weird, i'm using @liomajor a9lh payloads from this thread, screen init is there and fine (and gateway's arm9loaderhax.bin works fine directly for me, just not through ctrbootmanager.)
using Dshoe's v1.1 - https://github.com/Dshoe/CtrBootManager/releases/tag/v1.1
i'll dig in later and figure...