To start the celebrations, I dug up this "History of the UYD" from an earlier version of the web-site for both new and old members to enjoy.....
UYD Time Line part 1
It 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...
Sometime in 1986 - It was 1986 (possibly in the summer) 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....
1987 - It 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 UY Summer Special (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 - With the sell-out of the TMNT, and the fizzling out of the B&W Explosion, Todd's taste in comics changed. He was no longer the grubby little fanboy, but a more sophisticated comic book enthusiast. Usagi was #1 on his list, and his brain almost exploded when he got his first letter printed in UY Vol. 1 #8. Stan also mailed him a free signed copy of #8 along with a free fully-drawn-and-inked Usagi drawing! He started getting more and more into Feudal Japan, drawing, and martial arts weapons. He never really got too caught up with the Manga craze, but he did like Anime... when he could find it.
1989 - Todd started sending more and more letters in to the UY Letter Column, and even got his own fan art published in UY #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 - 1995 Todd 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, 1996 - Todd 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, 1996 - Todd 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, 1996 - Soon 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 UY 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, 1996 - One 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 UYD Email RPG). Others followed, like Jonathan "Kitsune" Roth, Simon Knowles, Tim "Crog" Ingram, David Royer, and Matt "Fellstar" Morgan
May, 1996 - In 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, 1996 - In 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 Usagi animated GIF, we found emulated copies of the UY C-64 video game and created the UY Video Game site
July, 1996 - In 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, 1996 - The 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 Guestbook, DojoBoard, 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 letter columns... 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 Grasscutter news site 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, 1997 - The 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, 1997 - The 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 #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.
UYD Time Line part 3UYD Time Line part 2
We are still in March 1997.
Glenn dug up all the historical info while Todd worked on the story plots, character cast page, and web searches for actual photos pertaining to Atsuta Shrine and Grasscutter. Todd finally came across a site somewhere deep within the non-indexed depths of the net which actually possessed photos of the 3 ancient imperial treasures, including Grasscutter. Immediately the images were incorporated into the site and copies were routed to Stan Sakai, who, coincidentally, was working on the last page of Prologue #2, where Yamato Dake pulled the sword from the tail of the giant serpent. Even with all his resources, Stan was still missing a visual representation of Grasscutter... and was just going to make something up for it. That was until he received copies of the Grasscutter Website for his review. Once he saw the sword, he immediately adapted it's design for use in the Grasscutter storyline. Once again, the UY Dojo proved to be an excellent source for Stan to benefit his UY comics.
Also in March, the UYD welcomed aboard some new Hatamotos: Ruben Javier Arellano, Don "Dusty" Rhoades, Julie Miyamoto, J.R. Brown, Robert Laguna, Robert VanDuzee, and Jason Sawtelle. These new retainders were responsible for many of the plot synopses, interview transcriptions, and graphics that were displayed on the UYD. The UYD also welcomed DHC Marketing Rep Lou Bank among the ranks of the Hatamoto. He showed a great interest in working with the UYD in promotions and helped get the UYD website address published in all Usagi Yojimbo ads! Additionally, he helped promote the UYD and the Grasscutter Website over at the DHC site, and began to deliver exclusive info whenever he could. Lou was like a double-agent working for the Dojo! With Stan, Jamie, and now Lou working with the Dojo, we were truly a spoiled bunch. (Lou - what ever happened with the Usagi Tea Cups????).
Glenn had suggested that Todd look into the idea of the UY Dojo becoming the "Official" Usagi site. So Todd contacted Stan, who immediately agreed to the idea. And so the first "Official" Usagi Yojimbo web site was born!
The UYD's website address began appearing in each and every issue of UY. Traffic soared. Times were great.
[Five years have passed since then... Todd probably knows what happened in them but since I just converted this file, I couldn't ask but I will - P. Dark]
September 2001 - Someone browsed the Analph comic store in Zurich and stumbles over a pretty high stack of Usagi Yojimbo books. Since they are incomplete and the dates in them suggest that they are out of print for years, now, he doesn't buy one. He buys Bone instead. He's still buying Bone but that's only because he hates it when he doesn't know how a story ends.
November 2001 - The guy is back for his next dose of comics and the UY books are still there. He leafs through USAGI YOJIMBO Book Five: Lone Goat and Kid. He likes the clean style of the images, the impressive details and the calmness of the storytelling. He spends the few bucks to buy it because he simply likes furries.
End of November 2001 - Roughly $300 later, he owns almost every story which Stan has ever published. That guy, called Aaron Digulla, was now hooked like so many before him who started to leaf through one of the comics of Stan Sakai.
December 2001 - Aaron Digulla had always had a liking for written texts but he never had thought about writing himself, before. But somehow, the UY Comics changed this. In the middle of the month, he published the first chapter of his Pau Tai story line called Usagi Yojimbo: The Other Side of the Moon which tells the story of a strange priest called Pau Tai who appears in Usagis life.
January-June 2002 - Aaron Digulla (or Philmann Dark as he calls himself when he writes -- it's not really a pseudonym; "Digulla" just sounds more like an insult when someone with an english accent says it) writes 15 chapters which can be printed on 250 A4 pages. Because his japanese skills are lacking, he becomes a frequent poster on the DojoBoard asking for japanese words and names to use them in his stories.
He dreams of a book to be printed... but he fears that this might give Stan nightmares, so he didn't approach him ... yet.
Btw, Todd likes Aarons' UY story, so far
July 2002 - Aaron Worob on the DojoBoard asks why the website hasn't been updated for so long? Well, we don't know but Todd contacts the two guys, who asked: Aaron Worob and Aaron Digulla a.k.a Philmann Dark.
August 2002 - For some reason, Aaron Worob never gets back to Todd but Aaron Digulla does.
7. August 2002 - Todd tells Aaron Digulla the password for the UY Dojo -- not knowing what would happen next...
30. August 2002 - A good part of the UY Dojo is converted to XML by Aaron Digulla: FAQs, Usagis world, UY Letter Column, UY Concordance, Story Synopses, Grasscutter Website and many other pages as well.
So what's the big deal behind XML? Aaron Digulla is a computer professionel, who works in Switzerland (usually at banks and insurances). He knows many different computer languages (around 30) and various computer systems and OSs. And he's the lazy kind of guy who likes it very much to see his computer work. That's why he's using Linux to work on the UY Dojo.
When he wrote this, the descriptions for all UY comics, stories and characters were converted into XML. XML is much like HTML but there are tools, called transformers (for the geeks: I'm using XSLT), to convert XML into something else. HTML, for example. So now, we can say, "hey, a page which describes a comic looks like that" and "all comics are described here" and the transformer will create 154 HTML pages from two source files.
Of course, if something changes (for example, the Dojowarp), then we just have to change one file, now, instead of hoping that we didn't forgot one of the 800 files which make up the UY Dojo...
The various transformation scripts also do many checks to make sure that the results are OK without someone having to look at them -- what's the point in generating 800 files when you have to check each one afterwards to make sure they are all OK?
The usual process is like this: He takes a webpage and runs a small editor macro over it (he's using jEdit) to clean the bad&broken HTML which the many HTML editors create. Then a common header and footer are added to make the file readable by the transformer. Now, the many remaining errors are fixed, the content is skimmed for being current, broken links are fixed, etc. and then the original is generated from the new XML file from now on.
And when there are new pages or old ones are renamed, all he has to do is to change a few files and say "make" and then "update" to upload all changed files on the webserver.
Life can be so easy when you know your tools...
To Be continued......
September / October 2015 - Daniel Fujii, web-designer for Stan Sakai’s new web-site, is allowed access to update and integrate the Usagi Yojimbo Dojo with the Official Stan Sakai web-site.
