An interview I did for Panel2Panel has just been posted:
http://paneltopanel.net/shop/article_in ... cles_id=43
PANELTOPANEL.NET, NOVEMBER 12, 2009
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Stan Sakai
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Steve Hubbell
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DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE WITH STAN SAKAI
by DANIEL BARLOW, (PANELTOPANEL.NET, NOVEMBER 12, 2009)
Usagi Yojimbo Creator Celebrates Publishing Anniversary
Twenty-five years ago Stan Sakai doodled a rabbit in his notebook and a new samurai was born.
Sakai’s samurai rabbit had a stoned face, wore sandals on his feet, wielded a sword like an expert and tied his large floppy bunny ears on the top of his head, a style known as chonmage, a traditional Japanese haircut for men.
“I wanted to do an epic story about Miyamoto Musashi,” Sakai said, referring to the famous Japanese swordsman. “But when I sketching in my book, I kept drawing a rabbit with his ears tied back. It was a striking and simple design.”
Soon, the rabbit got a name – Miyomoto Usagi (the title of the comic, Usagi Yojimbo, is Japanese for rabbit bodyguard) and a setting (17th Century feudal Japan) and, finally, in a small self-published comic anthology in 1984, was first shown to the world. Since then, Usagi has grown to become one of comics’ best-loved series, running more than 140 issues at three companies and spanning a series of cartoon appearances, toys, merchandise (usually via his pals, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) and, yes, a lot of awards and accolades.
Will Eisner called Usagi “enduring work.” Film director Alejandro Jodorowsky once said the comic has a “grace that verges on the miraculous.” And For Better of For Worse cartoonist Lynn Johnston praised it as a comic that “most of us can only aspire to.”
Sakai, who grew up reading 60s Marvel and DC comics and watching subtitled samurai movies as a kid, seems shy of all the love.
“I don’t really think about who my audience is,” he admitted. “I create the Usagi stories for an audience of one.”
Sakai was born in Japan, but when he was two years old his parents moved to Hawaii, where his father was from (his father had met his mother while stationed in the country after World War 2).
As a kid growing up on the island, Sakai devoured 60s superhero comics. His favorites were the classics – Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s “Dr. Strange” and anything drawn by Jack Kirby. Sakai said he remembers buying his first issue of “Fantastic Four” because DC raised the price of their books to 12 cents.
“I remember buying Fantastic Four #4 off the rack,” Sakai said.
Sakai has drawn his whole life, but Hawaii was hardly a comics Mecca when he grew up there. There was little if any artist community on the islands, he said, and all the artists he looked up to lived in New York City, the location of Marvel and DC’s offices.
“This was way before the Internet,” Sakai said. “The only way to send in art was through the mail … and they didn’t have overnight delivery yet. Until Kirby moved to California, there were very, very few comic artists who didn’t live in or around New York.”
Sakai took his first art class in high school. He studied art close to home, attending the University of Hawaii. When Sakai married Sharon, his wife, in the early 1970s, the couple moved to California and the future comic artist made a living drawing a line of t-shirts for a new sportswear company.
“I got by doing freelance artwork for advertising,” he said. “And lettering Groo.”
Sakai heard through a friend about an independent comic anthology called Albedo Anthropomorphics that was looking for contributions. In his notebooks at home, he had been drawing that character that he kept coming back to: A noble rabbit samurai, with his ears tied back behind his head.
“The look of Usagi came to me very early, but the personality developed over time,” Sakai said.
Usagi was influenced by the Japanese samurai movies that Sakai saw as a youth in Hawaii theaters. He said these stories are popular even today because of the nobility of the characters, which he compares to the trait of chivalry found in Europe’s version of the hero, the knight.
And, of course, there are always cool sword fights.
“I wanted Usagi to have some of the same virtues as a samurai … the swordsmanship, the philosophy … and his personality really grew out of that,” Sakai said. “He’s the idealized version of what warriors should be.”
Usagi's first appearances were in independent funny animal comic anthologies before moving onto to three other publishers. For the last 100 issues, Dark Horse Comics has been Usagi's home.
What resonates from reading Usagi is, despite that it is a world populated with talking, tea-sipping, sword-swinging anthropomorphic animals, is that the details seem real. The dress, the food, the language (Sakai frequently drops in Japanese words into the dialogue) and the politics seem ripped from history books.
That’s because they were. Research goes into every issue of Usagi, Sakai said, and that varies from asking his mother for historic and geographic details to reading lots and lots of sometimes obscure books about feudal Japan’s culture and legends.
“I’m really proud of the time I put into getting the details right,” Sakai said. “Usagi has been used as text books for Japanese history classes. Each story comes from a historic event or legend.”
One of the joys of the comic is how quickly it can move from a narrative to dramatic fight scenes – usually chaotic splash pages where dozens of warriors clash while a body count piles up around them.
“There is violence in Usagi and it is something you just can’t get away from because, well, Japan has a really turbulent political history,” he said. “That’s especially true for the early 1700s and the early 17th Century.”
It sounds violent, but Sakai, taking a tip of the hat from his friend Sergio Aragones' Groo comics, injects humor into each one, usually in the form of a ridiculous face or an exaggerated tongue sticking out of their mouth. It’s all camp.
“I try to soften it up a bit by giving them those silly faces,” he said.
Sakai didn’t plan on celebrating Usagi’s 25th birthday this year.
“I just wanted to pretend this was a regular year,” he said. “I just felt like plodding along … I didn’t think we had to do something special.”
But his editor – and his fans – couldn’t let him get away with nothing.
This month, Sakai releases Yokai, his first Usagi graphic novel. The book, based on Japanese folklore about odd supernatural spirits, is fully painted. Yokai is released from Dark Horse this month.
“I told them I would need at least three months to do a fully painted graphic novel and my editor, Diane Shultz, said to me, ‘You have two-and-a-half months.’ I didn’t think I could do it, but I did.”
His first mainstream publisher, Seattle-based Fantagraphics, will publish a hardcover, slipcase collection of his run for the company. And he still continues to letter every issue of Groo and the Spider-Man newspaper comic strip (an excuse to work with Stan Lee, Sakai claimed).
Usagi’s tale had a clear beginning, middle and an end when Sakai started the book.
But he said the characters have taken control, ruining what he joked was a “glorious death scene for Usagi.” Sakai has several stories planned for in advance, but said he sees no end for the book right now.
“I know what’s going to happen five years from now,” he said. “But I don’t necessarily know what’s going to happen next month.”
by DANIEL BARLOW, (PANELTOPANEL.NET, NOVEMBER 12, 2009)
Usagi Yojimbo Creator Celebrates Publishing Anniversary
Twenty-five years ago Stan Sakai doodled a rabbit in his notebook and a new samurai was born.
Sakai’s samurai rabbit had a stoned face, wore sandals on his feet, wielded a sword like an expert and tied his large floppy bunny ears on the top of his head, a style known as chonmage, a traditional Japanese haircut for men.
“I wanted to do an epic story about Miyamoto Musashi,” Sakai said, referring to the famous Japanese swordsman. “But when I sketching in my book, I kept drawing a rabbit with his ears tied back. It was a striking and simple design.”
Soon, the rabbit got a name – Miyomoto Usagi (the title of the comic, Usagi Yojimbo, is Japanese for rabbit bodyguard) and a setting (17th Century feudal Japan) and, finally, in a small self-published comic anthology in 1984, was first shown to the world. Since then, Usagi has grown to become one of comics’ best-loved series, running more than 140 issues at three companies and spanning a series of cartoon appearances, toys, merchandise (usually via his pals, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) and, yes, a lot of awards and accolades.
Will Eisner called Usagi “enduring work.” Film director Alejandro Jodorowsky once said the comic has a “grace that verges on the miraculous.” And For Better of For Worse cartoonist Lynn Johnston praised it as a comic that “most of us can only aspire to.”
Sakai, who grew up reading 60s Marvel and DC comics and watching subtitled samurai movies as a kid, seems shy of all the love.
“I don’t really think about who my audience is,” he admitted. “I create the Usagi stories for an audience of one.”
Sakai was born in Japan, but when he was two years old his parents moved to Hawaii, where his father was from (his father had met his mother while stationed in the country after World War 2).
As a kid growing up on the island, Sakai devoured 60s superhero comics. His favorites were the classics – Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s “Dr. Strange” and anything drawn by Jack Kirby. Sakai said he remembers buying his first issue of “Fantastic Four” because DC raised the price of their books to 12 cents.
“I remember buying Fantastic Four #4 off the rack,” Sakai said.
Sakai has drawn his whole life, but Hawaii was hardly a comics Mecca when he grew up there. There was little if any artist community on the islands, he said, and all the artists he looked up to lived in New York City, the location of Marvel and DC’s offices.
“This was way before the Internet,” Sakai said. “The only way to send in art was through the mail … and they didn’t have overnight delivery yet. Until Kirby moved to California, there were very, very few comic artists who didn’t live in or around New York.”
Sakai took his first art class in high school. He studied art close to home, attending the University of Hawaii. When Sakai married Sharon, his wife, in the early 1970s, the couple moved to California and the future comic artist made a living drawing a line of t-shirts for a new sportswear company.
“I got by doing freelance artwork for advertising,” he said. “And lettering Groo.”
Sakai heard through a friend about an independent comic anthology called Albedo Anthropomorphics that was looking for contributions. In his notebooks at home, he had been drawing that character that he kept coming back to: A noble rabbit samurai, with his ears tied back behind his head.
“The look of Usagi came to me very early, but the personality developed over time,” Sakai said.
Usagi was influenced by the Japanese samurai movies that Sakai saw as a youth in Hawaii theaters. He said these stories are popular even today because of the nobility of the characters, which he compares to the trait of chivalry found in Europe’s version of the hero, the knight.
And, of course, there are always cool sword fights.
“I wanted Usagi to have some of the same virtues as a samurai … the swordsmanship, the philosophy … and his personality really grew out of that,” Sakai said. “He’s the idealized version of what warriors should be.”
Usagi's first appearances were in independent funny animal comic anthologies before moving onto to three other publishers. For the last 100 issues, Dark Horse Comics has been Usagi's home.
What resonates from reading Usagi is, despite that it is a world populated with talking, tea-sipping, sword-swinging anthropomorphic animals, is that the details seem real. The dress, the food, the language (Sakai frequently drops in Japanese words into the dialogue) and the politics seem ripped from history books.
That’s because they were. Research goes into every issue of Usagi, Sakai said, and that varies from asking his mother for historic and geographic details to reading lots and lots of sometimes obscure books about feudal Japan’s culture and legends.
“I’m really proud of the time I put into getting the details right,” Sakai said. “Usagi has been used as text books for Japanese history classes. Each story comes from a historic event or legend.”
One of the joys of the comic is how quickly it can move from a narrative to dramatic fight scenes – usually chaotic splash pages where dozens of warriors clash while a body count piles up around them.
“There is violence in Usagi and it is something you just can’t get away from because, well, Japan has a really turbulent political history,” he said. “That’s especially true for the early 1700s and the early 17th Century.”
It sounds violent, but Sakai, taking a tip of the hat from his friend Sergio Aragones' Groo comics, injects humor into each one, usually in the form of a ridiculous face or an exaggerated tongue sticking out of their mouth. It’s all camp.
“I try to soften it up a bit by giving them those silly faces,” he said.
Sakai didn’t plan on celebrating Usagi’s 25th birthday this year.
“I just wanted to pretend this was a regular year,” he said. “I just felt like plodding along … I didn’t think we had to do something special.”
But his editor – and his fans – couldn’t let him get away with nothing.
This month, Sakai releases Yokai, his first Usagi graphic novel. The book, based on Japanese folklore about odd supernatural spirits, is fully painted. Yokai is released from Dark Horse this month.
“I told them I would need at least three months to do a fully painted graphic novel and my editor, Diane Shultz, said to me, ‘You have two-and-a-half months.’ I didn’t think I could do it, but I did.”
His first mainstream publisher, Seattle-based Fantagraphics, will publish a hardcover, slipcase collection of his run for the company. And he still continues to letter every issue of Groo and the Spider-Man newspaper comic strip (an excuse to work with Stan Lee, Sakai claimed).
Usagi’s tale had a clear beginning, middle and an end when Sakai started the book.
But he said the characters have taken control, ruining what he joked was a “glorious death scene for Usagi.” Sakai has several stories planned for in advance, but said he sees no end for the book right now.
“I know what’s going to happen five years from now,” he said. “But I don’t necessarily know what’s going to happen next month.”