Panels 2-4: Note that Emp’s attempt at a Southern accent is callback to a story earlier in the volume, as that’s how she tried to disguise her identity while cosplaying as herself for a now-defunct part-time job. The faux accent, you might recall (or not), first appeared all the way back in Empowered vol. 1. 

Panel 3: Can’t say for sure, but that depressurization lever might be an unconscious callback to a visual element from the end of the 1989 miniseries Dirty Pair: Dangerous Acquaintances, when the (mildly) superhuman operative Shasti reentered an airlock—sans spacesuit, 2001: A Space Odyssey-style!—in the final issue’s “post-credits” scene. 

Well, technically, that was a “post letters-page” scene, as the coda was added a few pages after the end of the story proper. (As in, the issue’s story seemingly ended, then the reader leafed through a few pages of fanmail and editorial replies, then the “Guess what? The villain survived!” scene appeared.) That was a fun little narrative trick, gotta say, which wound up being used rather more famously in a subsequent issue of Scott McCloud’s Zot!

-Adam Warren