Summary: Usagi wishes to enjoy a quiet meal. But a group of loud and drunk gamblers enters. And soon start harassing other patrons, throwing out of the inn anybody they feel is spoiling their fun. Finally their attentions turn to the quiet samurai sipping his tea and ignoring them.

The leader of the pack, a filthy pig surrounded by flies, charges at Usagi. Usagi draws his sword. After a few swipes, he returns to his tea. At first concerned, the bully notices Usagi has completely missed him, and his confidence returns. Until his friends notice that every fly surrounding him has been skewered in half...

Thoughts: The opening splash page is one of the first magnificent images Stan has given us. In terms of tone and texture, it is out of place with the story, but that is fine. That's why it's the opening splash page. You then turn the page, and the style blends quickly into the cartoonish. The image would have looked out of place midstory. But in the beginning, there is nothing to distract you from. You can just pause on the page and appreciate the beauty of the moment.

Then page 2 and see the scene of Usagi approaching an inn, which I've already remarked seems prototypical for the series.

The next panel is also a large and beautiful panel, though cartoonier. With the somewhat goofier innkeeper offering a table. While Usagi quietly removes his sandals, the tokage watch on. (These lizards are now a regular fixture of the backgrounds)

The serenity of the first two pages is immediately broken on page 3. The crowd of raunchy gamblers is immediately understood to be trouble. The next pages bring us the contrast between the quietly and barely moving Usagi sipping his tea and the loud rabble that has entered. Best illustrated with 4 panels of the gamblers going through a range of emotions over being ignored set against an almost unchanging image of Usagi.

Through the middle, the focus is on the characters and the background details are downplayed. Only in the final panel does Stan return to the detail of the inn we saw on page 2, bring us out of the story and back into the environment, and giving us a lingering moment to end on. In contrast to the panels through the story that were meant to quickly carry us to the next panel. This final panel is for us to pause and appreciate and then return from Usagi's world to reality.

At day's end, this issue is played largely for humor, as in the previous Critters stories. It builds to a punchline. The Albedo issues were quite serious and the Critters issues have been essentially for laughs, with the Doomsday Squad backup finding a mixed tone.

Within the humor, there is of course a point. About bullies. A point that will be echoed repeatedly throughout the series. That boasting and skill are often inversely correlated. That bullies get theirs (especially when Usagi is around). And that Usagi's unwillingness to fight shouldn't cause him to be underestimated.

Somebody else will have to explain what the three-headed dragon is doing there.

Grade: A-