Panel 7’s reference to “nom de guerre” is a hyper-obscure reference to a line from Dangerous Affairs, a project I worked on back when I was still in the Kubert School. Through my classmate Joe Rosas, I’d gotten in touch with comics writer James D. Hudnall, who in turn would later put me in touch with Toren Smith of Studio Proteus fame—but that’s another, Dirty Pair-related story. Before I contacted Toren and set the DP ball a-rollin’, though, I briefly worked on a comedic superhero pitch Jim Hudnall had worked up. This was Dangerous Affairs, which could arguably be described as “Urusei Yatsura with superheroes”—a very promising logline indeed for a Rumiko Takahashi fanboy like my 20-year-old self. Normal-human guy falls in love with a superheroine, and wacky shenanigans aplenty ensue; oddly, that description sounds far more like Empowered than the project actually felt, as Affairs had long slipped my mind by the time I started writing my own take on humor-oriented heroics. As I recall, I drew roughly 15 or so pages from Jim’s scripts for a Dangerous Affairs proposal, but the pitch came to naught. This, by the way, was the only time in my career—or, quite possibly, entire life—that I have ever worked on a comics project solely as an artist. Give or take a few pin-up pages, every other comic page I’ve ever drawn has also been written—or, very early on in Dirty Pair, co-written—by me.

Note, by the way, that panel 7’s “nom de guerre” bit references a Dangerous Affairs scene in which a superhero—“Macho Dude,” if I recall correctly—is queried about his name by none other than talk-show titan of yore Phil Donahue. (Younger readers may need to consult Google on this one.)