VOICES FROM THE SMALL PRESS: A CONVERSATION WITH STAN SAKAI
by CHRISTIAN BERNTSEN (COMIC CULTURE VOL. 2 #2, DECEMBER 1994)

COMIC CULTURE: How was Miyamoto Usagi created?

STAN SAKAI: Well, oh, this is way back in 1983 I think it is, I had wanted to do a series, a historical series based upon the life of Miyamoto Musashi, who was an actual seventeenth century samurai. But one day I created a rabbit and tied up his ears and I loved the design. It was really simple but no one had ever done it before. So instead of Miyamoto Musashi that character became Miyamoto Usagi. Usagi means rabbit, of course. That’s how Usagi was born.

COMIC CULTURE: What does Yojimbo mean?

STAN SAKAI: Yojimbo literally means bodyguard. A yojimbo back in the old feudal days of Japan was like a hired sword or a gunslinger in the old west. Basically after the shoguns established the peace in the early sixteen hundreds there were lots of samurai warriors who were unemployed because there was no war or conflict. So these ronin, unemployed samurai, basically hired themselves out to whoever would pay, such as merchants or minor lords. If they hear of a minor conflict somewhere around, that’s where they would hire out their swords.

COMIC CULTURE: Musashi was obviously a great influence, how much of an influence did other Eastern philosophers have?

STAN SAKAI: Most of my stories are more based upon either historical fact or Japanese folklore or basically just stories that I think up or from movies, things like that. Akira Kurosawa is a big influence of mine, especially his Yojimbo and Seven Samurai. Those are.., well, again Kurosawa is one of my big influences.

COMIC CULTURE: Japanese culture and history then play an important part in Usagi.

STAN SAKAI: Very much so, in fact I try to do as much research as I can into the culture and history of Japan. The story I’m working on now deals with Usagi’s swords, so I did a lot of research, about a week’s worth, basically looking up about ten different books on how swordsmiths actually created those swords. It’s pretty hard because a lot of the methods used by these swordsmen were secret. So even today, with today’s technology they can not equal the swords that were done seven hundred years ago. In the story I tell how one swordsmith would create the swords from the raw iron to the folding, the hammering, the prayers and things like that, until he created Usagi‘s swords.

Then a lot of the stories I write have a lot of the Japanese culture in it. Another story that I’m pretty proud of is a kite story where I pretty much told how the giant forty foot kites were made, taken from the making of the paper to the making of the bamboo frame to the actual kite festival. I even told about the origin of the kite festival. And one of Usagi‘s stories is taking place with that in the background.



COMIC CULTURE: While the culture does play an important part, you manage not to suffocate the reader with it.

STAN SAKAI: Well the story is paramount. If it’s not a good story you lose the reader right away.

Unless you sell Image books.

COMIC CULTURE: I guess you speak Japanese then?

STAN SAKAI: Very very little, I wouldn’t even call it speaking Japanese.

COMIC CULTURE: Is it just through your research?

STAN SAKAI: Research, I do know Japanese, but it’s not like a conversational knowledge. I can pick it up. I can understand it a lot more than I actually speak it.

COMIC CULTURE: So you’re just being modest like Japanese people can be.

STAN SAKAI: (Laughs)

COMIC CULTURE: You say. “You’re very good at this: and they say. ’Oh, ma mades (I’m average).”

STAN SAKAI: I guess I am, but I don’t think it’s being too modest.

COMIC CULTURE: Have you spent a lot of time in Japan?

STAN SAKAI: I was born in Japan, actually. My dad was there right after the war. He was stationed there. He was born in Hawaii, so we went back to Hawaii where he came from. My dad was a second generation Japanese American.

COMIC CULTURE: He was allowed to serve? He didn’t have a problem with concentration camps in the U.S.?

STAN SAKAI: No, Hawaii, because at that time, the majority of the people were Asian American, they didn’t have that much of a problem there; unless they were in certain job related things or owned fishing boats or that sort of thing. There were actually very little reprisals in Hawaii.

COMIC CULTURE: What prompted you to put Usagi in the future!

STAN SAKAI: Oh, Space Usagi. Basically, I love dinosaurs and in Usagi’s time you see these little dinosaur creatures running around. And I put that in because I love dinosaurs and also those little dinosaurs in the original Usagi time played an important role in that. I deal in funny animals. So the scavengers of today’s world, such as rabbits and possums or raccoons, are potential human beings in Usagi’s world. The dinosaurs play the parts of pets or scavengers. Anyway, I wanted to do more with dinosaurs so I created a line of Usagi’s descendants and Space Usagi just happens to be one of them. The descendants are traced through the ownership of Usagi’s original swords.

COMIC CULTURE: So we may be seeing other time periods?

STAN SAKAI: I do have a few other time periods in mind. In fact I’ve already started a Whodunit story, one of those Agatha Christie type mysteries with Usagi’s twentieth century descendant who’s an investigative reporter. I started that over four years ago. I really haven’t had time to do it besides a few pages.

COMIC CULTURE: Getting back to Space Usagi for a moment, you’ve said that it is supposed to be a trilogy.

STAN SAKAI: It is a trilogy, it’s a series of three mini-series, the first two mini-series have already been done. The next mini-series, I can’t say it’s the final mini-series because I may do more, but hopefully it will be out in about a year or so. It will be the further exploits of Space Usagi. And now that Usagi and Space Usagi are being published by Mirage it’s a color book. The trade paperbacks are currently being published by Fantagraphics.

COMIC CULTURE: That leads into my next question, what was the reason behind switching publishers?

STAN SAKAI: Basically Usagi did not seem to fit into the Fantagraphics line. I love the Fantagraphics books, in fact I read more Fantagraphics stuff than any other publisher. But Usagi just didn’t seem to fit well with Love and Rockets or Hate or the other more mature books. Because of that, Fantagraphics tends to lean more of its advertising to a more mature audience, and Usagi is more of an all readers type of book. So Usagi seemed to fit in well with Mirage’s line. In fact the Turtles and Usagi have crossed over many times, it just seemed logical to move over to Mirage. I still have a great relationship with the people over at Fantagraphics, and the people over at Mirage are terrific, too.

COMIC CULTURE: So it’s a win - win situation for you.

STAN SAKAI: Exactly, and actually, Mirage seems to be pushing the Usagi book in the right direction. I think they just put an ad in, I forget what magazine, Family Life or something like that. Where, if you write in they’ll send you a free comic book, a free issue of Usagi. That’s the kind of audience I was trying to get, trying to get the book into the mainstream rather than stick to the traditional comic book market. That’s why Fantagraphics is great with trade paperbacks, because they’re always keeping them in print, in fact the first book just went through its fourth printing last year. They’re always keeping them out in the book stores which I really appreciate, not just comic book stores. In fact, the trade paperbacks are in some libraries, I know they’re in Hawaii and there’s a few in the California State library system. I do a bunch of presentations a year for school and libraries, in fact I just did one for the Little Tokyo Library here in LA. Right after the presentation there was a fund raiser for the friends of the library, and in half an hour they sold all the books and comic books that they had ordered. This was, I think, sixty trade paperbacks and two hundred comic books, basically to a non-comic book reading audience. So I’ve been trying to, not necessarily get just my stuff out there to the general reading public, but also comic books in general too. One of the awards I received was a Parents Choice award, so again that’s more main stream. That’s kind of the direction that I wanted to aim Usagi for, that kind of readership, not just the comic book market.

COMIC CULTURE: Well, congratulations on the award.

STAN SAKAI: Thank you, well this was a couple of years ago, but I am up for an Eisner award this year. I’m up against Bone, and I voted, but I voted for myself. If I weren’t on it I’d vote for Bone because Bone is a terrific series. Jeff is a nice guy, too. (And recipient of the aforementioned award — editors note]

COMIC CULTURE: How do you become a voter?

STAN SAKAI: You’re nominated by a panel of so-called experts. I say so-called because it varies every year. The board is made of creators, for instance Michael T. Gilbert was one of them, who does Mr. Monster, another book I love, whenever it comes out. A few retailers and maybe a couple of distributors. The nominations go through about 5,000 professionals in the community, everything from distributors to the creative side. The votes are tallied by the Son Diego Con, Eisner committee. I was just surprised I was nominated.

COMIC CULTURE: Any chance for a Usagi / Bone crossover? I saw the sketch you did in Bone.

STAN SAKAI: (Laughing) Probably not, it was just a fun thing to do. Jeff by the way is writing the introduction to Usagi book six, the trade paperback (which came out last summer).

COMIC CULTURE: Going back to something you mentioned earlier, when you switched to Mirage you talked about Usagi going to color. What was the reason for that?

STAN SAKAI: Basically color sells better, at least that’s the theory. I’m not sure about it though, if that’s true. Mirage was at the time switching all their books to color. In fact I think Usagi was the first ongoing color series that they launched. Of course the Ninja Turtles are now in color, Space Usagi received color, too I was leery of color myself. I really like the black and white look of the artwork in print because that’s closest to the original artwork as you’ll ever get. Tom Luth is a wonderful colorist, I use him almost exclusively since I first had done any color work. We’d done three color specials from Fantagraphics and Tom always did such a marvelous job, and he still does with the new series.

COMIC CULTURE: How did Usagi become involved in the world of the Ninja Turtles, to the extent of even appearing in the TMNT cartoon?

STAN SAKAI: Peter Laird and I were sitting together at the San Diego Comic Con one year, this is back in ‘89 or so. He turned to me and said “Do you want a toy?” and I said sure. The Usagi Yojimbo toy came out and it was a pretty big seller, it was one of the bigger non-Turtles figures. Because of the toy, Fred Wolf had known about Usagi for a while. Fred Wolf has the animation house that did the Turtles TV series. He liked Usagi too, and he thought there was a good chance to work together. And that’s how Usagi got on TV.

COMIC CULTURE: How many episodes did he appear in?

STAN SAKAI: He appeared in two episodes. And further on down the line there was also a Space Usagi action figure.

COMIC CULTURE: You’ve been lettering Sergio Aragones comic Groo the Wanderer - - since its original series at Pacific comics, before it moved to Epic.

STAN SAKAI: At Pacific, yeah. Almost the entire creative team has been together since the Pacific days, that’s Sergio, Mark Evanier, Tom Luth and myself. We get along well. We’re all artists, everyone draws and is capable, I think, of doing each others job. We each have an ongoing respect for each others abilities, so it works out great. Most of all we’re just friends.

COMIC CULTURE: You had sort of a Groo parody in issue eleven of the Fantagraphics series, what did Sergio think of that?

STAN SAKAI: He loved it. Did you find the hidden message?

COMIC CULTURE: What?

STAN SAKAI: In the early issues of Groo Mark Evanier or Sergio would put in hidden messages. One was, this was one of the early issues of the Epic series, if you take the first letter of every sound effect you get something like “Give Jack Kirby his artwork back,” Or sometimes it would just be a hidden message. It was just a thing that we did, like an inside gag. But then fans caught on to it and it got to the point where we had to do a hidden message every issue. Mark just got tired of it, and we stopped doing it around issue fifty or so. When I did Usagi eleven of the black and white series, with the Groo parody well, it wasn’t a parody, it was more of a tribute. I also put in a hidden message. If you look at the poem, take the first letter of each line of the poem it will spell a hidden message. Also I did that because Sergio had the back up story in that issue, with his Catnippon series. That was a series that he was thinking about doing, but he’s so busy that I find it amazing he even has time to do Groo.

COMIC CULTURE: Well, he’s supposed to draw incredibly fast.

STAN SAKAI: He really does, and it’s not just the drawing that I’m amazed at. It’s the concepts. What he draws is not just a drawing of Groo standing there, it’s a gag. In that thirty seconds that he took to draw that picture he would do, he not only had to draw it physically but also to think of a great concept, a gag. Of course this is just for spontaneous sketches, when he works on Groo he takes a lot longer. We’ve gotten letters where kids will say, Gee Sergio, you must do an issue of Groo in two days what do you do with the rest of the month (Laughter) But Sergio does a lot of research. There are a few stories in which Groo would sail on ships, and each time Groo would sail on it the ship would sink, that was another ongoing gag. Sergio would research different ships or different periods or different countries and he would get to the point where everything he would draw would be accurate. So if you look at a ship in the Groo stories, you could actually build it and you could actually be able to sail it. He’s probably my inspiration for being such a cultural fanatic, trying to get everything right. He’s just a nut for authenticity. He kind of pushed that on me, too. In the early issues of Usagi I’d show it to him and he’d say. “Oh well, this fishing boat is wrong, that’s not how they actually built it”, things like that. He also loves the Japanese culture and he knows a lot about that, too, so he’s the one who pushed me to getting everything right, or as authentic as possible.

COMIC CULTURE: I asked about a possible Bone crossover, so is there ever going to be a Groo crossover?

STAN SAKAI: Well, Groo has appeared in a few Usagi stories just as a background character. In fact, in the kite story I mentioned earlier, that’s one of the stories where I had shown Sergio the original artwork prior to publication. When I got it back, unknown to me he had drawn a picture of Groo in one of the panels. I started getting a couple of letters saying “Nice Groo you did.” I didn’t put Groo in there, and when I looked at it sure enough there was Groo. I didn’t even know.

COMIC CULTURE: Now that Groo is an Image book, will Usagi move also?

STAN SAKAI: (Laughs). Usagi’s not an Image book.

COMIC CULTURE: I know. Will it follow?

STAN SAKAI: No. I doubt it. I’m very happy with Mirage. In the case of Groo, from what I gather. Because Groo has been with Epic, for what, a hundred issues now. They haven’t really been pushing Groo, the way it should have been, with advertising and whatever: It wasn’t getting the attention that was given to the X books. Whereas with Image, we’ve gotten o lot more control over that. When they asked Sergio, “What do you want to do to publicize the book?” He said, “Well, why don’t we do a poster.” They said, pretty much. “Give us the artwork and well have it done a week later.” That surprised Sergio. Then they asked, “Do you want to do anything else?”, “Well, why don’t we make stickers for the San Diego Con?’ Again they said, “Give us the artwork, in a week we’ll have it ready for San Diego.” And it was. Things like that. The cost will be a lot cheaper. That’s something that really bothered Sergio, when the cost increased a lot. I think it will be $1.95 instead of $2.25. The quality will be better, so will the quality of the printing.

COMIC CULTURE: It’ll be on glossy paper all the way through now?

STAN SAKAI: I believe it will be.

COMIC CULTURE: I guess your cut is gonna go up too?

STAN SAKAI: Aw, gee. We haven’t really talked about that part of it yet. I don’t know, hopefully!

COMIC CULTURE: You also did the Mighty Magnor mini-series, was that anything different or just same group, different comic?

STAN SAKAI: Well, we work good as a team. Why break up a good thing. The last couple of issues, Tom was not able to color it, because of time deadlines and also Malibu was trying to institute a computer coloring system so he did not do the last coupe of issues. As far as everything else, the entire Groo crew was there too. Actually, Sergio hopes that there will be another mini-series, at least, with Magnor.

COMIC CULTURE: Aside from your work on Usagi and Groo, you do some other things, why don’t you tell us about them.

STAN SAKAI: I do advertising art. I also have been the letterer for the Spiderman newspaper strip on Sunday. I’ve been doing the lettering for the strips, must be at least eight years now. I pretty much took that on because I get to work directly with Stan Lee. Stan’s a person that I’ve always connected with comic books since I first picked up comic books, since I first picked up Fantastic Four number two there was his name on there. It’s great to work with him, he’s a terrific guy.

COMIC CULTURE: You have another character, Nilson Groundthumper.

STAN SAKAI: Nilson Groundthumper, he’s appeared in just a handful of stories. Whereas Usagi takes place in Japan, Nilson takes place in Europe, during that same time period. Kind of a medieval setting. I haven’t specifically pinpointed a country or anything. He’s basically a wanderer like Usagi, but Nilson tends to be more humorous, as far as the story goes. Whereas Usagi tends to be more factual and also a bit more dramatic. Nilson wanders around with his companion Hermy, and again there’s always those little lizard things running around. Actually Nilson predates Usagi by about a year or so. Nilson first appeared in a comic book called Albedo number one, this was in 1983, I think, or 1984. Usagi appeared in Albedo number two, it’s hard to find. This was right before the black and white boom started.

COMIC CULTURE: Are there any plan for Nilson to return?

STAN SAKAI: There’s always a bunch of Nilson stories, it’s just finding time to do them. For Usagi and almost any other story that I do, I’m not only the artist but I’m also the writer, the letterer, and I do just about everything except for the coloring. It takes a while, the research on the story takes a long time. If it weren’t for the research I don’t think Usagi would be around anymore.

COMIC CULTURE: The rising tension and characterizations of your stories are so well done, where did you hone your storytelling?

STAN SAKAI: I pretty much stuck to the comic medium. I’ve been doing Usagi for the past ten years now. So, I’ve just been working in the comic medium since then.

COMIC CULTURE: Why don’t we go back to Usagi and if you could, give us a taste of what’s in store for him.

STAN SAKAI: In issues nine and ten he rescues a village that has been enslaved by gangs of bandits, and Usagi himself is captured. During his captivity his swords are stolen, and the sword to the samurai represents his soul. So it’s basically a part of Usagi that’s been stolen. After he gets free he has to relocate his swords, so the next couple of issues deal with him trying to track down his swords. It’s really heartbreaking for him because his swords are stolen by a brigand, who’s killing all these people and enslaving all these others, and basically his swords are being used for evil. Again that’s a blow to his samurai spirit, so it’s a matter of honor as well as righteousness that he get his swords back. Aside from that I haven’t thought of what’s beyond that, except for a six issue story that I want to schedule in somewhere. It deals with the treasures of Japan, there are three traditional treasures of Japan: the jewel, the mirror and the sword. Without these three treasures the emperor can not rule. My story deals with the sword, which by the way is lost, actually all the three treasures are lost. But the story opens with the creation of Japan, and it goes through history following the sword. I think the story would take a year to actually research, because it deals with the creation and winds up in Usagi’s age. Hopefully there will be a little epilogue as far as its ramifications in today’s world. But that has not been scheduled yet and I haven’t really done all the research for that yet.

COMIC CULTURE: There was one character that I found fascinating, Chizu from issue three of the current Usagi series.

STAN SAKAI: Oh, the female ninja.

COMIC CULTURE: Yes, at the end of the issue she told Usagi they would meet again, so...

STAN SAKAI: Yes, they definitely will (Laughter). She’s a kuno-ichi, which is a female ninja, it was a secret code word for a female ninja, back in the old days and she is the leader of the Neko ninja clan. The Neko ninja and Usagi have run into each other quite a few times. So she’ll be popping up again, as will the Neko, or the Cat ninja, and there’s Bat ninja and there’s all kinds of ninja running around. Since you mentioned that character, if you don’t mind, I’ll tell you about the origins of the other characters.

COMIC CULTURE: Sure.

STAN SAKAI: There’s Gen the bounty hunter, who was a direct tribute to Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, played by Toshiro Mifune, with his gnarly, unshaven face and the way he manipulates characters. There’s a blind swordspig, Zato Ino, which is inspired by a movie series in Japan called Zato Ichi the Blind Swordsman. Basically it was the adventures of a blind wandering swordsman. Zato’s profession was a masseur, he used to massage people, that was an occupation held by a lot of blind people in those days and his actual name was Ichi. But with my Zato Ino he’s a blind swordspig and he finds through his sense of smell, because pigs have this amazing sense of smell. In Europe they’re used to smell truffles underground. Anyway, in their first encounter Usagi cuts off his nose, thereby blinding him. But Ino comes back with a wooden nose, it works just as well but everything’s pine scented (Laughter). There’s Tomoe, who was inspired by Tomoe Gozen, I think she lived in the fourteenth century during the Japanese civil wars. Tomoe Gozen was renowned for her beauty and also for her skill with the sword, or with a spear actually. My Tomoe was based upon the original Tomoe. I also did a little tribute to Lone Wolf and Cub called Lone Goat and Kid. And Godzilla.

COMIC CULTURE: I thought that was hysterical.

STAN SAKAI: The entire story developed because of the pun “Are you a god, zylla?” That was too good, or rather, too bad a pun not to use, so I had to build a whole story around that. Actually it was kind of cute, I thought.

COMIC CULTURE: Is Usagi going to remain a ronin, or is there a master out there for him?

STAN SAKAI: For the time being he will be unemployed.

COMIC CULTURE: These days Young Usagi is usually your back up feature. Will you explore other characters there, such as Gen?

STAN SAKAI: I’m writing a Gen story now in which Gen the bounty hunter meets up with another bounty hunter called Stray Dog, and they’re after the same outlaw. Basically it’s more of a character piece of how Gen’s personality clashes against the other guy’s personality. Another back up story that I did is Nilson 2199. We’ve met Usagi’s descendants in Space Usagi, so I figured I’d just do a little eight pager on Nilson’s descendants, so Nilson 2199 came about. Seeing as how everyone was doing these futuristic things, like Punisher 2099 and whatever.

COMIC CULTURE: Cool. Finally will the tokage (the lizards) ever get their own mini-series (Laughter);

STAN SAKAI: Probably not. Actually, there was one lizard called Spot that was Usagi’s pet for a while. He got killed in issue eighteen or whatever and I got more outraged fan mail from that than from anything else. It was actually released at the San Diego Comic Con that year. I had alluded to him dying in previous issues, but when people saw issue eighteen and still saw Spot around, it’s “oh wow Spots not dead, he’s alive, terrific”. But he dies at the end of the issue. So people came back the next day and say “You bastard, you killed him!” So, yeah, we got lots of fan mail when that came out.