Though of course you can't tell from this webcomic formatting, today's installment is what I've informally dubbed a "vertical bleed" page. That is, if you were perusing either a print or (conventional) digital edition of Empowered vol. 8, you'd see that the artwork extends to the top and bottom edges of the printed page, as opposed to featuring the thick black gutters normally surrounding each original page's art.

Note that the "vertical bleed" page is an approach long favored by the mangaka Inio Asano (Solanin, Goodnight Punpun, Nijigahara Holograph), though I'm not sure whether or not I would've borrowed the technique from that artist way back in 2013.

See, an important problem with so-called "full-bleed" pages, which extend artwork to all the edges of a printed page, is that two full-bleed pages facing each other in print can accidentally line up panels across the center of the double-page spread, causing unintended narrative problems and possible confusion in the reader. Ah, but "vertical bleed" comic pages like Asano's avoid that problem entirely by not extending out artwork horizontally; besides, most of the available comic-page real estate in any bleed format is at the top and bottom of the pages. Yay! 

Aaaaaaand I just blew 20+ minutes yammering about this storytelling issue, folks; ouch! Not a smart use of my scant commentary worktime, to put it mildly.

Today’s Patreon update: As it’s a Wednesday, time for the $5+ Patron tiers to get their weekly dose of commissioned “damsel-in-distress” content, along the lines of the same material that was eventually reworked into Empowered. No idea as to exactly what that content might be at this time, though; these commentaries are written much further out from posting than are my often last-minute Patreon updates. (Er, unless I've put in effect a long-planned shift to weekly Monday/ Wednesday/ Friday posting, in which case I'll likely have shuffled around the once-fixed daily slots for different types of posts.)