Ehh, should’ve pared down this page’s dialogue a little bit; if carefully chosen, less text would’ve conveyed the same narrative points while keeping the pace of the story flowing more rapidly.

For the record, folks, my point with all the criticism of Decade-Ago Me’s choices isn’t just to give my earlier self a ration o’ crap—no, really!—but to show that a creator’s preferences in art and storytelling inevitably change over time. Or, at least, they should, as otherwise your work will likely be stagnant, ossified, static, repetitive. Believe it or not, I’m glad that I think differently, write differently, and draw differently nowadays than I did a decade ago—or three decades ago, for that matter.

Panel 3: Arguably, we shouldn’t hear Emp’s voice until her mouth breaks the surface of the portal’s membrane, but that’s some heavy-duty nitpicking, folks. Besides, this shot is meant to be visual shorthand for action elapsing over seconds, not necessarily a single freezeframe in time. 

-Adam Warren