Volume 2 Page 164
Posted January 19, 2017 at 12:01 am

Panel 2: Rather a poor choice to show the speedline-delineated outbound path of the rebounding rock so visibly disconnected from its inbound path, though space constraints likely drove this decision. In fact, this image seems almost as if the rock is flying into a transdimensional portal on the side of Dumbass Bad Guy’s head and then hurtling back out at a different angle. Oh, well.

Panel 3: A touch of the ol’ Mysteriously Intermittent Post-Millennial Torso Glitch to this shot of Emp, as her waist is notably more exaggeratedly skinny than 2006-ish Me intended to draw; if you check most of the other images of Emp in this story, she wasn’t cartoonishly wasp-waisted like this.

Some arguably out-of-character wackiness in this scene, as smashing a foe in the temple with a good-sized rock seems a tad vicious on Emp’s part, given the possible medical consequences of such violence. Or is this act truly all that vicious, given the blatant nonexistence of neurological consequences to blunt-force trauma in a superhero story? After all, every superheroic universe—however supposedly “serious” it might be—operates with a narratively convenient lack of post-concussion syndrome or traumatic brain injury, not to mention a deliberately unrealistic form of unconsciousness meant to similarly ease storytelling difficulties. As in, heroes get clubbed in the head, snooze peacefully for twenty-odd minutes so the villains can transport ’em, then awaken with no ill effects whatsoever—a process which obviously bears no relation to reality, but makes for easy-peasy storytelling. (In fact, much further down the road, I’ve worked up a potential—if rather No-Prize-ish—explanation for why neurology in the Empowered universe functions in this peculiar manner.)

Then again, this dumbass supervill did go a bit far beyond the pale in chaining Emp into an actual deathtrap, which is extremely unusual bad-guy behavior in the Empverse. You were kind of inviting some violent consequences, dumbass supervill.

-Adam Warren

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