Yeahp, in case you weren't paying attention, the fabled Were-Giraffe By Night did indeed make a brief cameo appearance in the background of a crowd scene fifty pages earlier.

By the way, I've only recently figured out that my habit of including the words "The End" on the closing spreads for each book invariably confuses a few readers, who mistakenly think that I just ended the entire series instead of each particular volume.  "Oh, I didn't know the series was still ongoing!" Ouch.  So, as of Empowered vol. 11, I intend to include a clarifying line such as, "Empowered will return in Empowered vol. 12, okay?"

The scene that Ninjette and Thugboy are referencing does eventually appear later on in the series, for whatever that's worth, but off the top of my head I can't remember which volume that might be.