42 Plain Street

So. Back in the olden days, there was this unusual family living on the street I grew up on. Heck, this is many years ago we're talking; not last week. That's them on the left in cartoon form. Well, sorta. I mean; they don't look EXACTLY like that. Nobody does.

But I sent off a batch of these homemade comic strips featuring the odd neighbors from the old days and - whoda'thunk it - the Japanese liked it. They bought it. (What WERE they thinking?)  I was offered a five-year contract to provide them (Kodansha) with a mutually agreed upon amount of episodes per month of little life-affirming moments; in the 4-panel cartoon style. They probably wouldn't have believed that they were actually buying wacky adventures of a real life family, so I didn't bother to mention it to them.

Thing is... I'd titled the strip: 'It Takes All Kinds'. Which seemed to sum up their state of being. But nope; the Japanese didn't like that title. Maybe it didn't translate well from English. They asked me to come up with a new name please ASAP, and all I could think of (under the time limit) was the phoney street address I'd employed in the strip. "42 Plain Street". Where the characters lived out their little life-affirming lives.

Looking back on it now, I guess the name works out fine. Because the strip itself is very 'plain'. Very subtle. Far from dazzling. Couldn't get much more plain than it is, really.

Drat. Phone call. Gotta go.