Panel 1: Thumbs-up on the floating spirals of popcorn issuing from the bag at lower left, which was a fun visual riff. Not sure, however, that Spooky would’ve credibly taken such a delicate little nibble from the peanut-butter cup near the left edge of the panel.

Panel 2: While I’m okay with the shape I used for these telepathy balloons, I can assure you that I wasn’t thinking, “Best put some serious thought into designing these suckers, as I might still be drawing ’em a decade later.” No, instead I just tossed out the first balloon type that sprang to mind, and rolled with it. This worked out fine, but other of my spur-of-the-moment Empowered decisions have aged less gracefully over the years, such as the maddeningly tough-to-replicate design of Emp’s supersuit “wings” first seen at the end of vol. 3. I’m drawing those bad boys today for an Empowered vol.11 page, and I’d like to strangle 2008-ish me for such a frustrating design choice. Oh, well. 

-Adam Warren