Usagi Yojimbo: Book 8: Shades of Death

by Stan Sakai, 192 pages

In this volume, wandering samurai Usagi lets fate determine which path to take at a fork in the road, with the expected results--namely, that he finds people who need him and make his existence temporarily more complicated than he'd like, gives them a hand, and goes on his way, grumbling but satisfied that he did the right thing. We also get a few glimpses into his childhood days of apprenticeship and how he learned a few lessons about living honorably.

Aw, little Usagi is so cute! There's also a cameo from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which you may at first think is a bit odd, but if you've been reading these for a while, you know that the silliness of such world-crossing has its place, too. A few of the shorts in this volume have almost no dialogue, letting the reader take in the details and development largely from the images alone.