For this page’s webcomic publication, I seriously considered changing the timeframe Thugboy quotes in panel 2—nineteen days—down to a more reasonable nine days. Ah, but then I’d need to fix panel 1’s reference to “a few weeks,” and—ehh, screw it, might as well leave the page as is. I often say that working on Empowered is all about “embracing imperfection,” and I guess I’ll just have to grit my teeth and live with the flawed judgement of 2006-Era Me.

’Cause, damn, nineteen days is an insanely long timeframe for Emp to have given Thugboy the ol’ cold shoulder and silent treatment. Not only would Thugboy very likely have taken off much sooner than that—even nine days seems a bit of a stretch!—but Emp is constitutionally incapable of maintaining an emotional “deep freeze” for even remotely as long as that. Moreover, nineteen days is also a ridiculously long time for Emp to have gone without wearing her supersuit—in fact, I’m not sure that nineteen days have elapsed during the last seven or so highly eventful volumes of Empowered. (Ehh, that’s clearly a bit of an exaggeration, but I sincerely doubt that more than six weeks or so have passed since the Ayakami-clan attack at the end of Empowered vol. 3.)

About all I can muster—however wanly—in 2006 Me’s defense was that I hadn’t yet worked out the full parameters of Emp’s volatile emotional climate and still had yet to determine how fast-paced her superheroic life would become. Pretty sure I was only thinking at the time, “Ehh, nineteen days sounds like a workable timeframe for Emp’s pubic hair to have regrown enough to interface badly with her suit’s hypermembrane. Roll with it!” Then again, who knows? Perhaps Emp’s “hair down there” regrows as fast as my beard did at her age—and back then, when I doggedly attempted to remain clean-shaven, I’d have to break out the razor at least twice a day. (My beard still grows back so fast as to look like old-school time-lapse horror-movie footage of a lycanthropic transformation—but taking place in real time.) 

Too much information? Aye, perhaps. In any event, stay tuned for the next page, in which we discover if Emp’s “clearcut nether realms”—to quote the Demonwolf—are now “kissable” or not. (SPOILER ALERT: They may very well be.)

-Adam Warren