Category Archives: Shorter Works

Mad, Mad, Mad Pre-Adolescence

Douglas Adams once observed, “Anything invented before your fifteenth birthday is the order of nature.  That’s how it should be.  Anything invented between your 15th and 35th birthday is new and exciting, and you might get a career there.  Anything invented after that day, however, is against nature and should be prohibited.”  He probably was not thinking of Mad Magazine. Or maybe he was.  I don’t know.  I wasn’t there.

The Mad Magazine age is twelve.  You have a budding sense that you may actually know everything.  On top of that, the notion first tickles your cerebellum that everyone else is really dumb- particularly those adults- the ones over there- in the corner- waiting for you to put down this newspaper and read something that’s good for you- not this mental floss that corrupts morals and causes hair lice.  The kicker though is that this revelation has come to you alone.  And you are so alone; so very, very alone.

So, let us not cast aside the things of our youth, particularly the things that made that youth a tinge more bearable.  Let us leave them out on the kitchen table.  And remember to look askance when any pre-adolescent opens those Mad-dening pages.

Mad Magazine crawled out of the horrifying crypt of EC Comics in the 1950’s.  Originally a comic book created by Harvey Kurtzman, it became a slick magazine when Kurtzman told his publisher, Bill Gaines, that he was leaving EC for the better world of full-size mags.  Gaines wanted his one-man editor/artist/writer to stay with the family business, so he offered to publish a magazine.  As an extra bonus, the recently implemented Comics Code no longer applied to the bigger Mad.  After five full-sized issues, Kurtzman was lured away by another little emperor of the publishing industry, Hugh Hefner.

Mad Magazine prospered however.  By the 1970’s, every smart aleck in the back row of his middle school class secretly longed to join the “Usual Gang of Idiots,” as the Mad masthead has always labeled the staff.  Nowadays, you either accept Mad for what it is or you would have to be offended by finding one in the hospital waiting area while your great-grandchild is being born in the next room.  And let’s not ignore what Mad Magazine has always done best- not total iconoclasm- it helps tear down the idols of our childhood.  How those idols are replaced is beyond any magazine’s scope.  Well, other than Teen People, but that’s always been an exception.

October, 2005

Usagi Yojimbo 75

Quick Rating: Classic
Title: Hokashi Part 2

Writer/Artist: Stan Sakai

Over the past two years, Stan Sakai has treated the readers of Usagi Yojimbo to a tremendous series of tales chronicling the travels of the samurai Usagi with his son, Jotaro. I can think of no other comic book that has entertained as well, provoked more thought, or captured the glorious potential of sequential graphics so consistently over the same time. It is a tragedy if you’re not reading it—and not for Stan Sakai or Dark Horse or the comic book industry—for you, my friend, for you.

Am I overstating the quality of Usagi Yojimbo? Picture if you will, the mastery that could come after twenty years of working in this medium. Imagine Alexander Dumas combined with Carl Barks. Go ahead. I’ll wait. (Dum de dum dum. Fingers tapping… more and more impatiently.) You can’t, can you? Well, turn off the television and try again. We’re talking about the person who created the Three Musketeers and then wrote five, four, or more books about them. Now imagine Porthos as a rhinoceros and Athos as a stag—it could work as a pretty cool comic, but you’d have to be awfully talented to pull it off.

And Stan Sakai is awfully talented! Thank heavens—because a samurai rabbit is not going to leap off the page all by itself!

I have to pant fitfully now (exhale, exhale, inhale). I’m just a little giddy.

Now listen carefully– this issue contains the conclusion of the two-part Hokashi storyline. At the end of his travels with young Jotaro, Usagi has spent some time in the company of his former teacher, Katsuichi, and his current student, Shunji. The foursome has encountered some unhappy members of the assassins’ guild. Usagi also must decide if it is time to tell Jotaro that he is the boy’s father since the two will soon be parted for possibly years.

I’m going back into the corner now where it’s dark and quiet. I’ll just be sitting here waiting for the next person to wander past. Shhh, don’t tell them I’m here. Move along. Don’t look at me. Don’t look at me!

May, 2004

Usagi Yojimbo 73

Quick Rating: Great
Title: The Pride of the Samurai

Samurai! Rabbits!

Writer/Artist: Stan Sakai
Editor: Diana Schutz

Usagi Yojimbo is the story of a samurai wandering through an anthropomorphic medieval Japan. Usagi is a rabbit. For the past few issues, he has been traveling the countryside with his pre-pubescent son, Jotaro. The boy is unaware of the fact that Usagi is his father, instead considering him an uncle, a friend of his family. For some time, Usagi has been pondering whether or not to reveal the truth about Jotaro’s parentage to the lad.

This time, the story concerns the plight of another samurai released from service because peace has broken out. The old warrior is lost in a world that does not need his services. Unfortunately, his young son suffers at his side as the two of them live in a shanty under a village bridge. As surely as Othello’s path is laid by Desdemona’s lost handkerchief, any title referencing pridefulness will end in tragedy.

The art in every panel of Usagi Yojimbo does not cry out for attention and yet, I find myself studying the pictures as intently as anything offered by any other comic book artist. I love the way the action is reflected in the style chosen; the way the detail flows with the point-of-view. Visual art is presentation, which we sometimes forget.

With this issue, Usagi Yojimbo celebrates its twentieth year of publication, having passed through a few publishers, but always remaining true to its basic storyline. Bone and Cerebus are about to come to an end, leaving few long-term independents with this kind of history. The world could live without Marvel or DC. The world will continue without regular output from Jeff Smith and Dave Sim. In fact, the world would continue without Usagi Yojimbo or Akiko. Yet, the world needs all the art it can get and never doubt that comics are an art form. And never forget that art is created by artists, not corporations. Usagi Yojimbois a remarkable accomplishment, worthy of innumerable accolades. Hopefully, you will deem it worthy of the most important honor you can offer, a good word to your comic shop owner and a purchase. The series begins a set of single-issue stories here, the perfect time to discover a new world.

February, 2004