Thursday, March 7, 2013

Dark Horse Motion Comics: Usagi Yojimbo

One of my favorite comics has gotten a bit animated, courtesy of the fine folks at Dark Horse and Geek & Sundry.

I started reading Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo back during its run at Mirage Studios, not too long before it moved to Dark Horse Comics. Sakai's rabbit ronin had something for me that most of the other anthropomorphic comics born out of the 80s black & white boom did not, mainly story, humor and heart. It was a more or less serious tale with funny looking animals, rather than another Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle knock-off working some other gimmicky angle (like, say, Geriatric Gangrene Jujitsu Gerbils. Yes, that's a real comic. Yes, I bought it. Yes, it's horrible, let us speak of it no further). 

In recent years I've fallen out of reading monthly comics, but last year I began picking up a few new titles, including Rachel Rising, which I talked about not too long ago. That made me miss some of my old regulars, including this one. So, I'm about to embark on a massive Usagi Yojimbo read/re-read, starting with the Fantagraphics Books collections--where the first regular, ongoing series was published--and working my way up to the most recent story, catching up on all the the tales I missed the first time around.

Hope you like this short tale, and if so, give the comic a try!



And a bonus! A horrendous copy of an aborted Space Usagi animated series, interesting to see what could have been if Usagi's futuristic counterpart would've made it to the small screen.

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