And it was rather unpleaseant to be stuck in the middle of DBC with no hope to find out how the story ends.
Luckily I and the internet became fast friends a few years later and I was able to purchase the whole DBC tradepaperback. I guess the long wait helped it to become one of my favourite Usagi stories so far.
Recently the translations were discussed on the Schwarzer Turm boards, because people wondered why the two versions of Usagi 1 were so different.
The answer lies in the technical limitations that the Carlsen edition had to work with.
German is much more wordy than english. The wordcount of german translations of english books is about 20% higher than in the original.
Thats no problem for books, you can just add a few pages on the end and do not miss a thing ( or split the book in two and have the reader pay twice, for example the german 'Wheel of time' edition is at book 28 ).
But unfortnately thats doesn't work in a comic. The Carlsen edition was lettered by hand and that way only two more letters per line were possible.
That forced the translator (who is in fact the same one doing the Schwarzer Turm edition right now) to concentrate on translating the pure information delivered in each line. There was simply no space to give each character his own 'voice' or mode of speaking.
The Schwarzer Turm edition is computer lettered. In fact they used Mr. Sakais own lettering to create the computer font. The result is rather nice looking. This new method made it possible to add about a word more per line and flesh out the dialouge.
LINK to the original discussion in german.
I hope this helps.
E.
p.s. The Schwarzer Turm reissues of the old Carlsen material will contain some stories that were somehow dropped in the first edition like the first meeting of Leonardo and Usagi and the first meeting between Usagi and the leader of the Neko Ninja whose name escapes me right now.