Panel 1: Here we see one of the tricky things about using a so-called “wavy word balloon” when lettering a character’s dialogue—once you commit to using a full-on wavy balloon during a scene, you’re kinda stuck. The “full wavy” made sense a few pages back, when Emp was really shaky and emotional, but makes a lot less sense—in fact, possibly no sense at all—now that’s she’s expressing much more confidence, even if she’s not 100% as sure about this course of action as her words would indicate. I guarantee you that Decade-Ago Me was thinking, “Crap, gotta stick with the wavy balloons for consistency’s sake, even if she’s not sounding anywhere near as shaky as she did earlier.”

Nahh, I should’ve reverted to regular word balloons on this page—or, maybe, trotted out the “in between” variation that I now use to visually indicate only a slight quavering in a character’s vocal tone. This is the “wavy tail” word balloon, which pairs a conventionally rounded, oval-outlined dialogue balloon with—you guessed it!—a wavy, undulating tail or arrow pointing to the speaker. One problem: I only thought up this approach a few years ago, so Decade-Ago Me arguably had no such option.

Panel 6: Gotta say, until I drew Empowered vol. 11’s seemingly endless scenes of Emp running and jumping—oh, so much jumping—I hadn’t fully grasped to what degree her long hair partially obscuring her chest was effectively part of her default “look.” When you get her hair streaming back out of the way—as in all those Emp vol. 11 leaps and this panel’s shot—yikes is her rack ever prominent. (Though, I should note, the notably heavier, fuller-figured Elissa of recent years is rather more prominent in that department.)

-Adam Warren