Looks like this is the very last time I used linen-finish cardstock as the medium of choice for a title-page illo, after nine full volumes of such chapter-break pages. By this point, I'd grown thoroughly sick of the low resolution inherent to the cloth-patterned stock, not to mention the surface's incredibly heightened tendency to smudge and smear; the latter's not all that surprising, I suppose, as I'm drawing these pages with 5B Berol Turquoise 2mm pencil leads, which are pretty much the softest, boldest, and smeariest lead available. Even with the use of plenty of taped-on copy paper to keep most of the working area masked off from smudging, this surface was still a source of great annoyance for me.

Good riddance! With Empowered vol. 10 and beyond, I transitioned to using the same paper for the title pages as I used on all the other interior pages. Yay?

-Adam Warren