Panel 1: Uh oh! Here’s a first, ominous hint of the dreaded scourge of “overdialoguing,” which will soon barrage this poor story with too many word balloons in too few panels. Brace yourselves, dear readers, as my criticism of Decade-Ago Me’s unfortunate if not tragic verbosity will soon become fully as repetitive as my earlier bitching about the Mysteriously Intermittent Post-Millennial Torso Glitch.

That said, this panel’s touch of Overdialoguing is, I think, excusable to some degree, as the three rapid-fire balloons help to convey the telepathic equivalent of the “wacky sitcom neighbor bursts into room” trope Spooky mentions in panel 2. I do, however, implore long-time Empowered readers to refrain from divulging certain SPOILERS about  Mindf**k in the comments section. Please?

BTW, the reference to honey walnut shrimp is a nostalgic callback to a favorite dish of mine at the now-closed Panda Inn in San Diego's Horton Plaza, a restaurant I dropped by pretty much every year I attended San Diego Comic-Con over the last thirty-odd years. (Ouch.) Not a big surprise that the Panda closed, though, as Horton Plaza had gradually emptied out into a deserted commercial ghost town over the last decade or so.

Panel 3: The idea of compulsively honest telepaths who can’t keep their true thoughts concealed whilst communicating psychically was, I think, something I first had in mind when I was writing Gen13 for Wildstorm/DC back in the day, but never got around to doing before the book was canceled.

Come to think of it, I should probably post my bio in the About section sometime, for the benefit of new readers who would almost certainly be unaware of my previous career in print comics, such as it is (or was, to be honest).

-Adam Warren