Usagi Yojimbo DojoBoard

Recently I was able to see an exhibition of Stan's work at the Comic Art Museum in San Francisco, and was blown away. Then, after attending the Spotlight panel at SDCC, I became even more interested in reading Usagi Yojimbo.

I'm wondering where to begin. I know a new collection of the early work was solicited a couple of months ago in Previews. Should I track that edition down? I mainly collect hardcover collections, and have quickly found that these versions of UY are highly sought after and substantially higher in cost. Since SDCC, I've been checking ebay and other outlets, and have to say, wow, they really do seem to retain their value.

Don't get me wrong, if the only way I can afford to read UY is in tpb form, I will do so.

Can anyone direct me to a source to pick up the new Fantagraphics collection, which I believe is being offered in hardcover?

Thank you all for your assistance,
Andrew

The Usagi Yojimbo Special Edition from Fantagraphics has not been released yet. This 2 volume hardcovered and slip-cased edition containing all the material from the first seven books published by Fantagraphics should be released soon, with one shipping date listed as 8/26/2009.

I announced at Comic-con that, after talking to Kim Thompson at Fantagraphics, we decided to postpone the Special Edition until early fall of 2010. We want to do an updated interview as well as a few other features.

Thank you so much for the update Stan! It was mentioned in your Spotlight panel that you were very hands on in this forum. I appreciate the information. I'm sad that it will be such a long wait, but I suppose I will begin with a trade of the first one or two volumes. Maybe I will start with Space Usagi!

Thanks again,
Andrew

Well, that frees up some money from my august/september budget if it isn't being published this year.

I will defiitely be looking forward to it around fall of next year then.

Didn't want to start a new topic for this, but I wanted to voice my disappointment in the fact that I'm finding it hard to locate trades to read. As I've decided to wait for the big Fantagraphics collection, I wanted to get down to reading some trades. I went ahead and ordered the first five directly from Amazon, no problem. But today, while waiting, I decided to try to find a copy of Space Usagi and was totally unsuccessful. While many of my local comic shops had many other volumes of UY, there was no Space to be found.

My greatest disappointment however, stems from the fact that no bookstore I visited today had a single volume of UY! While I've only read one issue (and am ashamed of that, because I have read comics for over 20 years now) I find it deplorable that UY is not represented among the offerings in regular bookstores.

Most of the trades are all over ebay. I'm surprised you're having trouble.

Well, what I was attempting to express was my disappointment in the fact that regular (non-comic) book stores do not seem to stock the trades of UY. They carry all the regular comic book collection fare, but not some of the finest.

Of course I can find these on ebay, and have. But it would be nice for Stan's work to be more widely available in bookstore markets. And, I think Dark Horse should push collections onto the bookstore shelves.

Will there be signed and numbered copies of Usagi Yojimbo: The Special Edition?

Ronin-K wrote:Will there be signed and numbered copies of Usagi Yojimbo: The Special Edition?

I believe there will be.

furystorm wrote:Well, what I was attempting to express was my disappointment in the fact that regular (non-comic) book stores do not seem to stock the trades of UY. They carry all the regular comic book collection fare, but not some of the finest.

Of course I can find these on ebay, and have. But it would be nice for Stan's work to be more widely available in bookstore markets. And, I think Dark Horse should push collections onto the bookstore shelves.

When I was in high school, there were approximately a dozen "new" bookstores in the area, as well as another half dozen used bookstores.

Now we have a Barnes and Noble store and an extremely small Waldenbooks in one of the malls.

Every single independently owned book store has long since gone out of business, the last one close to ten years ago.

Between the economy and Amazon.com, be happy you have bookstores in your area to whom you can suggest potential titles for them to stock.

Speaking as someone who works at a Barnes & Noble I can tell you that distribution is a big issue. Diamond is notorious for running out of stock of popular trades at random times (just ask your local comic book retailer). Right now I can guarantee you that you couldn't walk into a B&N and order all 23 volumes of Usagi Yojimbo (and likewise for your local comic book store).

Now, granted, there are very few series that are stocked in full (off the top of my head I can think of Naruto, Bleach, Hellboy, and Fables). After awhile it just becomes untenable and cost-ineffective to stock 15-20 volumes of a series when they all don't sell on a regular basis. Shelf space is money, remember. We used to stock every volume of Ultimate Spider-Man, but now there are 22(?) volumes, the demand has died down, so we only have maybe 1-6 and then random volumes after that. It's not an ideal system, or the best way to snag new and returning readers, but again shelf space is money and we only have so much shelf space.

A common strategy is to keep the first 3-5 volumes to satisfy new readers and then only keep the latest volume of the series (this happens a lot with manga). But again, the problem is distribution. I doubt all the Fantagraphics volumes would be consistently available to order into the store. Manga publishers have big names companies like Hachette, Random House, and Simon & Schuster keeping all their titles readily available to the bookstore market at all times.

Anyway, that's just my two ryo.

Over the past few months I've seen a few Hardcovers turn up from Marketplace sellers on http://www.Amazon.com for about 70$-150$. They also turn up on eBay naturally. Finding the HC for the latest released UY volume is never ridiculously hard, but it is for any single previous one. I'm looking for a few select ones because I'll never be able to afford them all.

Thanks for the tip Ronin-K! I've been checking out Amazon for the hardcovers since I have decided to collect Volumes 8-23 and beyond this way. I'll wait for the Fantagraphics slipcased collection for the earlier work next to be released next year.

By the way, if anybody was wondering, the recent copy of Volume 21 which looks like it sold for $24.99 on ebay, actually sold much higher. I made a deal with the seller to end the auction early. Two down, and fourteen to go!

Another potential source for some of the older s/n limited edition hardcovers is Stan Sakai himself. If you (or someone you know) is planning on attending a convention or book signing at which Stan will be present, you can always send a request by PM that he bring a specific book (or more) to the signing for you. Of course, not all of the books are available, but I believe quite a few of the Dark Horse releases still are.