Behold, the secret origin of the unidentified superheroine whom I’ve unofficially codenamed as “Kirby Helmet Chick!” Gasp! Seriously, only queries for clarification of Sistah Spooky’s racial status are even remotely as Frequently Asked An Empowered Question as “What’s the name of the tower-headed girl?” Once again, out of sheer perversity or pigheadedness, I’ve elected not to answer that question for the time being. As of Empowered vol. 10, this enigmatic superchica remains formally unnamed; my condolences to the innocently curious.

Panel 2’s reference to “Doctor Gorshkov” is a tangential—and, as always, ultra-obscure—reference to one of my (many) childhood obsessions: namely, the Soviet military circa the late  70s. Architect of the then-burgeoning Soviet Navy was Admiral Sergei Gorshkov, here lending his surname to a presumed mad scientist of some sort. (For old-school Red Fleet cognoscenti, I like the idea of Dr. Gorshkov’s secret base being aboard a decommissioned but still wildly imposing Kara-class heavy cruiser—though some would claim a Kirov-class battlecruiser would be a better choice, no doubt.)

With panel 4’s punchline about these suprahumans having met in an (supra-)STD support group, this story seems to have become many readers’ favorite from vol. 1. Interestingly, this peculiar plot point was something I’d originally planned to address during my run of writing Wildstorm/DC’s teen-superhero title Gen13, but the book was cancelled before I got the chance to use this idea. Then again, in many ways my time on Gen13—by far my longest run on anything other than Dirty Pair, until this series—was a direct precursor to what I’d later do with Empowered. (In fact, I’ll very likely blither on about Caitlin, Roxy and company at greater length in a future commentary.) 

-Adam Warren