Long-time Empowered readers may note that panel 2’s dialogue miiiiight just eventually help to explain an artistic change that becomes noticeable in the most recent volumes of the series. (Hint: A certain character slowly becomes a bit fleshier and fuller-figured over time, perhaps due to this side-effect of Spooky’s infernal bargain.)

Panel 3’s reference to “polarization of the population” is more than a tad insensitively phrased, but then again, a demon from f**king Hell is delivering this sales pitch, so he’s not likely to use ideally inoffensive terminology. Still, the idea is based more on the ever-widening divergence between the people one sees in real life and the people one sees in TV and film. During my lifetime, the selection of actors and actresses in mass media has, for good or ill, skewed much younger and much, much prettier than was the case in my childhood. (For example, even most contemporary Hollywood “hunks” from the 70s would be considered laughably old, hairy, out-of-shape and, well, "unpretty" by today’s rather more idealized standards.)  

Fun side note, regarding weight issues: A few weeks into this series’ webcomic serialization, I received a communiqué warning that some Empowered material was—and I quote—“fat-phobic.” I frowned and scratched my head over that point, until I realized what the complaint was likely referring to: namely, the plump fellow who dons Emp’s cruelly revealing supersuit in the story “All Mine.” For the record, dude’s physique is primarily based on what I probably looked like at the time I was drawing the g-d story, ten years ago and 60-odd pounds heavier than the present. (Note that I wrote "what I probably looked like" as I wasn't quite daring enough to actually use photoreference of myself, which might well have threatened my already fragile sanity.) To label that particular image as “fat-phobic” is, by implication, labelling Decade-Ago Me in a manner which I find quite frankly very hurtful indeed. *flounces off in a huff*

-Adam Warren