Volume 2 Page 113
Posted November 9, 2016 at 12:01 am

Must admit, it would make vastly more sense for Emp-disguised Ninjette to stealthily slip into the Unnamed Bad Guys’ Hideout through a side door or an air duct—or even, say, an open window—but dramatically crashing in through skylights or windows on surprised enemies seems an unavoidable temptation for superheroes. (Or, well, lazy writers who can’t think of any other way to introduce Our Protagonist than to mindlessly regurgitate a trope that was already well-worn long before I was born.) Ah, but as previous installments have shown, leaping in through shattering glass doesn’t mix well with an easily torn supersuit, so the real Emp has presumably given up on such practices. So, come to think of it, Ninjette’s cosplay portrayal of Emp is already flawed and inaccurate from the very first moments of her performance! Oops!

Then again, not like Ninjette would’ve been able to effortlessly—and harmlessly—fling herself through the unseen panes of glass, either. So, she must have used some form of ninja magic, another esoteric “jutsu” form, to allow her to pass through the shattering glass without harm. Ah, but loudly smashing a window certainly doesn’t seem very stealthy or “ninja-riffic,” does it? Ah, but surely the canny shinobi knows that, in certain circumstances, sudden shock and surprise can be just as tactically useful as stealth and furtiveness.

Panel 3: One advantage of depicting an action scene with a “continuous flow” of mayhem—as opposed to the “random, disconnected panels of punches and zaps” approach often preferred in American comics—is the opportunity for panels that “breathe,” that show a brief pause in the action as you set up the next spasm of violence. This particular image, with Ninjette landing on the table as the goons around her gawk in surprise, is one of my favorite such panels. I like the fact that we see our heroine’s (wigged) hair sweeping forward and briefly covering her face before it’s whipped back away by her subsequent motion, which is something I rarely show in Empowered action sequences.

Panel 4: Reasonably sure that I scavenged Ninjette’s kicking pose from a Yuri kick in the Dirty Pair: Fatal But Not Serious miniseries. The question is, from where did I first acquire this dynamic little pose? I’d love to claim that it’s something I worked up on my own, but I’m not quite willing to be that generous towards 1995-Era Me.

-Adam Warren

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