Panel 1: I get the strong impression that this shot is ripped off from a vintage manga action sequence, but I’ll be damned if I can recall the original source. It’s certainly not ganked from, say, Shirow’s Appleseed vol. 4 or Yaz’s Star of the Kurds, as I’ve studied both of those comics so thoroughly that I would easily recognize a callback to either. A mystery, folks! Regardless, I do appreciate the action storytelling of this panel, even if I suspect it’s not wholly original.

Panel 2: Yeahp, as we’ll see in more detail down the road, the g-d Maidman does indeed have a rather outsized reputation throughout the caped community—and its underlings, as noted here by the goon’s dialogue.

Panel 5: I do rather like the idea that seniority might be a valid issue in minioning circles, not that I’ve addressed the matter in Thugboy’s flashbacks to his time serving as an ultimately treacherous lackey. Say, I do quite like the word “lackey” in this context, even though the term sounds even less likely to be favored by supervillain employees than the more common “henchman” or Empverse-standard “minion.”

-Adam Warren