Usagi Yojimbo: Book 1

Miyamoto Usagi is no Bugs Bunny. He’s a rabbit bodyguard, a samurai who wanders the mountains, plains and villages of a 17th-century Japan populated almost exclusively by anthropomorphic animals. Cats, snakes, rhinos and ninja moles plot and fight their way across a land ravaged by civil war. The 10 stories in this first collection introduce Usagi, the evil Lord Hikiji and a host of other characters. The stories themselves can stand alone, but taken together they form an ongoing saga of treachery and revenge.

Author Biography

Stan Sakai is a Japanese-born American artist and comic book creator. His creation, Usagi Yojimbo, first appeared in 1984. Usagi has been on television as a guest of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, as toys, on clothing, in comics, and in a series of trade paperback collections. He is a multiple Eisner-Award-winning cartoonist and the recipient of numerous national awards including an American Library Association Award and a Cultural Ambassador Award from the Japanese American National Museum. In 2020, Sakai was inducted into the Eisner Award Hall of Fame. He currently is an executive producer on the Netflix original CGI animated series Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles, which is based on “Usagi Yojimbo”. He lives in Pasadena, CA.

Stan Lee (1922-2018) was an American comic book writer, editor, publisher and producer for Timely/Marvel Comics and was the co-creator of many of the Marvel Comics iconic heroes, including Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, Daredevil, Thor, Doctor Strange, Nick Fury, and the X-Men.