Some puzzlingly dubious fight choreography on this page, as the sequence implies that the goon’s chair swing in panel 1 was so violent and forceful that Emp-disguised Ninjette rides its momentum away from the table—far away from the table—in panel 5. Admittedly, it’s just possible that the seated Ninjette launched herself off the table in panel 5, but this certainly isn’t made clear from the storytelling, and I cannot tell if that was my intention or not. The idea of an martial artist seating herself in an opponent-swung chair is, IMHO, a reasonably clever bit of choreography, but extending that move’s momentum into a head-over-heels spin seems a bit of a stretch. Oh, well.
That being said, this story’s beat-’em-up action represented a pivotal moment in the development of Empowered, as it marked the first time that I fully realized that the nascent series’ generous pagecount allowed me to indulge my love of complicated fight scenes. As much as I had loved attempting complex action choreography in my earlier comics work, I always felt myself hemmed in by the strict limitations of mainstream comics’ fixed pagecounts, and rarely managed to draw out fight scenes for more than a few pages at a time. Ah, but as I discovered with this story, the loosey-goosey (lack of) structure of Empowered allowed me far more freedom to explore longer and more intricate action sequences.
Panels 1 and 3: Once again, the strangely familiar Ruger P-89 semiautomatic pistol makes yet another appearance. Gotta say, this has always been a rather odd choice of a handgun, in part because of the peculiar surface complexity of this particular model, which is festooned with odd, difficult-to-visualize slopes, angles, cutaways, bevels and scallops. (As I’ve cursed on numerous occasions, “This g-d thing has more scallops than a g-d Legal Seafoods menu.”) To put it mildly, this compares unfavorably with the easy-to-draw simplicity of, say a boxy Glock semiauto or the like. I have, however, kept drawing this very specific and annoyingly complex Ruger pistol because it’s very easily referenced, if you catch my drift. Still, in the very least, I should’ve invested in a few more AirSoft replica firearms to allow for a wider reference set. Again, “Oh, well.”
-Adam Warren
