Panel 1: The often varying size differential between Emp and Thugboy reaches what might well be its series apex with this particular panel, in which our heroine appears positively child-sized in relation to her significant other. As I’ve never deigned to draw up a height-comparison chart for the cast of Empowered—which is something I’ve done for damn near every other comics project I’ve worked on, by the way—I muddle through the stories with only a vague idea of the character’s relative sizes. I generally think of Thugboy as standing roughly a head—or maybe a head-and-a-half—taller than Emp, but that’s about as far as my consideration of the issue goes. Then again, the existence of a formal height-comparison chart might have been a moot point for this panel, given that I can guarantee you that I didn’t bother with working up proper figure proportions for either character in this shot. Yeahp, I just winged it and “eyeballed” Emp and Thugboy’s proportions freehand here, as I did for the rest of the page—and to be honest, probably for the rest of the entire volume. More often than not, due to sheer repetition I’m able to pull off “eyeballed” figures—but sometimes this carefree, devil-may-care can lead to problems, as you can see.
Must say, I rather like the extra-cartoony “noseless Emp” of panels 3 and 4. A fun bit of stylization on the part of 2006-ish Me! Should I brace myself, though, for the caterwauling of critics bitching about these panels’ patently “unrealistic” artwork? (Calm down, folks who disingenuously claim to be concerned about “realism” in comics art; I was just joshin’ with you a li’l!)
Panel 3: Who could that mysterious, shuriken-earringed character swooping down from above possibly be? Who indeed? Find out in our next installment! (For the record, note that said character is quite noticeably not wearing a dark shirt when they appear on the next page. Oops!)
Panel 4: Behold, the first appearance of Thugboy’s large-caliber, short-barreled revolver, which plays a fairly important role later on in Empowered volumes 3 and 5. If you’ll indulge a brief bit of gun nuttery, this gun was probably based on a friend’s lightweight, alloy-framed .44 Magnum, one of those “wilderness survival” pistols designed to be carried by hikers worried about possibly reenacting The Revenant’s key setpiece whilst out in the boonies. (SPOILER ALERT: We’ll eventually learn that Thugboy didn’t carry this revolver because he was sweating a bear attack.) Nowadays, though, I’d probably retcon this snubnosed monster into the now-discontinued Smith & Wesson Model 500ES in .500 Magnum, as his old line of work required him to carry as powerful an “emergency survival tool” as possible. (Again, see Empowered vol. 3.)
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-Adam Warren
