Panel 3: Enjoy a very rare version of Emp’s supersuit-based zapping ability—or “VORPPing” ability, after the sound FX that accompanies it. Here, the imminent VORPP manifests a distinctly Street Fighter-ish “Ha-Do-Ken” fireball flavor—or, in theory, a Dragonball Z-ish “Kamehameha” flavor, but I’ve never read much Akira Toriyama. (Street Fighter, on the other hand, I spent a great deal of time playing before having to give up fighting games altogether, due to their stress on my all-too-vulnerable drawing hand.)

In fact, this peculiar VORPP iteration is never seen again in the series, but who knows? Perhaps we’ll see it again during the upcoming Empowered volume that will be, in effect, a 200-page fight scene. Then again, in all honesty, I’ve forgotten why the heck I even went the Ha-Do-Ken route with this scene in the first place. Mysterious!

Panel 4: Nice action shot, 2006-ish Me! Come to think of it, this is an ultra-rare Empowered action shot in which Emp’s supersuit is fully intact as she kicks butt. 

Panel 5: Ah, behold the reappearance of one of my favorite Empowered tropes: The fact that Emp’s hair immediately, magically resets to its tucked-behind-her-ear state after an action shot—such as panel 4—in which her platinum mane was very clearly and dramatically blown back by explosions or violent motion or the hair-disarraying like. Down the road, we might have a minor reveal about the nature of Emp’s technically “unrealistic” hair—you’ll notice that it never snags on anything, nor is it ever grabbed or pulled by anyone (including Thugboy), as you might expect. See, I eventually worked up a No-Prize-ish explanation to justify this phenomenon, but have never quite gotten around to trotting it out in a story; suffice it to say that Emp’s ever-enigmatic supersuit is involved. Mysterious, again!

In retrospect, I kinda wish that I’d established the idea that Emp’s long hair was always part of her supersuit, and that she actually sports short hair—possibly of an entirely different color—when out of costume. (That might help explain why, apparently, few people seem to spot her resemblance to a fairly infamous superheroine.) Ah, but that would’ve felt too much like certain issues of Marvel’s Spider-Woman I read as a wee 70s-era lad, in which we find out that, early on in the series, Jessica Drew’s flowing locks were indeed part of her costume, and she rocked a vaguely Dorothy Hamill-ish hairdo as a civilian. (Then again, if I recall correctly, the Spider-Woman costume was, well, “bald” in issue #1, akin to Spider-Man’s covered-head look, and that little detail was hastily changed as of issue #2, though sadly without an amusing and/or No-Prize-ish explanation.) 

-Adam Warren