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.

Usagi Yojimbo: Book Seven: Gen's Story

by Stan Sakai, 191 pages

Usagi helps the soul of a former comrade find peace, aids a widow in her quest for justice, and crosses paths with old acquaintances and new, including a cheapskate rhino, a blind assassin pig, and a pick-pocketing fox.

Aw, Gen proves, more than once, that he's a nobler soul than he'd like to admit. He still tries to trick Usagi into paying for all his meals and lodging, but that seems a small inconvenience in return for a friend who's got your back.

Usagi Yojimbo: Book Six: Circles

by Stan Sakai, 167 pages

Grown a bit weary of the wandering life, Usagi thinks of returning to his home village and settling down. But a few too many things have changed (and a few too many have not) to make staying there a comfortable choice. Although that doesn't mean he can't stop in and visit now and then. He'll just have to watch out--as he always does--for the bandits and demons and a certain lunatic who lurk in the bushes waiting to make sure he never reaches his destination.

Aw, poor Usagi. But he'll be ok. The wandering life suits him well. And if and when he decides to settle down for real, I'm sure he'll find somewhere he can happily call home.

Usagi Yojimbo: Book Five: Lone Goat and Kid

by Stan Sakai, 142 pages

After his lord is betrayed and killed in battle, upright samurai Miyamoto Usagi wanders throughout Japan, offering his bodyguard services to the worthy and countering the nefarious doings of the corrupt nobleman who caused his lord's death.

In this volume, Usagi recovers a dead samurai's swords, helps protect a village from attacking ninja, and gets caught up in a web meant to trap an honorable assassin and his son.

Stan Sakai is pretty brilliant. Not only does he succeed in building a vibrant, cohesive world filled with allusions to Japanese historical figures (Miyamoto Musashi, for starters), pop culture (Akira Kurosawa, Toshiro Mifune, Godzilla, Zatoichi, Lone Wolf and Cub, among many others), and traditional crafts (such as the kite-making in this volume), but he does so without casting a single human being.

As you might guess from the cover (or the title, "usagi yojimbo" literally meaning "rabbit bodyguard"), our noble hero Usagi is a rabbit--not a bunny; though he can at first glance be deceptively cute, bunnies don't usually go around causing little cartoonish skull-and-crossbone thought bubbles to appear over their unfortunate opponents' heads. In his pursuit of honor and justice, Usagi encounters cat ninjas, bat ninjas, snake lords, goat assassins, a blind pig swordsman, a rhino ronin (or masterless samurai), and highways, fortresses, and villages populated with lions, tigers, and bears and an assortment of other animals who, like himself, are utterly human in every other way.

Sakai has won a handful of Eisner awards over the years, has long lettered for Sergio Aragonés' hysterical Groo the Wanderer, and has lettered for and is friends with Stan Lee (who wrote the introduction to this volume).