l'esprit d'escalier, part one

I think making that spiral staircase go all the way up the centre of the image without any breaks or visible joins took longer than anything else in the art production of this strip. It's supposed to be a semiotic key to suggest the action is switching between the upstairs and the downstairs. Even though I just pointed it out, which really negates any subtlety the effect had, although it might alleviate mass confusion if I did it wrong in the first place.
Also, I put a little more work into shading the close-ups of faces on this one. Does it show?

Oh, and Scary-Go-Round had a pretty good guest week last week (I particularly liked R Stevens's guest strip) and this week Big Johnny Allison is hand-drawing his strips as he is wont to do occasionally since Scare-O-Deleria ended. Which is a joy, since his strength lies in hand-drawn illustration.


DAVID'S DVD EASTER EGGS:

Despite having a spiral staircase running down the centre of the strip, Halifax's house does not actually have a spiral staircase - it has conventional flights of stairs.
The term 'l'esprit d'escalier' roughly translates as 'wit of the staircase' and is a French term used to describe the act of thinking of the perfect comeback to something just after you've left the room and started leaving. It's quite a useful term, since everyone has had that happen to them at least once. There was an entire episode of Seinfeld based around the conceit that George was so taken with 'l'esprit d'escalier' that he flew across the country just to use his 'perfect line'. (Jerkstore. The line was jerkstore.)