![]() Sakai’s art has a wonderful, lyrical quality to it and it’s incredible that he’s been able to maintain his more-than-twenty-five-year schedule of producing one chapter per month. ![]() Some of the most beautiful pages are silent and filled with panels each of these panels illustrates part of a picture-story that initially seems unrelated to the narrative intent but ends up providing context or mood for everything that is to follow. His art flows naturally and his panel design is masterful. One of Sakai’s great talents is in his visual storytelling. And even when he isn’t completely halting his telling in order to instruct the reader, Sakai weaves a story that posits a seamless, discreet form of education-taking part in the story by simply reading it, Sakai’s audience is constantly learning more and more about a dead and foreign culture. Other chapters include overtly educational bits on kite-making, pottery-making, and the intrusion of the West into the Far East. A shorter story, “Daisho,” explains the craft with which the samurai’s sword-pair is forged and the importance those two swords (called daisho) hold to their owners. ![]() The most popular of his stories, “Grasscutter,” begins with a lengthy-though-entertaining excursus into the mythological origins of Japan and her people. Sakai peppers his narrative with the fruit of a lot of research. These tales unfold circa 1627 and create, despite their (sometimes) almost mythical hue, a worthwhile vantage into real and historical Japan. Due to his wandering nature, the reader encounters a breadth of stories, regions, and cultures. It is a story told by following (primarily) a single wandering ronin as he follows the way of the samurai, seeking enlightenment, honour, justice, and the beauty of living. Usagi Yojimbo is the story of a fictional, idealized, totemic, and somewhat historical Japan. And a month after reading “Grasscutter,” I had every volume of Usagi Yojimbo I could find. I waited a few months more for “Grasscutter” to be collected so I could get a little more context. It was really much better than I expected a book starring people with animal heads to be. After all, I’d heard of the rabbit samurai by that point and I was looking for new ways to distance myself from the superhero genre, a market of the medium with which I had been growing increasingly disenchanted. Rather than return the book for a refund, I thought I’d give it a shot. It wasn’t until late 1998 that I first encountered Usagi Yojimbo firsthand when I had one of the final issues of the “Grasscutter” storyline slipped into my pull list at my local store. And I’ve been regretting the ignorance of my youth ever since. After all, he wasn’t good enough to work on color comics. ![]() Not only was I painfully shy as a child (I would have been in sixth grade or so at this time), but I felt bad for this creator and didn’t want him to see the pity in my eyes. He was the letterer for Groo the Wanderer and a creator of indie black-and-white comics. His favorite movie is Satomi Hakkenden (1959).īack in what I imagine was 1986* I walked into my local comic book store for the latest issue of Power Pack and saw there was an artist doing a signing. He also made a futuristic spin-off series Space Usagi. First published in 1984, the comic continues to this day, with Sakai as the lone author and nearly-sole artist (Tom Luth serves as the main colorist on the series, and Sergio Aragonés has made two small contributions to the series: the story "Broken Ritual" is based on an idea by Aragonés, and he served as a guest inker for the black and white version of the story "Return to Adachi Plain" that is featured in the Volume 11 trade paper-back edition of Usagi Yojimbo). He began his career by lettering comic books (notably Groo the Wanderer by Sergio Aragonés and Mark Evanier) and became famous with the production of Usagi Yojimbo, the epic saga of Miyamoto Usagi, a samurai rabbit living in late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth-century Japan. He and his wife, Sharon, presently reside and work in Pasadena. He later attended the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Stan Sakai (Japanese: 坂井 スタンSakai Sutan born May 25, 1953) is an artist who became known as an Eisner Award-winning comic book originator.īorn in Kyoto, Sakai grew up in Hawaii and studied fine arts at the University of Hawaii. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |