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By Todd Shogun and Aaron Digulla
Back then...The Usagi Yojimbo Dojo started off very crude in February 1996 as just a one-screen link from my home-page. Slowly as I got to learn HTML and UNIX, the contents started to increase... and increase... until what you see here today. It took fooling around on three platforms to get this far, but doing this page has been a hell of a lot of fun. I am kind of disappointed at the lack of Usagi on the Net, though, that's why I've gone to all the extremes with this page. Here's a run-down on how the Dojo was created: What the Hell is HTML?In early 1996, my Numerical Methods instructor, Dr. Perez y Perez, first introduced me to the world of HTML, Hyper Text Markup Lingo as I called it. He also taught me some UNIX, which is similar to DOS, except more advanced. Anyway, I believe I owe it all to Dr. Perez for getting me addicted to doing all this stuff. Here's what it took to create the UY Dojo back then: UNIXUNIX sucked, and I couldn't understand why the hell everyone used it over Windows. This was the platform my school used to conduct all of its Internet applications. All of the HTML files, JPEG and GIF images, Perl Scripts, and such were run thru UNIX, and are stored in my personal account (which constantly exceeded the limit) in the "Puma" directory and in my cgi-bin directory, all of which were at my server, HEART, in the CSULB engineering domain. All files except the Dojo Login were ch-mod 755 for security purposes. The Login was chmod 777 for the whole world to write to. The connection to my PC at home was through Windows 3.1 and 95 Dial-up, which connected me directly to my server. Things were wild back then..I used this software called Twinsock to connect directly to school. It was slow as all hell, but fun just the same. I mean publishing web pages on the Internet, a new phenomenon that EVERYONE could access?? What wouldn't be exciting about that? Apple Macintosh
Windows and DOSIn '96-97 I ran an IBM PC with a 75 MHz Pentium Processor and a Windows 3.1 setup, which was soon upgraded to Win95. I thought Win95 sucked at first, but it grew on me. And yes, it was better than Macintosh. Anyway, I used a simple text editor to conduct the HTML documents. For editing the JPEG's and GIF's, I used Corel Draw 5.0 and later on PaintShop Pro, with all the necessary converters and special effects. Windows 95 dialed up my server and hooks me up to my account. WS FTP 32 for Windows 95 provided me with a decent FTP Client to upload everything to HEART. And that was it... But How did it all really begin? Well, we'll need to rewind back even further, to the 80s! UYD Time LineIt all began with a boom.... the Black-and-White Boom of the mid-80s, that is... a time when tons of comic book creators started popping out of the woodwork to publish non-color and often cheaply-produced comic books featuring funny animals, and thus hopefully cashing in on a craze started in 1984-85 by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics. Existing anthropomorphic black-and-white comics and fanzines got a push in the marketplace by the TMNT craze, while others joined in after the craze had begun... The Pre-Usagi DaysBefore the Black-and-White boom, Todd was just a part-time comic book collector. One of his first comics was an old Star Wars comic published by Marvel. I probably picked this up sometime in late 70s or early 80s. During 1980-1983 Todd was a rabid Star Wars fan...he had all the cool toys and action figures from Kenner. He was also into the G.I. Joe toys, comics, and cartoons that soon followed from Hasbro. As far as samurai/ninja go, his first exposure had to be the character Snake Eyes from G.I. Joe. After Storm Shadow (Cobra Ninja from G.I. Joe) appeared, it was clear that the Japanese Invasion had planted its seed. He vaguely remembers watching the TV Mini-Series Shogun, based on James Clavell's novel in 1980. In 6th grade (circa 1984) a 10-year-old Todd Shogun was heavily into the new Transformers toys, comics, and cartoons, as well as Voltron, his first exposure to Japanese Animation. He remembers drawing quite a bit during these early years - ninjas, tigers, war scenes, mazes, "cool stuff" as he called it. In 1985 he started watching Robotech when it first aired on American TV. Robotech completely changed his world. It drew him to actual comic book stores to pick up Robotech comics and merchandise (his first shop was Comics Unlimited in Hawaiian Gardens, CA). He had previously got his comics from the local bookstores in the various malls that were around. At Comics Unlimited (his new home away from home) he was taken by other comics -- superhero comics like X-Men and Batman. He remembers getting into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in 1985, after several shop employees recommended it. It blew him away! Quickly becoming his favorite comic, Todd began scouring for anything TMNT-related. He joined the Mile High Comics mailing list in hopes of one day acquiring a 1st print TMNT #1 (which he later successfully did), and remembers seeing the Albedo comics listed for unbelieveable prices ($50-$100). He had no idea what on earth "Albedo" was, but the name "Usagi Yojimbo" under the heading for Albedo struck his interest. What was "Usagi Yojimbo" he wondered. All he knew was that it's first appearance was in the Albedo comics and it was hugely expensive. The TMNT comics made mention of Usagi, which really spaked his interest. Later he noticed "Critters" in a catalog and that it had Usagi Yojimbo in it. It wasn't until he saw a preview in another comics catalog that he finally saw Usagi. Wow, a samurai rabbit? This has to be good. Soon he started taking notice of other black-and-white funny animal comics. What was it about black-and-white comics with animal characters that attracted him? Was it the fact that TMNT was in black-and-white, and it appealed so much to him that he wanted more? It began in 1986It was the Summer of 1986 when Todd-Shogun (then nothing more than an insignificant boll weevil) first picked up an issue of Critters with Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo in it. Young 12-year-old Todd-Weevil, a "Black-and-White Boom" baby, was picking up every black-and-white funny animal/mutant ninja anthropomorphic comic book he could get his grubby little fan-boy hands on... Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was his personal fave, followed closely by Critters, Albedo, Cutey Bunny, Cerebus, Equine the Uncivilized, Captain Jack, Fish Police, Black-belt Hamsters, Commando Koalas, Boris the Bear, Menagerie, Spaced, Panda Khan, Bean World, you name it (he also liked Groo, Robotech, GI Joe, X-Men, Batman, etc but those don't count cuz they weren't part of the B&W Boom). Back then Usagi to him was yet another cool warrior animal character.... 1987It wasn't until the next year when Todd-Weevil began becoming more and more crazy about Usagi. TMNT was still #1, but Usagi came up a close 2nd place. He hunted down all the back issues of Critters and Albedo (sans #2) and even got to go to the 1987 San Diego Con and acquire 4 copies of Summer Special #1 (which was published in 1986 but escaped his grubby little hands because of even MORE greedier fan-boys). He even got to see Stan, albeit as another anonymous fanboy. 1988
1989Todd started sending more and more letters in to the UY Letter Column, and even got his own fan art published in UY Vol 1 #18 (a trend which would strangely follow in every issue of UY with a #8 in it for several more years... #28, #38, and Vol. 2 #8 had fan art by Todd). He also acquired a copy of Albedo #2 at the 1989 SDCC for a whopping $100! He also got his very first commisioned piece of Usagi art from Stan... a cool drawing of Usagi and Shingen in team-up mode! RYAAAAAAAA!!!  1990 - 1995Todd continued to read UY religiously and became known as the "Ace Letterhack" of UY fandom, with well over 20 letters printed in the two volumes of UY that were published. UY had switched publishers twice during this period of time. January, 1996Todd started attending college at Long Beach State University, and in doing so received a student Internet account... The thing is, Todd didn't know a whole lot about the Internet, so he had some computer-savvy friends hook him up. He had a PC at home, but he had never used the modem until now... February, 1996Todd learned quickly about the Web, Email, FTP, and HTML, enough to create his very own website, with the help of one of his instructors. He had browsed around the Dark Horse website, saw a few Usagi sites (Bill Burge's, Todd Jenner's, Jared Smith's, and of course the UY RPG site by Mark Arsenault), and decided to create his own personal webpage about Usagi, called the "Usagi Yojimbo Dojo". It was very simple, and he had to steal graphics from the other sites until he could learn to make them up on his own using a program. There was no true "official" Usagi website, and Todd had no initial intention of creating one... this was just a small link from his personal website. Here's what the original UY Dojo site looked like way back then. It had next to nothing! March, 1996Soon the site began to grow, and Todd started submitting it to search engines like Infoseek, Webcrawler, Excite, Lycos, and Yahoo. They indexed his site and he soon began receiving email about it, even from people who knew him from the old UY letter column days (UY afficionado Dan Benjamin was one of the first to contact him). It was cool. He started scanning his own images and creating graphics with a pirated copy of Corel Draw 5.0 for Windows 3.1 he got off a friend (don't tell anyone!). He added extra sites like the Tomoe Ame Website, the Dragon Bellow Conspiracy site, and later on the Cover Gallery, Dojo News, and Space Station Usagi and Nilson & Hermy sites. He started getting more and more creative and soon a vision of this big UY site began to emerge in his mind. The other UY sites out on the net were pretty small, little more than personal webpages, with the exception of the UY RPG site, which had a pretty good amount of info on the then upcoming game. April, 1996One day in programming class he started messing around with Perl, a CGI language used in web pages to operate programs like guestbooks and discussion boards. He decided to add a guestbook to his page, but instead of a traditional guestbook, he decided to have it as a type of fan club sign-up form. And so the Unofficial UY Internet Fan Club was born. Additionally, he added a web-counter to track the amount of hits he was getting. That same counter graces the UY.com homepage to this very day, and has never been reset! Many web-surfer Usagi fans began posting to the guestbook (UYD Members like Jared Smith, Josh Ford, Ronald Edge, J.R. Brown, David Royer, Ben Kelly, Simon Knowles, Kenneth Chisholm, Denis Hackney, Jason Sawtelle, Jon VanDuzee, Don "DUSTY" Rhoades, Tim "Crog" Ingram, Rosemary Reeve, Matthew "Fellstar" Morgan, Jamie Rich from DHC, Bill Burge, Amy "Amara" Pronovost, Stephen Escobedo, Evan "Gyumaoh" Jacobson, Adriel Lee Serna, Clint Moulds, Tom Bolling, Simon Magid, and Glenn "not Yoriki" Masuda). Some even began expressing an interest in helping out with it. Thus Todd came up with the idea of a simple two-way structured ranking system in the UY Dojo, with all helpers as "Hatamoto" or Retainers (this included himself -- Todd didn't set his eyes on the Shogunate until later on that year). Regular members would be known as "Shugyosha" (student warriors). Before this, everyone was known simply as "Usagi-Otakus". The first Retainer was Ben Kelly from Australia (creator of the ill-fated UY Email RPG. Others followed, like Jonathan "Kitsune" Roth, Simon Knowles, Tim "Crog" Ingram, David Royer, and Matt "Fellstar" Morgan. May, 1996In late spring, Jamie Rich (then editor of UY) informed Todd that the UYD address (the URL back then was http://heart.engr.csulb.edu/~tbustill/usagi.html) would appear in DHC UY #5. Todd was stoaked. Imagine the traffic that would come through once everyone in UY fandom knew the site was there. And increase it did. Check out the UYD Home Page as it progressed. Not bad! June, 1996In the early summer of 1996, something really cool happened: Stan Sakai expressed an interest in contributing to the site! It was Todd's wildest dream come true (right next to landing a date with Laetitia Casta... alas, still just a dream...). Stan offered to contribute story plots and cover art for future issues (via snail mail), well in advance of what the Dark Horse web site had to offer. He also offered up advanced and sometimes exclusive info on signings, merchandise, and upcoming specials. Todd graciously accepted the offer and soon there was a UY New Releases section with previews, synopses, and cover art!!! Also in June, the Dojo was indexed by Yahoo... something that rarely happend these days! Also in June, Tim "Crog" Ingram created the very first UY Animation, we found emulated copies of the UY C-64 video game and created the UY Video Game site July, 1996In conjuntion with Stan's help, Todd created the UYD Email Newsletter, mailed out to all members whenever something cool popped up about Usagi. At first it contained only a bit of info, as the UYD was but an infant organization back then. But things were going great. Todd met up with Stan at the 1996 San Diego Con to give him his first look at the UY Dojo (Stan did not have access to a computer at the time) by bringing bubble-jet printed copies of it in a manilla envelope. Stan was pleased! As the summer wore on, Todd created more and more features for the UYD. The UY Comics Buyer's Guide, Story Synopses ("UY Journal"), UY Character Profiles ("Who's Who of UY"), Albedo #2 Website, UY Top Ten Collectables, UY Pronunciation Guide, UY Q&A, and UY DojoBoard were among these early features. Todd also came up with an idea to have an online contest, the UYD Internet Contest (UYDIC). He requested of the UYD Members through email newsletters to come up with an idea. Additionally, Stan expressed an interest in contributing the grand prize -- a custom Usagi drawing! Other prizes included UY cloisonne pins, UY issues, and UY sketches. Stan also informed Todd that The Comics Journal would be conducting a mega-interview of Stan, with a full-color cover painting. Stan requested that UYD Members send him questions to answer for the interview. The UYD was fast becoming a very useful avenue for Stan to communicate with fans... and Stan didn't even have internet access! Aug-Dec, 1996The UY Dojo was rolling hard! Stan provided tons of info about cool upcoming issues and storylines (including the then-upcoming Grasscutter epic!), convention-appearances, release schedules, and local signings. Todd started up the UY Fan Art page, featuring UYD Members' renditions of their favorite Ronin Rabbit! The UYDIC was finally chosen: the first contest would be a fan fiction contest. But it didn't stop there. Todd pledged to hold regular contests throughout the years, based upon the various suggestions offered by members. He also consolidated all of the "member" pages to one site: the UYD Member Forum. This included the UY Login Page, DojoBoard Forum, Member Log, and UYD Member Profile page (the profile page used to be password-access only). And more retainers entered the ranks. So many more that Todd had to refine the ranking system. He separated the Retainers by adding another rank, "Daimyo", which would be higher than Hatamoto for those who have done an exceptional amount of work. Todd of course siezed the title of Shogun! It was around September that Todd would meet up with Glenn Masuda, another obsessed Usagi nut. Glenn showed much interest in promoting the Dojo, and did a lot of extra stuff on the side, in addition to web work. He printed up 100 copies of the official UY Dojo flyer and gave them to Stan at a signing in L.A... Fans were impressed! Todd promoted Glenn to Daimyo, among the likes of Ben Kelly. Todd started enlisting more Hatamoto when he was able to secure another account at school. His computer dept only allowed him 20 MB of space, and the UYD was growing fast and was pushing the 20 MB limit. He was tired of getting email warnings that he had exceeded his limit. He decided to use one of his Engineering Society web accounts to place files in. Little did he know that by doing so it would one day actually cause the downfall of the site, albeit temporarily. In November, Simon Knowles got himself promoted to Daimyo by volunteering to head up a site containing transcriptions of all the UY Letters... and even got Jamie Rich from DHC to contribute. But the project was put on hold... for about 4 years! Ben Kelly was busy with story synopses and character profiles, and Glenn was digging up info on Musashi and Grasscutter for some historical sites. Todd started making issues of the UYD Newsletter available in the Member Forum. In December, Todd was amazed when he received an email from Stan. Stan was at a friend's house for Thanksgiving and was messing around on the internet. He browsed through the Dojo for the first time and sent Todd and email letting him know how cool the site looked. Stan got online a second time on Christmas day and sent Todd another email. But the big question still remained: when will Stan get his own access??? Also in December the preliminary FIXME Can't find reference "uynews6" was born with help from contributor Matt "Fellstar" Morgan... The UYD also had it's first "Character of the Season" contest, a tradition that would end up only lasting for about a year-and-a-half... and the UYD Internet Contest #1 was still underway... Jan-Feb, 1997The Dojo survived it's first year on the internet and was fast becoming one of the largest, most informative comic-book related websites on the net. The Dojo News page was discontinued in favor of the easier-to-send Newsletters. Todd and Glenn also began work on the highly-anticipated Grasscutter Website. The UYD also had it's first special mission: to get DHC to offer UY subscriptions. Unfortunatley, we lost the battle, as DHC would never offer subscriptions. oh well... The Ben Kelly-created site "Who's Who in UY" was transformed into the "World of Usagi Yojimbo" as the Email RPG fell out. Oh yes, and the UYDIC #1 was STILL underway... March, 1997The UY Dojo started making way for the upcoming Grasscutter epic. For the rest of '97, the UYD was all about Grasscutter. It was also in '97 that the UYD started incorporating MIDI music backgrounds based on traditional and popular Japanese music styles. Once the cover art and story info for UY Vol 3 #13 (GC Prologue 1) was available to the UYD, the Grasscutter Website was opened, with more info than you can ever want about the ancient and legendary sword of the gods.  |
History of the UYD
In '96-97 a lot of the GIF
and JPEG images you see in the UYD were provided to you by good ole
MACINTOSH. An 80 MHz PowerPC running Adobe Photoshop 4.0 and a LACIE
SilverScanner III took care of everything just fine. Macintosh was a pretty
decent system for graphics and such. I hear it still is...