Usagi Yojimbo DojoBoard

I'm doing a little research project, attempting to reverse engineer the original Fantagraphics issues of Usagi from the recent Special Edition hardcover, and I'm hitting some snags with the order in which things are reprinted.

I'm pretty clear on obvious stuff like the contents of issues 5 & 6 being flipped, but I'm having trouble wrapping my head around "Samurai," which I think should reprint eight chapters from issues #1–#4, but seems to have an extra chapter (ch. III). My best guess is that that chapter is from Usagi #6 and has had some pages added to fit it into "Samurai." Does anyone with the original issues know if that's correct? Any other things like that I should be looking out for?

Thanks,
Brendan

brendan wrote:I'm pretty clear on obvious stuff like the contents of issues 5 & 6 being flipped, but I'm having trouble wrapping my head around "Samurai," which I think should reprint eight chapters from issues #1–#4, but seems to have an extra chapter (ch. III). My best guess is that that chapter is from Usagi #6 and has had some pages added to fit it into "Samurai." Does anyone with the original issues know if that's correct

Hello Brendan,

I pulled out my issues and I just got the Special Edition on Thursday (and I love the white pages compared to my brown issues). Issue #6 does have the "chapter 3" pages, minus page 175 in the special edition. I don't know where that page comes from. Maybe Stan added it when it was originally collected in UY GN #2.

Peace, maka

Hi Maka,

Thanks for looking into this. Knowing which page was added helps everything make sense. Is there any change to the chapters, like the chapter numbers being adjusted?

-Brendan

Hello Brendan,

In UY #1 on page 20 (page 174 in SE UY) it says "CONTINUED" instead of "END PART II."

In UY #6 there is no pages drawn SE #175 & 184. It's the last story of three (KAPPA & ZILLA are first) So I assume those were added. But I can't find where my daughters have put UY GN #2, so I can't check to see if they were added in there as well (I assume so). So on SE page 184 it says END CHAPTER III, there is no matching page in UY #6. In UY #3 the story ends on SE page #183 and had END printed below the last panel under Young UY .

UY #2: Page 10 match SE UY page 194. It says "END PART III" vs. "END CHAPTER IV" And Page 11 says Part IV in same font vs. Part V. Page 20 "TO BE CONTINUED" vs. "END CHAPTER V." Similar changes for issue #3 and beyond (I assume, I didn't look them up after issue 3).

Hope that helps. Peace, maka

So, can anyone else explain what's going on with the missing page in the Usagi Special Edition. I don't own any of the Usagi TPBs because I started to really seriously (though I use the word somewhat loosely in this context) collecting comics and graphic novels right around the time the Usagi Special Edition was first solicited back in late spring/early summer of 2009, and I'd like to have the most complete version of the Usagi stories. Can anyone else please describe this missing page in detail, maybe even provide a scan of it?

I pulled out my h/c #2 to check compared to the SE. The hardcover has the pages present in the SE @ p175 and p184. I'm assuming Stan drew them to segue the parts of the comic together more coherently when the issues were collated for book #2.