At first glance, Emp-disguised Ninjette’s move with the knife seems a little hard-edged—pun unintended!—for a sequence in which she’s intending to use non-lethal force. A less potentially deadly choice might’ve been to grab and hurl the mook’s billy club at his fellow, gun-wielding mook—and, SPOILER ALERT, she does exactly that in a subsequent page. Or she might’ve pegged Gun Mook in the arm or hand with the foot-flung knife.
Ah, but I like the idea that the fight has started to slide out of Ninjette’s “comfort zone,” as she certainly hadn’t planned to get grappled by a far stronger opponent and have a pistol pointed at her whilst being pinned, so she’s instinctively resorted to dangerous ninjutsu tactics under stress. (A gun being involved would undoubtedly tend to ramp up her level of situational awareness, at the very least.) A badass Ninjette might be, but she’s not truly superhuman—or at least not entirely—and would be well aware that she could easily get her clock cleaned or be killed outright by these brawnier bros if she doesn’t pay full attention to the fight she’s engaged in. Note, by the way, from what we can make out under the mask of Emp’s supersuit, Ninjette’s expression seems somewhat alarmed, conveying that the situation is definitely starting to spiral out of her control a bit.
Note further, however, that pointing a 9mm at a superheroine in this context seems a bit sketchy in and of itself, besides representing extraordinarily poor tactical judgement in regard to the hapless mook grabbing Ninjette. Of course, I hadn’t yet created the doctrine of the so-called “Unwritten Rules” advising against killing or otherwise abusing superheroes, which I installed retroactively into the Empverse later in the series. (In fact, the present non-existence of the Unwritten Rules becomes a rather critical issue later on in this story, when Thugboy presents a view of “caped vs. uncaped” interactions that’s rendered quite notably flawed in the light of later Empowered developments.) Ah, but then again, Emp is supposed to be superhumanly powerful when her suit is fully functional, and Triggerhappy Mook might well have heard that one can blaze away at her with carelessly free-firing abandon.
-Adam Warren
