Panel 1: Tougher than usual to draw characters’ eyes positioned correctly when they’re depicted as cartoonishly small, as is the case in this panel. Oh, well.

Panel 3: A new power is manifested by Emp’s ever-enigmatic supersuit. Huzzah! For the record, this “clingalicious” riff is based on a gecko-emulating function of the Dirty Pair’s uniforms which, as of my final, out-of-print DP miniseries (Dirty Pair: Run from the Future) and beyond, had developed all sorts of increasingly exotic ultra-tech abilities. (Emp’s suit will eventually manifest more and more functions derived from  largely unused DP ideas, but that’s further down the road.) Only after this volume did I realize that anyone might consider this “clingy Emp” bit to be imitating Marvel’s Spider-Woman, to whom Emp’s suit arguably bears a resemblance. Unintentional, I assure you!

Panel 5: If you look at the last few pages, the Japanese sword in the background presumably came from Captain Katana—it might be the sword off his back in page 157—and wound up lodged in the “artery tentacle” of the heart-shaped alien organ when it grabbed him earlier. Then, when the tentacle flung Emp up at the statue, the sword was dislodged and ended up piercing the unnamed cape’s metallic palm. It’s all there in the previous pages, I swear!

-Adam Warren