Introduction
I grew up in West Los Angeles, California. As a kid, I could take a bus all the way from Sepulveda down Wilshire Boulevard to La Brea Avenue, where for many years there was a movie theater called the Toho La Brea. The Toho La Brea screened only Japanese films in their original versions, with English subtitles. There were Japanese-owned nurseries all over West L.A. then, and many of my schoolmates were Japanese-American. And it was those kids who introduced me to the Toho La Brea Theatre and the Samurai movie!
While most of the population of the United States was first introduced to Japanese cinema by the bastardized Godzilla, King of the Monsters, I had already seen the glories of Kurosawa and the magnificent Toshiro Mifune!
So, many, many years later, when I was with my (then little) son Max at the legendary Golden Apple comic-book store on Melrose, my eye was naturally drawn to the colorful cover of a comic featuring what appeared to be a samurai rabbit! After leafing through just a few pages, I was hooked. Yojimbo is now not just the title of one of my favorite movies, but Usagi Yojimbo has become the title of one [of] my favorite comics, too!
I hold Stan Sakai right up there with Winsor McCay, Chester Gould, Art Spiegelman, Jack Davis, Wally Wood, Al Capp, Charles Schulz, Robert Crumb, Jules Feiffer, Will Eisner, and all the others who can move me and tell such wonderful stories with just drawings on the page.
This collection of nine issues of Usagi Yojimbo in one volume tells the epic tale of two cousins and a lost mine. The evil Noriko can hold her place among the great villainesses-like Cruella De Vil, but with deadly martial arts skills! This whole saga reminds me again of how close the samurai stories are to our Westerns. If Italians can make Westerns in Spain, why can’t Stan make realistic samurai tales about a brave and accomplished and honorable rabbit? Stan Sakai can, and he does!
The similarities between comics and film are well known. Movie storyboards - illustrated shot lists - are just comics, after all. When a movie or play or book or graphic novel or painting succeeds, it’s called “suspension of disbelief.” Simply, you believe it.
You’re there. Stan’s work does that. In some weird feudal Japan where these strange lizards run around and anthropomorphic warriors and peasants live, I lose myself entirely.
I love this stuff!
JOHN LANDIS
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
MARCH, 2007
“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.
