I have one and I am one.

Actually, that statement works no matter which side of the equation I place myself.

Like a lot of fourteen-year-old boys, my son shares the usual litany of common teenaged interests with many of his friends: hot new music, the ever-ubiquitous video games, any and all things Japanese, and - of course, thank god - comic books. Now, since my son is who he is and since his dad is who he is, Brennan and his pals have access to a veritable treasure trove of the latter on a regular and rotating basis. They tear through whatever I give them with a rapid hunger, consuming pages and pages of material that - when I was a kid - had to be unearthed with the most painstaking persistence and patience. Still, I’m overjoyed to be able to share my love of our unique medium with them, and I get a real kick out of seeing how their tastes develop and evolve.

And so it was that, about a year or so ago, they all discovered the rich and sprawling world of Usagi Yojimbo.

With a locust-like appetite, they consumed every available volume that I fed them - even digging up some, on their own, that I didn’t have. It was fun to see how deeply involved they soon became in this distinctive, epic tale that pairs the disarming style so commonly known as “funny animals” with a narrative depth that belies that description at almost every turn. I could often hear the boys discussing not only the individual character traits of Usagi’s wandering ronin and Jei’s soul-gathering demon, but also the artist’s clever use of symbolic word balloons, evocative dialogue, and smoothly paced action sequences.

One day, after I had finished work in my own home-studio, I came upstairs and heard the familiar chatter of Bren’s usual posse of pals all gathered in his bedroom. On my way to a much-needed shower, I stuck my head in the room and offered my usual hellos. This time, though, as I turned to go, one of my son’s oldest friends, Morgan, summoned me back. Hey, Matt, wait, wait...”

I paused. “Yeah?”

“Um...” He seemed a bit embarrassed, as if he were about to ask an enormous favor of me.

“Do you...” (Here, his eyes went wide, actually twinkling with the most unfettered display of starstruck awe I think I’ve ever seen.) Do you...know Stan Sakai?”

I chuckled to myself. These guys had all been in and out of my studio for years. They’d seen me work on project after project that involved not only my own creations but also a wide variety of popular, established characters, and while surely impressed, they had never expressed this sort of enraptured delight.

“Yeah, sure,” I answered. “In fact, we had breakfast together just a few weeks ago at a convention in Seattle.”

To be so close, even by proxy, to his newfound hero struck my questioner utterly silent. Nearby, his comrade Peter nodded knowingly and offered the only response imaginable. “That is so cool!”

What else could I possibly add to that?

MATT WAGNER

“Usagi Yojimbo” and "Space Usagi", including all prominent characters featured in the stories and the distinctive likenesses thereof are trademarks of Stan Sakai and Usagi Studios. Usagi Yojimbo is a registered trademark of Stan Sakai.  Names, characters, places, and incidents featured in this publication either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events, institutions, or locales, without satiric content, is coincidental.