The background images are all from “damsel in distress” scenes scattered throughout Empowered, but I don’t feel like tracking ’em down and linking ’em. (As I’ve noted before, the series did spawn from a series of “superheroine laid low” bondage commissions, after all.)

Panel 5: The profuse “sweat droplets,” here, are an amusing riff I largely picked up from manga artists Atsuji Yamamoto and Hisao Tamaki; I believe the latter worked as an assistant to the former, which might explain where he picked it up. This would no doubt bug the crap out of mangaka Naoki Urasawa, who’s famously scornful of “sweat drops” as being something one does not see in real life. (A slightly puzzling rationale to me, but what the heck.) Not 100% sure, though, that such a cartoony spray is appropriate for such an emotional scene. 

UPDATE: I went online to see if I could find Urusawa’s exact quote about manga “sweat drops,” and what was one of the first results? A previous Empowered commentary addressing this same point!

-Adam Warren