The first time I saw human characters drawn by Stan Sakai was in 2001, in a short story for Greg Rucka’s Queen and Country. Other examples pop up now and again, like Stan’s Hulk story for Marvel’s Strange Tales anthology or his recent Rocketeer short, but Stan is, of course, best known for his rabbit ronin Miyamoto Usagi in the pages of Usagi Yojimbo. So seeing three issues worth of regular people so far in Stan’s work on 47 Ronin has been a novel experience for this longtime Usagi fan, but far from the only treat working with his original art boards has offered up.
Everyone knows Stan is a great writer and artist, but you may not realize that he is so good that editor Diana Schutz and I don’t see any part of an issue of Usagi until it’s done. So trusted is Stan that the only thing he sends in are completed, inked and lettered pages. His wonderful process piece in The Art of Usagi Yojimbo is really the only time I can remember previously seeing anything but finished art. Which is why it’s been even more exciting than usual lately when Stan’s art comes in. Because he’s drawing from scripts by Dark Horse president Mike Richardson, and because Mike—an artist in his own right—is collaborating on the storytelling and adjusting his scripts to better fit the art, Stan is sending in pencils as well as inks. Mike then uses the pencils to create the final script for letterer Tom Orzechowski.
This change has really opened up Stan’s process for me in a way that four years working with he and Diana on Usagi couldn’t. Thumbnails for each page are on the back of the boards, and it’s fun to see his mind work as he puts together a composition, then see the layout strengthened in the pencils. The pencils themselves reveal so much about Stan’s actual execution of ideas in what he’s chosen to carefully render and what’s left to be fleshed out in the inks. Some figures are completely detailed while others are simply broad indications of gesture, allowing the inks to retain a greater spontaneity. No wonder the final product has so much life!
Working with Stan is always a master class in comics making, and the should-be-tedious chore of erasing the pencils underneath the finished art is a happy excuse to stare long and hard at each page. Now handling additional stages makes me even more confident than usual how much readers will be blown away by the final product. Stan must be some kind of samurai to wield this much skill, a 48th Ronin if you will, and the way that he’s interpreted Mike’s scripts and the way Mike’s built on the pencils for even stronger dialogue (and I haven’t even mentioned Lovern Kindzierski’s breathtaking colors) make this a series I’m just as eager to see printed as any other reader.
by Brendan Wright