Usagi yojimbo book 13/23/2023 The narrative setups are also reminiscent of Sakai’s pop-culture preoccupations. Every page is dripping with mythic resonance the very first panels depict the cloaked warrior entering a peasant’s hut to shelter from a snowstorm, announcing his presence with a brusque “I am called Miyamoto Usagi.” It’s difficult to mentally superimpose the granite countenances of Toshirô Mifune or Clint Eastwood onto the features of a rabbit but Sakai gets you there. The stories are the sort of archetypal yet just off-kilter enough material that Sakai was to trademark over two decades, combining rabbit-who-came-in-from-the-cold genre tropes with outré supernatural elements. As far as samplers go, this is a representative one. While later installments of the series tend toward graphic-novel length, this book is comprised entirely of short stories, making it an ideal sampler for those new to Sakai’s work. They construct a composite picture of Usagi’s origin story and provide introductions to several of the series’s regular supporting characters. The Ronin is a judicious selection of those initial anthology appearances, combined with stories from the first series special. Unlike his contemporaries in the decade’s comic-book bestiary, Usagi emerged astonishingly well formed from the get-go-a supremely confident merging of various cultural influences, ranging from spaghetti westerns and samurai films (the series title is cribbed from Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo) to Japanese mythology and Kabuki plays. After starring in a couple of Fantagraphics anthologies, he had his own title by 1987- Usagi Yojimbo-following the rabbit ronin in his adventures around a 17th-century Japan populated with anthropomorphized animals. The rabbit outlasted the more traditional conceptual drawings, forming the latest addition to the odd tradition of violent, anthropomorphic animals (one of Usagi’s early cameos was with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) in the indie comics of the ’80s. While working on character designs for a series based on historic samurai Miyamoto Musashi, Sakai doodled a rabbit with his ears tied back like a samurai topknot. Miyamoto Usagi was born-quite accidentally-in 1984. Boasting their usual high-production values and showcasing the genesis of the indie comics icon, The Ronin is a meticulously curated artifact of comics history. In commemoration of these various milestones, Fantagraphics (Sakai’s original publisher) has released a new edition of Usagi Yojimbo: The Ronin, a collection of the character’s earliest appearances. Two thousand eleven was a banner year for Sakai, marking the 200th issue of the long-running series, his being named Cultural Ambassador by the Japanese American National Museum, and their unveiling of “The Year of the Rabbit”-a highly publicized retrospective of his work. Having trudged down the Way of Self-Reliance with his creation Miyamoto Usagi for 25 years, he trails a devoted fanbase and a considerable reputation in the cultural mainstream. Stan Sakai is one of the most quietly prolific comics creators in the business.
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