Panel 2: I only noticed Havoc and Rivet’s resemblance to Bert & Ernie—or is that Ernie & Bert, to get the order correct?—when drawing the previous page’s shots of the two of ’em together; I immediately decided to include a moment of Emp noticing the same thing.

Panel 5: Time for another Alert, folks—why, it’s the L-Shaped Panel Alert, meaning another appearance of the panel-design riff I first noticed in Frank Thorne’s 70s-era Red Sonja art (and have discussed in some detail in the recurring Comics Riffs I Love feature on my Patreon).

The L-shaped Panel Alert isn’t a negative flag, unlike the more frequent Overdialoguing Alert that gets addressed a great deal in this volume. And for webcomics readers annoyed by the recurrence of the Overdialoguing Alert (or others), feel free to skip these free-of-charge commentaries if they bug you, okay? Besides, I need to say something about these g-d pages, and such present-day criticisms of narrative or art techniques that I no longer favor are invariably the first things that spring to mind when I look at decade-old material. My intent with such quibbling is to show how a creator's preferences in work techniques can gradually—or, on rare occasions, abruptly—shift over time.

Note also the bit about “Homeycrib 6.0,” meaning that this HQ has clearly endured repeated brushes with destruction. Note also that readers won’t get a definitive look at the exterior of the Homeycrib until Empowered vol. 11.

Today’s Patreon update: Probably another dose of Vintage Con Sketches, from the late-90s/early-2000s era when I was cranking out a ton of ’em.

-Adam Warren