Art For Art’s Sake #252 — Stan Sakai’s Samurai Rabbit: Usagi Yojimbo

Art For Art’s Sake, serving up regular slices of comic art better than your ma’s best apple pie…

Batman #431 Cover and colour guides by George Pratt

Blacksad by Matteo  Scalera

Titans villains by Phil Jimenez

Unused Hawkeye promo poster by David Aja

Matias Bergara – The Shadow

Staz Johnson – Indiana Jones

Sara Richard, Kitty Pryde/Lockheed vs. Sentinel

James Kochalka – a little Hulk from Marvel’s Strange Tales...

Jaime Hernandez – a classic L&R cover

And a print of just a little later…

Mike Mignola – 

Paul Pope – 

Andi Watson – Dream/The Sandman

Arthur Adams – Death

Simon Gane – a few commissions…

And that last piece by Simon Gane leads us nicely into the final section, a celebration of Usagi Yojimbo, Stan Sakai‘s masterpiece of a wondering samurai, Miyamoto Usagi. A ronin, Usagi is one of the masterless samurai in 16th Century Japan. Oh, and yes, he’s a rabbit, as Sakai’s always drawn anthropomorphised figures in his book.

Since 1984, Sakai’s masterpiece has been consistently brilliant, full of invention, variety, and excellence. You’ll find grand history here, huge battles, politics, romance, horror – it’s truly epic in scale yet always wonderfully welcoming and easy to get into.

First a few from various artists for The Sakai Project…

Sergio Aragones – 

Paul Smith – 

Bill Sienkiewicz –

Mike Mignola – 

Frank Cho –

Jack Davis –

Paul Gulacy – 

Charles Vess –

 

And now a few from Stan Sakai himself…