Panel 1: Note that, in the previous page’s final panel, Emp had said, “Now I wish you had become a supervillain, so you could tell the other bad guys about—” The weekend-long gap between webcomic posts is, at times, especially unhelpful to dialogue responses.

Panels 1-3: Even as the era of Emp’s Big Pouty Lips gradually draws to a close in the next few volumes, a primo example of the visual riff appears here in panel 1. Ah, but note how said Big Pouties instantly vanish in the next two panels, as such “Soupcoolers Grandes” are actually not all that useful for conveying changing facial expressions. (Eduardo Risso was able to pull that trick off in 100 Bullets with his many full-lipped characters, but I never could.)

Panel 3: Manny tying up Emp can certainly be viewed as creepy, but (IMHO) putting a gag on her strikes me as arguably more so, though Your Mileage May Vary on this point, especially if you happen to be a serious "Damsel in Distress" aficionado. Then again, Manny is unquestionably a fairly divisive character, as readers seem to break between either sympathetic or skeeved out regarding his preadolescent fixation on Emp.

-Adam Warren