Feast your eyes on what is almost certainly the first 7-panel page in early Empowered! Shocking, eh? (Not that present-day Empowered features all that many more high-panel-count pages, to be honest.) More surprising still is the fact that the next page in this story features a sense-shattering total of 8 panels! Shocking-er, eh?

Truth is, Empowered’s squat, “short” original pages—8.5” X 11”, versus the much “taller” 10” X 15” proportions of conventional comic pages—severely undermines my ability to indulge in high panel counts. (The additional fact that I draw very small original artwork with the very softest pencil leads available also prevents me from rendering the noodly detail level that many small panels would require.) Then again, not like I really miss having to draw many-paneled pages, as that was a necessity of my earlier career driven by strict page-count limitations. (As in, working with the serialized strictures of 22- or 24-page issues, as opposed to Empowered vol.1’s wide-open, 248-page “graphic novel” format.)

Holy crap, just realized that the warm fluffy blanket wrapping up Emp on this page is a reference to the (figurative) warm, fluffy blanket of praise wrapping up Emp in the earlier story “It’s Like This”: http://www.empoweredcomic.com/comic/volume-1-page-69 Did not remember doing that, must admit.

-Adam Warren