Panel 3: Note that “blanket party,” beyond the involvement of the hapless Wet Blanket, is a reference to the famous basic-training blanket beatdown scene from Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. Not a callback that Emp is likely to have made on her own, but no doubt she picked it up from Thugboy, who as a male is rather more likely to make a movie reference, as seen before.

Panel 4: Belatedly occurred to me that Hand Solo could be in dire straits indeed to be suddenly deprived of his powers by Wet Blanket’s proximity, if—as the “can’t see” line hints—that’s not just a hand-shaped mask, but his actual head. Whatever superpower or unearthly magic allows him to somehow breathe in that state might well cease to function in this context. Yikes! (Okay, maybe that is just a hand-shaped mask of some sort, but with a superpower that allowed him to see out of it.)

-Adam Warren