Panel 3: Shoutout to the famed mangaka Junji Ito, as this creepy-eyed shot reminds me of a scene from his horror manga Uzumaki. Disturbing!

Panel 4: Speaking of old-school manga artists, I think the double exclamation points in Emp’s “burst balloon”—that’s the comics lettering term for word balloons with bold or jagged outlines like this one—may be a reference to emphasis riffs used in Kenichi Sonoda’s Gunsmith Cats or Cannon God Exaxxion manga. (Note that I was the English-language “rewrite guy” on the Studio Proteus/ Dark Horse English translation of the latter manga, by the way. Bit of a pity that the adaptation was shut down before we got to finish off the series.)

-Adam Warren