Original Commentary

I was originally going to have a much more complicated arc, where David was throwing the party. It would've been slated for two weeks and probably gone to three. This one, however, is much more direct and is slated for two days (with a possibility of three). Isabel suggested the idea and I wrote it. Usually we have trouble with titles, but we discarded the suggestion "Playing cowboys and Indians" to go with "Halloween Intermission". Sometimes I wish we had daily titles on this comic - Terrence

A few days ago, I thought we weren't going to be able to do a YSIF Halloween arc (I think I mentioned it in an ND Chat somewhere). I'm not sure if this really counts, since it's only two comics. It's utter fluff, but that's what Halloween is all about - Isabel

Modern Commentary
Yeah, she shouldn't have worn that. Not because it's skimpy and people are coming over, but because it's a culture, not a costume. Dressing as stereotypes of other ethnicities is Not Cool and 2006 was about the tail end of when you could get away with this. This has aged a bit poorly and maybe we should have done the costumes differently - Terrence

Original Commentary

Lounge Guy 1 is Batman, LG2 is a clown... not too far from their everyday attire. I had to make a few minor changes to Terrence's script (mainly making Kimberly sound madder and removing Robert's mentioning of Kimberly sitting on the couch). It does seem that Jane and Robert are at that stage of their relationship. It was tempting to put them in the "male/female outfit plug" costumes, but decided against it.-Isabel

Modern Commentary
I mean, if you throw a white sheet over a chair it looks like a dustcover, which would imply the chair is fragile or otherwise not in use. - Terrence

Original Commentary

Do we consider this a double-size comic? Well, not really. I mean, there's three panels of art and three panels of door - Terrence

In the original version of this joke, we were going to have Brisbane walking down the street (after buying candy at the grocery store) and getting trick-or-treated out of it on the way home. But this is funnier and has the advantage of not requiring us to readjust the comic order in the archive. And we always wanted to be the people who give away the cool stuff - Isabel

Modern Commentary
Based on this, there are at least three families who live there that aren't Brisbane, Kimberly, and the lounge guys. Or one apartment with a gang of unsupervised children who trick-or-treat separately. It's one of those details that comes up when it needs to. - Terrence

Original Commentary

Not much we can say about this one, other than we're surprised Kimberly didn't let Brisbane keep on his chaps. -Isabel

Modern Commentary
Without the hat, Brisbane is just wearing a set of crotchless overpants. The hat makes the costume, really. Not that it's going to matter in a few minutes. - Terrence

Original Commentary

Isabel suggested candied tuna, I suggested bonito (which is a Japanese dried tuna flake). We rejected the first because it didn't exist, and the second because we thought most of our readers weren't familiar with it. So, tuna it was. - Terrence

Modern Commentary
Isabel was right. Candied tuna would have been funnier.

You know what else would have been funnier? If I had cut a week from the previous storyline and this ran just before Halloween instead of in early November. Not that it matters since this is re-running in June. But sometimes I think we could have used a bit more planning.- Terrence

Original Commentary

Last one, probably. Isabel came up with the basic idea and I wrote it out. In addition to giving us an extra day to finish writing the next arc, it also shows that Brisbane is back to his old tricks, and that he's at least trying to talk some sense into Ms. Taylor. I was originally going to mention something about raccoons getting in and eating up all the Zesty Lime scent, but that was too much explanation for the joke to be worthwhile - Terrence

Modern Commentary
Like all good executive assistants, Brisbane is kinda running the company and hoping nobody notices.- Terrence