USAGI YOJIMBO!

Due to popular demand (well one person demanded it anyway!) I now present my Dark Horse Usagi Yojimbo bound comics. The text below was sort of sent into the Usagi letters pages around November. I don't expect it to grace that letters column - but I have that tiny little bit of hope that it will!


It seems like I have been reading Usagi forever, so a big thank you to Stan Sakai for so many years of entertainment! I have always thought the digest sized, collected editions of Usagi are a little on the small side, but they are fantastic to grab off the the shelf and read. However, I appreciate Stan's artwork more in the slightly larger format of the individual comics, but they are harder to store than the trades and much harder to pull from the shelf to read in a quick sitting.


I wondered how I could have the best of both worlds, so I started thinking. A friend introduced me to a book binder when I returned to living in New Zealand (I have recently spent two years living in London, UK) and I have slowly begun binding a lot of my comics into the hardcover format for my personal collection. The first comic I thought of binding was Usagi, but there was a lot of preparation to be done and the project has been ongoing for the last 6 months. However, it is now complete!


I like to consider my Usagi binds the magnum opus of my comic collection. I have bound issues 1 - 120 of the Dark Horse series in four separate volumes with soft black leather covers and with silver foil logos (I had foil stamps made) to give the books a really professional feel. These volumes create an amazing compromise for the two formats of Usagi! I now have the readability of the trades with the bonus of the larger format, the colour front and back covers and all the letters pages to boot.


PS - Since I had these bound the Fanatgraphics special edition arrived on my doorstep two years after initially ordering it. Now that is a sturdy volume and complements by binds nicely!