Panel 2: Thugboy’s dialogue, here, does beg a few questions. So, apparently, Emp wasn’t sexually active during her early days as a superheroine? Timeline’s a bit tricky, as I’ve always held the vague idea that Emp moved to this city shortly after graduating college, and found her supersuit shortly thereafter, only a few months before the start of Empowered vol. 1. Then, well, what kind of contraception is she using as of the present day, as implied by Thugboy’s statement? Conceptive pills—or “the Pill,” capitalized, as it was referred to so ominously during my childhood—or minipills, or perhaps a Depo-Provera shot? Or one of the many other contraceptive options? With a series that depicts as much sex as this one does, I’ve no doubt missed out on a primo opportunity to provide good contraceptive role modeling. Oh, well. 

Then again, safe to say that Emp’s rather, ah, improvisational approach to MacGyvering a condom out of her supersuit’s hypermembrane, as seen on this page, does not represent an ideally responsible approach to one’s contraceptive options. Don’t try this at home, kids! (Note: the previous sentence is, of course, an ancient pop-culture reference—from That’s Incredible!, an early, proto-Jackass reality-TV show—dating back to the 70s-era days when the Pill was still capitalized. My apologies to any bemused young folk out there who elected not be born in time to experience the polyester-clad, feathered-hair, single-digit-TV-channel majesty of the 1970s.)

Note that Thugboy must have gotten out of his pants very quickly indeed during panels 3 through 5 to set up Emp’s off-panel application of the supersuit MacGyver condom. Timeframe’s not entirely unreasonable, though.

-Adam Warren