Inserted text missing from blank lines after ctrl-V, vertical highlight, ctrl-I

I am working on a source code file with many blank lines (lines
containing zero characters, not even white space). The cursor is on
(say) column 5 and I press ctrl-V before highlighting a column of
text. I then press ctrl-I to insert a comment character in the
highlighted text column. The comment character does *not* appear at
all in the lines that are blank.

I could be mis-remembering, but I don't seem to recall this behaviour
in the past. I thought I had vim in a mode where ctrl-V would put in
the required white space to achieve the visual effect, regardless of
whether or not the whitespace was there before. Is this a recent
change in the behaviour of vim, or is there a specific setting which I
might have muddled up in my romps through vimrc?

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