This is frankly the worst change I've seen made, hands down. It's cluttered, the comments are shoved into a tiny sidebar for no discernable reason... Honestly, my first thought on checking my comic was that the site layout broke.
It honestly seems like this change was made solely to put as much information as possible on a single page without any regard for how it would be laid out. The site is vertical, that's been a recurring theme. There have even been points where it's been made explicitly clear that Tapas has a "mobile-first" design philosophy, so vertical just makes sense. Adding in a horizontal element like this sidebar and shifting everything horizontally isn't just unnecessary, it's off-brand.
