SAMURAI!!!

I just finished reading the phenomenal, twenty-eight volume series of graphic novels entitled "Lone Wolf and Cub." I was granted this luxury by: a.) Carrying all of them at my place of employment, and b.) Having an hour-long lunch break. I had originally planned to post this on my own personal page, but mainly find myself singing my most esteemed praises here, simply to spite a certain EWF and his nerdy and slightly homoerotic obsession with sweaty young men running and leaping about, a big round ball in one hand and the other on firm pair of quadriceps. We all have our geek, geek.
Ha ha. Ha ha ha.
If you ever decide to read an entire collection of Japanese graphic novels, make sure it is "Lone Wolf and Cub," created, written and illustrated by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima. They have truly created a masterpiece.
Even if you don’t feel like committing to the entire story – it is quite long and at 10 bucks a copy, not cheap – pick up any volume and you’ll walk away with something. Each book has a series of stories in them, like any collection of short fiction. Some pertain strictly to the overall storyline of the series, a samurai father and his small boy setting out alone to set something right, but some are just small vignettes that tell the story of one of the many characters they meet on their journey. Always interesting and always a window into a different person’s way of life. Peasants, fishermen, prostitutes, merchants, local rulers, (ninjas), and the list goes on. Every aspect of life is covered, carefully researched, it is a window into the way life and society worked in 18th century Japan.
It is more cinematic, more cinematographic, than a lot of comics I see on the shelves. I think this is more common in Japanese works, a comic industry that has survived and thrived for as long as the one we have, the two evolving before they met. They are typically thicker volumes than what we have here. But, with over 7000 pages in the whole series, I wouldn’t be surprised if half of them were just art, no words at all. I think most American comic fans become disgruntled with that because we want some damn story in our 24-page weeklies so we don’t start to feel ripped off. But there is the sense of more time taken in these Japanese works. “Slow down,” they seem to say. Help to achieve Mu while viewing the work. Find the story in the pictures. And the art is amazing. Entirely painted, it’s all black and white and yet so full of life and motion, emotion.
But as incredible as the art is, the storytelling makes it great. It is a simple plotline, like so many of our westerns, a man on a quest for justice, a quest for anything really. But like any story, it’s all about the character. His beliefs, his wants and his needs. Maybe I’m just a sucker for the Samurai way of life (and sword fighting), but I also like to see perseverance and tenacity in the face of great adversity no matter how it is revealed to me.
And let’s not forget about the kid. His character is as important as his father’s if not more so. A three-year-old boy who bears witness to slaughter after slaughter, oft times going into battle holding on to his father’s back, and trying to make sense of it all in the Way of the Samurai - life in death - and always confronted with the choice of the life of a warrior and the life of a child. It is truly beautiful.
I have shed a tear or two in more than one copy. Granted, I have a tendency to cry more in episodes of honor and heroics than sadness and misfortune – though I’m not entirely immune to the latter – this series has it all.
Read them.