Back-issue Blog: Usagi Yojimbo

"Back-issue Blog" is my little infrequent comics column. This week, we're looking at an introduction to Dark Horse's rabbit ronin with Usagi Yojimbo #136 and #137.

I'm going to be honest, I only picked this title up because I've stopped buying Marvel. Love the characters, love the films, slavering at the mouth for The Avengers et cetera, but having to suffer through Siege, One More Day and Cap's ridiculous resurrection (a "Time Bullet"? Really?) I decided to cut my losses before I broke something. No way on God's green earth was I going to shell out for four Avengers books a month. So like so many others before me have done, I looked for salvation on the internet. Turns out there are very few independent comics with unanimously positive reviews. I could either wade deep into DC's Brightest Day line or admit defeat and slink off back to Brian bloody Bendis and his four Avengers books a month. But just as I was about to bend over I noticed Usagi Yojimbo, a quaint little title tucked away in Dark Horse's output. The reviews were unanimously positive.

I must admit, I was put-off at first. The dialogue was simple, the art was cartoonish and more to the point, the lead character was a rabbit. While a great recipe for a children's book, it didn't sit well in a comic about a masterless samurai doomed to tread the warrior's path. And then, on closer inspection, it kind of did.

The dialogue was simple, true. It was elegantly simple. It was as if Stan Sakai, the man who has written, drawn, and inked the comic for 137 months and counting, took a sword of his own to his writing; every word that didn't build our understanding of a character or didn't advance the plot was mercilessly cut away. Sakai's art also shines; the attention to detail and the hand-drawn cross-hatchings are a breath of fresh air compared to the exquisitely computer-rendered environments of many more commercially successful comics. And say what you will about the rabbit, at least he's memorable. Iconic. Even his cute little ears are done up in a samurai topknot, and the variety of emotions that contort over Usagi's cute little face are so evocative of his character, a guard without a master struggling to find his purpose. Look at that face. That is unmistakeably the face of a badass.

Don't be put off by Usagi's childish nature. Scratch beneath the surface and you have an absolute gem of a genre comic that deserves a much, much wider audience. If you're like me and you're fed up with every superhero title on the shelf, you couldn't go far wrong with Usagi Yojimbo.