?Panel 1: Note that this is a callback to a Very Young Emp incident originally described by the Caged Demonwolf, apparently as related to him by her mother(!).

Panel 2: Note also that I did not want to show Age 4 Emp in her underpants on the back cover of Empowered vol. 5, so I instead gave her a footie-pajama version of the outfit.

Might’ve been a good idea to use the footie dealie here, too, but I hadn’t yet thought of that. Oh, well. 

Panel 3: Staircases can be extraordinarily difficult to draw—but not if you depict them in an up-angled shot, as I did here. Besides, the camera angle worked well dramatically, IMHO.

-Adam Warren