Panel 1: Using some artistic license, here, in that the tattered-form suit is almost always depicted as completely baring Emp’s midsection, and hence would usually be in two or more separate sections. That seems a bit at odds with how Thugboy’s holding it up as one extraordinarily tattered but still-connected piece, but what the heck. The wildly inconsistent “tear patterns” of Emp’s supersuit are just something the reader will have to live with, along with many, many other—ahem—“flaws” in Empowered’s otherwise documentary-like realism. *wink*

Panel 2: Here, I arguably should’ve elected to use the more Lee/Kirby-esque phrasing “the suzerain spacefaring”—as with their immortal term “The Power Cosmic,” as opposed to the ineffably less important-sounding “The Cosmic Power.” I might, however, have sensed that I was already getting fairly abstruse with the vocabulary choice “suzerain,” and hence didn’t care to tempt fate—or a reader’s patience—with a potentially further confusing “Power Cosmic”-style reversal of word order.

Panel 4: Getting a bit “hand-wavy,” here, with the explanation of how the supersuit’s membrane theoretically protects the top of her head. I still kinda wish I’d gone with the idea that Emp’s long hair was always a part of her costume, and that she’s a different hair color—or hair length, at least—under the suit’s identity-disguising wig. As I’ve mentioned before, though, I didn’t pursue that route because, way back in the day, that’s how the costume of Marvel’s Spider-Woman worked; while costumed Jessica Drew’s seemingly Tangled-length hair was flowing hither and yon, out of costume she rocked a late-70s-fashion Dorothy Hamill hairdo. I didn’t care to make Emp any more Spider-Woman-like than I already had, so I avoided that otherwise-promising idea.

-Adam Warren