Panel 1: And yeahp, the previous page of shocking Ninjette-on-Spooky violence was another appearance of the “counter-factual scenario,” first seen 80-odd pages ago back in the beginning of Empowered vol. 7. I’ll copy/paste the three paragraphs of text explaining the term below:

Speaking of imaginary scenarios, I was amused to stumble across the term “counter-factual scenario” a decade ago when I picked up a handful of “What If”-style essay collections written by card-carrying historians. These writers seemed obsessed with not using the now-familiar term “alternate (or alternative) history,” possibly because they didn’t want their speculative blithering to be lumped in with presumably—ahem—lesser works of mere fiction. 

I found myself thinking over and over again whilst reading the essays, “Folks, you’re talking about alternate g-d history scenarios, for f**k’s sake. As in, y’know, The Man in the High Castle or SS GB or l’oeuvre de Harry Turtledove?” 

But noooooo, the vewwy, vewwy serious and not at all fiction-related term the editors used instead was “counter-factual scenario,” which seemed different from lowly “alternate history” only in that real historians were writing these goofy-ass essays. So, I borrowed this frankly pretentious term for Empowered vol. 7; not to wax too SPOILER-iffic, but you might encounter a few more “counter-factual scenarios” later on in this volume.

Panels 2-5: Behold, a series of otherwise unrelated panels riffing off the “laughing” concept; an interesting approach, gotta say.

Panel 5: Stand by for yet another of vol. 7’s characteristically abrupt scene and timeframe change, webcomic readers!

Today’s Patreon Update: As this is a Monday, time for our weekly double dose of life drawings new-ish (2018) and old (2017), along with the high-res Photoshop raw scans for both of ‘em, available to all Patreon tiers.

-Adam Warren