I love American comics. When saying this, I always try to make it clear that this doesn’t mean Spider-Man and Batman. The long-running Marvel and DC superhero series all have their fine moments worth reading, of course (I highly recommend works such as Batman: Year One, Superman: Red Son and the Marvel 1602 miniseries). But their mythologies have never interested me much simply because there’s so much of it! I’m sure it’s not any hurdle to really throw myself in to the comics if I wanted to, but I love a good starting point; I like to read from the beginning to the end or the most recent volume, uninterrupted, without having to do more than pick up a trade paperback. Laziness? Absolutely. But there’s plenty of works for me to sink my teeth into so I feel no guilt over my sloth–I just finished Y: the Last Man, I’ve devoured most of Hellboy, and I plan to start on Image Comics’s Invincible at some point. Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to a comic that matches this profile to a tee–high quality, compact but masterfully crafted mythology, and a series run that’s notable, but not daunting. I speak, of course, of Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo. Quick and Dirty/why it’s not furry after the jump.

Usagi Yojimbo's author prides himself on historical accuracy. Except when awesome.

The Quick and Dirty

- Usagi Yojimbo is authored by Stan Sakai, who writes, illustrates and even letters every issue.
- The second longest-running comic done entirely by a single author, running since 1984.
- Titular character is Miyamoto Usagi, a rabbit and ronin, who wanders Edo period Japan on a warrior’s pilgrimage.
- At times lighthearted humor, at others intense action, still other times deeply moving.
- Some historical liberties are taken (and come on, the cast is a bunch of animals–literally!).
- Not a furry comic, really more like Disney’s Robin Hood meets Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai.

I first encountered Usagi Yojimbo as a footnote in the Wikipedia page of another comic–Dave Sim’s Cerebus, which at 300 issues is the longest-running comic done by one man. Usagi’s run is slowly closing in on Cerebus, but as we all know, it’s not about the size of the series–it’s about how you use it. Stan Sakai, first and foremost, is consistent–when you’ve been doing a comic for 25 years and you’ve rarely hit a sour note, that’s incredible. Along the way Usagi’s had trials and tribulations, has met an enormous cast of rogues and heroes, has fought supernatural evil and scheming feudal lords. And behind it all is Stan Sakai, who’s grown Usagi from a rough-hewn sketch of a samurai with ears for a topknot into a lithe warrior to rival the greatest in trade paperback or technicolor.

Let me back up a bit–I think I might be losing the trees for the forest, as it were. There’s a lot of sweeping vision in Usagi Yojimbo but I don’t think that’s what you’re here to read about. Let’s start with the basics–Usagi, that is, Miyamoto Usagi, is a ronin, made masterless after his lord was killed at the battle of Adachigahara, a bloody affair that Usagi narrowly escaped from. Instead of committing seppuku to preserve his honor, Usagi wanders Japan as a yojimbo (bodyguard for hire) on a warrior’s pilgrimage, an equally honorable pursuit that allows him to ply his skill as a swordsman. And what a skill it is–Usagi’s master, the lion Katsuichi, taught him a unique style that refuted established schools of swordsmanship and which has served Usagi well. Usagi needs it, too, because he’s a bit headstrong and has a tendency to poke his nose into any wrongdoing he smells, regardless of whether or not it’s a good idea.

The supporting cast is enormous. Some characters pop up with frequency, like Gennosuke, called Gen, a rhino bounty hunter who’s more interested in gold than honor. Gen is Usagi’s equal in swordplay, and not a bad guy either, even though he constantly tries to stick Usagi with the bill at whatever inn they’ve frequented most recently. More adherent to the role of a traditional samurai is a character like Ame Tomoe, a female samurai in service to the young but wise Lord Noriyuki (a panda!). Usagi earns Tomoe’s respect in the first issues of the series, and the two have fought side-by-side many more times since then. There’s a subtle undercurrent of romantic tension between the two, so subtle that you even wonder if Sakai intends to write it, though Usagi is committed to his life as a wanderer and bachelor and has turned down several offers to enter into a lord’s service again.

Batman, eat your heart out.

I could keep going on about minor figures like Sasuke, a demon-hunting exorcist fox, or Inspector Ishida, a jitte-wielding investigator whose small number of appearances are inversely proportional to his immense popularity among fans. Other characters are Sakai’s fond way of poking fun at famous Japanese manga or cinema, such as Yagi, an assassin who travels the countryside with his young son, spoken of in fear as the Lone Goat and Kid (a play on long-running, extraordinarily violent manga/film series Lone Wolf and Cub, which used the same premise).

It’s my firm conviction that villains make or break a series, and Usagi’s foes cast long shadows. There’s three clans of fiendish ninja–cats, bats and moles, and Usagi’s fought each of them over the run of the series, and once or twice has fought alongside them instead! Perhaps the most popular villain, Jei, is a sociopathic fox who’s convinced that he’s been chosen by the gods to root out evil in the world. Jei’s hell-bent on killing Usagi, and nothing has stopped him yet–not even death. Most mysterious is Lord Hikiji, who’s almost never seen, but whose influence is felt repeatedly as the puppetmaster behind ninjas and evil samurai, moving incrementally towards his ultimate goal of dethroning the shogun himself.

On the surface it seems like it would be easy to put Sakai’s work into any number of boxes based on its presentation or subject matter, but Usagi Yojimbo’s inner rabbit wants to run free. It’s certainly not manga, though Stan knows his history and does his research, and frequently incorporates the slow, cinematic pacing typical of manga into his story arcs. But Usagi’s not what most people associate with America comics either–it never tries to shock and though there’s sometimes supernatural overtones, deus ex machina to wrap up story arcs are rare. The characters, for being rabbits, foxes and cats are amazingly human, and Usagi as a whole occupies a niche of humor and action alongside the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, with whom Usagi’s shared several crossover issues and animated series appearances. And Stan Sakai probably wouldn’t be thrilled if you called his comic a furry comic outright–he doesn’t identify as one, he was hesitant about attending any of their conventions until a couple of years ago, and most importantly, he never draws his characters with tails.

So what is Usagi Yojimbo, at its core? Intense. I was impressed by how much I cared about the characters, to the point where I was actually gasping aloud when it looked like someone might not make it out of a fight alive, and when I was right I felt my stomach clench. It’s also entertaining all around–there’s violence, sure (though very little blood), and there’s a lot of visceral “hell yes!” moments when Usagi and Gen cut their way through a mob of brigands, side by side. But the series has plenty of lighter moments–it’s hard not to crack a grin when Sasuke summons a giant frog to ride into battle against a spider demon. And Sakai tries to make his readers think, and to really put them in a setting that isn’t just fun but feels real, because it’s firmly grounded in the real, or at least in mythic history. “Grasscutter,” one of the best received arcs, both popularly and critically, has several prologues just to explain the history surrounding the legendary Japanese blade Kusanagi. It’s that sort of detail that makes it that much more gripping when Usagi and company are suddenly tangled up in the fate of the most famous sword in Japanese history.

I salute Stan Sakai. Usagi Yojimbo hooked me quickly, and held my attention like a vise–I literally read through fifteen years worth of comics in less than a week, and every one was a page turner. It was one of the most exhausting and rewarding reading experiences I’ve ever had, and I’m proud to suggest that You Might Like It.

At some point in the future I’m going to have to do a comic on the game that made this column late (Linley’s Dungeon Crawl variant Stone Soup) but for next week I think I’m going to tackle another comic. Am I just doing it now to get in before the movie comes out? No, I swear not, even though I’m not really sold on Michael Cera as the main character…what am I talking about? Well, you’ll find out next week as You Might Like It boldly suggests that you can enjoy (and maybe even identify with) the comedy-action-romance-indie comic hero Scott Pilgrim.

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