Panel 1: In theory, a more conventional establishing shot for this setting would’ve constituted better storytelling, but I’ve often eschewed such shots in this series; in fact, if I recall correctly, Empowered vol. 1 might not have featured a single true establishing shot in the entire book, which was a startling change of pace from my previous narrative practices on earlier projects.

Then again, as stated earlier, early Empowered was all about embracing spontaneity and  speed of production while blithely ignoring the storytelling “rules” I followed in my previous comics work—and blowing off slow and, often, not all that interesting establishing shots was very much part of that approach. 

Panel 4: Gotta admit, the term “ceiling-sitter” as a slang reference for Emp is not quite as catchy as “wallcrawler” for Marvel’s Spider-Man.

-Adam Warren