We continue serialization of 2013's one-shot Empowered: Nine Beers with Ninjette (as collected in the anthology volume Empowered Unchained), featuring sweet B&W art by Guest Artist Takeshi Miyazawa and lettering by Susie Lee.

Speaking of Susie's lettering, a poor choice on my part is becoming clear with this page: I shouldn't have insisted on using such a large font for this story's dialogue. I had (and still have) long opined re: the ridiculously diminutive default font sizes used in American comics lettering for decades now, and thus had asked Susie for notably large "body copy" to ensure maximized clarity and readabilty in contrast to the nigh-illegible "teeny fonts" used by all too many modern comics letterers.

Ah, but at a certain point such a large font size becomes a liability all its own, as upon publication I noticed that the strapping "body text" I had requested now struck me as too big, especially for the sheer amount of dialogue this story was gonna require. Belatedly, I realized that I should've printed out the lettering PDFs and checked to see how my font choices were gonna work out at "repro size"; oh, well.

Today’s Patreon update: Originally done as a means of scratching out more worktime to complete the long-gestating Empowered vol. 12, I've switched over to a Monday/ Wednesday/ Friday Patreon posting schedule that won't feature the fixed content format I previously used. However, my vast archive of years of Patreon posts—extensive Empowered previews, work-in-progress updates on developmental projects such as fantasy comics The Chaste and the Chained and The Last Party, vintage con sketches, work stages on covers, "damsel in distress" commissions, life drawings & much, much more—remains available for Patrons' perusal.

-Adam Warren