It Takes All Kinds

Presented here for our consideration, is the only appearance to date of the comic strip '42 Plain Street' - published in anything other than the Japanese format.

The Vancouver Sun newspaper ran a sample episode and included a few short words (also in English) about the local 'home-grown' artist (that's ME!) behind the scribbles during a period (late 90s) when I was using my original title: "It Takes All Kinds". However, had I known that they would print the 4 cartoon panels at the microscopic size that they did, leaving the poor reader little chance to follow the script, I might have said 'thanks, but no thanks' and remained undiscovered and untranslated.

A less compressed edition of the same episode is included below (click to enlarge).

The SUN had requested a dozen or so examples of the strip to choose from, and if I'd been allowed the opportunity, I probably would have picked one of the other gags instead of this one. But again, only if they weren't going to shrink everything down to the size of a speck of dirt.

After this short feature was published in The Sun, I did enjoy hearing from a few people that had managed to spot it, despite its shrunken state; people I'd not been in contact with for a while.

It acted somewhat like a free advert in the paper, encouraging any former acquaintences of mine to come out of the woodwork and say hello. Or at least to ask me what the joke was about because they couldn't read it.

In Japan, the same gag was published in proper Japanese format (top-to-bottom) as shown here below. (I've removed the first two frames.) But now for some reason, Wanda was mentioning the number "3" in her final speech balloon. Was this an editor's decision; to change the script without consulting me? Did they shorten the period of time I'd offered up for the care & clothing of the young boy character from the flippant term of 'forever'... down to just '3 short years'? Why would 3 years be considered a funnier length of time in Japan?

Actually, now that I stop to seriously consider it, the number 3 in the final frame might be referring to the amount of members in the family. As in this possible final statement: "We better get used to the fact that it'll be the 3 of us here for a long, long time." Hmmm... maybe.

I think my original punchline was better, but, heck; as long as they still sent full payment, I wasn't going to hoot and holler about it.