General discussion about Usagi Yojimbo, the comics, the stories, the characters, collectibles, TV appearances, Stan Sakai, Space Usagi, Nilson & Hermy, and all other related topics.
Spam Musubi #7 wrote:I then walked off like a sad Charlie Brown… I am such a Tool.
You certainly are not. Sorry you had a such a negative experience with him. You didn't deserve that.
Spam Musubi #7 wrote:Still want to read about the adventures of Scrooge McDuck. So I should read Banks first and then Rosa? Is it like a Star Wars thing where you should watch the Original trilogy first and then the Prequels? Also I have a cool carving of Scrooge McDuck. I might put it on Ebay or bring it to Comic Con so someone from the Dojo can have it. -Spam
I am not a duck master either. But my kids and I enjoyed Life of and times of Scrooge McDuck a lot. I first bought an eBay lot of 10 Gladstone Bark's / Rosa collections of duck stories, that my kids destroyed by reading so many times. In my non-duck master opinion, you can read them in any order. But, full disclosure: I haven't watch any of the Star Wars Prequels yet.
Spam Musubi #7 wrote:...
Still want to read about the adventures of Scrooge McDuck. So I should read Banks first and then Rosa? Is it like a Star Wars thing where you should watch the Original trilogy first and then the Prequels? Also I have a cool carving of Scrooge McDuck. I might put it on Ebay or bring it to Comic Con so someone from the Dojo can have it.
I'm sorry you had such an experience. The last remark about the true fans was out of place. As for the rant about the first/lucky dime, I think it was probably not so much against you as it was against Disney and the cartoon. Don Rosa HATES the Disney company (he started to work for european publishers in the 90's because he couldn't stand working directly for Disney anymore) and only considers Barks stories and interpretation of the character to be canon. Maybe you can try to meet him again another time, so you can replace this bitter encounter by a better memory? He's usually very friendly, so maybe he was just having a bad day or made a poor attempt at a joke with the last remark.
Was there a long queue to meet him?
As for the order, it's as you want. Just know that many Don Rosa stories are full of references to earlier Barks stories (some of them are plain sequels). So if you read Don Rosa stories first, you'll still have to read them a second time after finishing Barks comics in order to fully appreciate them. On the other hand, Don Rosa comics are better (in my opinion), so maybe starting straight by the best part might get you more interested and involved with the characters.
OnitsukaTiger wrote:Is Scrooge a samurai? Am I missing something here?
It seems we went slightly off topic. Have you read Rurouni Kenshin? It's a shonen, with several shonen tropes, so it's not as historically instructive as Usagi, but I found it quite interesting (I also happen to enjoy shonens).
Don Rosa has mentioned he frequently feels belittled and even harassed at American cons by folks who have no idea what his work is and just assume he's doing Disney or DuckTales fan art or some such (as opposed to being overseas, where Donald/Scrooge are some of the most beloved and widely know comics and he's well known). He may have been having a pretty bad day.
As for more samurai comics: have we mentioned Dororo yet? As far as I know that's Osamu Tezuka's only samurai based comic (I might be wrong). I thought it was really great, and if you like Usagi's supernatural stories with Sasuke this is a bit like that. The only caveat is that the series wasn't a financial success when original published and so it was cancelled somewhat abruptly, so the finale is a bit on the rushed side.
... oh, and it isn't samurai, but another great wandering hero type comic is Corto Maltese, which is about a sort of bohemian-type sailor who gets involved in all sorts of adventures. Now that I think of it, Corto is probably the closest thing I can think of to Usagi in terms of feel, despite a much different setting.
Disappointing Encounter with a Legend - This weekend I was really excited to go to Long Beach Comic Expo to meet some of my favorite comic writers and artist one of them was Don Rosa. Like many people my first exposure to his work was through the cartoon Duck Tales. Don Rosa HATES Duck Tales. He even had a sign at his booth explaining how that TV show you loved as a kid was a gross bastardization of the sacred text created by God Carl Banks himself and passed on to ME ! If you love these characters because of that crappy show you are doing it wrong and will burn in a fiery abyss. (Mr. Rosa’s sign didn’t actually say this – It said something like these are not the characters from the T.V. show Duck Tales but are the characters from the comics which the show was based on)
I made the mistake of asking his assistant for the Poster print of Scrooge McDuck with his “Lucky Dime.” Mr. Rosa stopped what he was doing (which I believe was complaining to a fan that he wasn’t selling enough prints) and then scolded me for referring to the “Number One Dime” as the “Lucky Dime.” He then went on this two minute diatribe about how the dime was an emblem Scrooge’s hard work and determination and not a Lucky Dime. After he was done he turned to one of the anointed disciples and quipped, “ You can always tell who the true fans are.”
No Sir you cannot. True I am not a Duckinsian Scholar well versed in the excepted nomenclature of divine talismans. I’m just a guy who loves your characters because of a tv show he watched as a kid and now wants to learn about the comics it was based on. In fact I was hoping you would have some books so I could buy them from you so you would get the profits. I even bought this weird Scholarly book about your work written by some Italian guy. I also had my friend carve a portrait of Scrooge McDuck out of wood that I wanted to give to you because I read that you lived in a Cabin and to say thank you for the joy that you have brought to so many people.
I told him none of this. Maybe after he was done ranting I should have told him, “No I think you’re wrong. It is a lucky dime.” Or maybe I should have stood by his booth and sang the theme to Ducktales. Instead I waited in line, bought the print, thanked him and told him it was nice to meet him. I then walked off like a sad Charlie Brown… I am such a Tool.
Still want to read about the adventures of Scrooge McDuck. So I should read Banks first and then Rosa? Is it like a Star Wars thing where you should watch the Original trilogy first and then the Prequels? Also I have a cool carving of Scrooge McDuck. I might put it on Ebay or bring it to Comic Con so someone from the Dojo can have it.
- Spam
I'm sorry to hear about the experience you had. It's never fun to meet an admired creator and have a bad experience.
I think the whole Scrooge McDuck line of messages started as a recommendation for another anthropomorphic adventure series, as opposed to another samurai series. It would be cool to see Don Rosa do a Samurai Scrooge story some day.
And, as another more on topic recommendation, both samurai and Sakai related....
Steve Hubbell wrote:I think the whole Scrooge McDuck line of messages started as a recommendation for another anthropomorphic adventure series, as opposed to another samurai series. It would be cool to see Don Rosa do a Samurai Scrooge story some day.
And, as another more on topic recommendation, both samurai and Sakai related....
OnitsukaTiger wrote:Steve, thanks for the suggestion. That looks really interesting!
It has some great artwork, but it is a small 48 page graphic novel, comic book size dimensions but the artwork still feels like it should have been reproduced in a larger format.
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This one here is also really good. Unfortunately, only one volume has been translated (as far as I know) into English.
I quite enjoyed the series. The last book has just been published in french (didn't get to read it yet). The english publication is still ongoing, I believe.
There are a bunch of Usagi fans that are also Scrooge fans and Groo fans, and Star Wars fans and Hellboy fans, etc…. If you are looking for samurai related comics the work of Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima is amazing: Lone Wolf and Cub, Path of the Assassin, Lady Snowblood, and The Samurai Executioner are all classics. Be careful though the work is ultra-violent and very rapey.
Mr. Sakai’s work is influenced by the movies of Akira Kurosawa. Three of my favorite Kurosawa films are Seven Samurai, Ran and Yojimbo. Kurosawa himself was influenced by American westerns, three great westerns are: The Searchers, Stagecoach and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
If you are just looking for great comics here are some of my favorites:
Alan Moore’s run on Swamp Thing. (Scott Snyder’s is also very good)
Hellboy
Fables
The work of Brian K. Vaughn: Y the Last Man, Runaway s, Ex Machina and Saga
East of West is a great current book.
