USAGI YOJIMBO Book Two

Mark Evanier is best known as the writer of the Groo the Wanderer
stories and also the Garfield and Friends cartoon.

This is the second volume collecting the long-eared warrior's adventures, herein recapitulating Usagi Yojimbos numbered one through six. Most of these are out of print and would cost you bills of large denomination were you to find someone willing to part with them. Which probably almost no one is. Now, those of you who missed them have the chance to buy them in this deluxe format. And those of you who bought them before have a chance to buy them again...a cheap but effective ploy on the part of most funnybook firms these days but one used usually on comics a lot less deserving than Stan Sakai's.

Stan, as any fool can plainly see, is a wizard at the drawing board: well able to write and draw tales with the best of them. His wabbit has an amazing following...all the more amazing when you consider the genre in which he's working. It's funny (sort of) animals. Those are not, we are told, the kind of comics today's readers flock to buy. But they sure like Usagi Yojimbo , buck teeth and all.

The stories that follow are pretty much self-explanatory and I'm really just here so those of you who've followed this strip from its start will have something new to read. But let me direct your attention to the skill of the Sakai camera, ever capturing the action at just the perfect instant: Not a frame too soon, not a frame too late. Stan's pantomime panels are especially good. The opening pages of "Samurai," Part I, are terrific, saying everything that need be said about the depicted encounter, wordlessly and eloquently.

For reasons that still escape me, even though he can do all this, Stan continues to letter Groo the Wanderer. And for reasons that escape me even more, many of you buy it. Often, the Groo Crew travels en masse to conventions to inhabit side-by-side tables and to do what they do best for the fans: Sergio does a little sketch of Groo, Stan does a little sketch of Usagi, our colorist Tom Luth (who colored this book's spiffy cover, as well) does a little sketch of his characters, the Rockhoppers. And I define "mulching."

And you should see how they flock around Sakai. Jeez. Fans who have avidly bought and digested Usagi, asking about it, gushing over it, boasting of having followed it since its inception in Albedo (try and find one of those issues for sale today; I dare you). Folks love this comic.

But I don't have to tell you that. You just shelled out eleven bucks for the thing. Best bargain you've gotten in a long time, I'd wager. And I know you; you don't plunk down that kind of money for just anything.

Which brings me to the main point of this Foreword which, to be honest, hasn't much to do with Stan or his bunny. This is the seventy-first Foreword I have now written for a comic book or collection thereof. many of you are doubtless growing ill of Evanier Forewords, marring otherwise dandy funnybooks. Well, I'm sorry; when asked to write something about a book I like, I can scarcely refuse. Especially if I get a couple free copies of the book in the deal. And there are folks who like these Forewords, even (I'm told) those who actually read them. For those few, I think it's about time we did a collection of my Forewords.

Think of it: A whole anthology, available softbound or hard, also with a deluxe edition with a tipped-in bookplate signed by Yours Truly. The Collected Forewords of M.E., introducing books he likes by people he likes. And I could even write a Foreword introducing my own Forewords. And then maybe another Foreword introducing the Foreword to my Forewords. And then, to be truly innovative, I'll write a Preface to my Foreword to my Forewords. And maybe an Afterword at the back...

I can see it now. And you can help. Pick out a publisher you'd like to see go under. Deluge that publisher with demands that they publish this book. Tell them you'd buy three copies. And you wouldn't be lying, because - get this - I intend to do a neat role reversal in it and get Stan Sakai to draw one page (only) of Usagi Yojimbo for the back of it. Yeah, that'd be nice...

Three hundred and twenty-seven pages of Evanier Forewords and one page of Usagi Yojimbo. And, what's more, I'll even write a Foreword to Stan's page...

- Mark Evanier

Last change: 19. May 2003

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Usagi Yojimbo, including all prominent characters featured in the stories and the distinctive likenesses thereof are trademarks of Stan Sakai and Usagi Studios. Usagi Yojimbo is a registered trademark of Stan Sakai. Names, characters, places, and incidents featured in this publication either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events, institutions, or locales, without satiric content, is coincidental.