This essay originally appeared in the The 40th Anniversary Usagi Yojimbo Tribute Project, organized by Steve Hubbell and published in January 2025. I was very humbled to be invited to contribute an essay alongside many wonderful cartoonists and lifelong fans of Ol’ Longears.
I’m a scholar of comics, so I initially thought about trying to couch Stan’s work, and Usagi more broadly, within my field of comics studies: his influences on the field, how Usagi has inspired countless other projects, historical/cultural touchstones, etc. But, like many of my comics studies colleagues, I’m also a fan of Usagi Yojimbo, and to cap off 40 years of Usagi Yojimbo, that’s what I’m going to touch on.
And what am I a fan of?
Dinosaurs.
There’s something wonderful, fun, and exciting about this fabulous comic that has all of these connections to history, geography, and culture…and it also happens to feature all of these little scampering dinosaur-like lizards throughout most every issue: tokage! Stan brings tokage to the foreground of different stories throughout the comic’s publishing history, including (but very much not limited to):
- Usagi Yojimbo #06 (Mirage, 1993), where Usagi contends with and befriends a pack of wild and hungry tokage in a pantomime-heavy issue, extending a story Stan first began back in Critters #23 (Fantagraphics, 1988)
- Usagi Yojimbo #24 (Dark Horse, 1996), featuring a ghostly white tokage seen as a harbinger of hauntings, murder, and doom
- Usagi Yojimbo #19 (IDW, 2021), a story in which tokage serve as a narrative bridge between Usagi’s present and a classic tale from his past, the battle of Adachi Plain – and that tokage come to his aid in a moment of dire need.
I would be remiss without mentioning the most famous tokage of all, Spot, first appearing in Usagi Yojimbo #7 (Fantagraphics, 1987), with that wonderfully iconic blue cover showing our favorite tokage. Spot becomes Usagi’s trusted companion for a spell, before settling in with Zato-Ino, and eventually, reaching an untimely but heroic death in Usagi Yojimbo #18 defending a town of villagers and Zato-Ino.
It’s not just that Spot stole readers’ hearts and became a fan favorite. We actually see tokage in the very first full issue, Usagi Yojimbo #1 (Fantagraphics, 1986), in the very first full panel. In a now iconic image from the story “Samurai! Part I,” a warthog silently squares off against Usagi in front of a forest on one side of the path, brush and shrubs on the other, with a mountain looming in the background. But, the foreground? A pair of tokage, quietly hunched low to the ground in holes, opposite Stan’s signature. Indeed, two pages on, we see the aftermath of the lightning-fast duel: Usagi and the warthog have clashed, and are standing on opposite ends of a sequence of panels, with a tokage watching on from the right. Our eyes move from left to right: grass; frog on a rock; Warthog; open expanse of space; Usagi; tokage.
But, I’ve always liked this first issue *because* we get the tokage. They often act like audience surrogates, following Usagi or his companions across feudal Japan, sometimes scampering through towns just like the pair of Villagers crop up from time to time. When we think about Spot, we see this audience surrogation in action at the end of Usagi Yojimbo #8 (Fantagraphics, 1988), when Spot mourns the tragedy of Obaasan and his mother with Usagi.
For my money, these frequent appearances of saurian lizards actually adds to the intangible quality that keeps pulling readers in to follow our favorite samurai warrior-who-also-happens-to-be-a-rabbit. Their presence adds a unique dimension to the world, somehow legitimizes all of these anthropomorphic tales in a way that regular raccoons or rodents might not, particularly when we see such animals as part of the fabric of society within these pages.
Stan writes in the introduction to Usagi Yojimbo Saga: Legends (2nd edition, 2024) about this very subject, writing succinctly “I love to draw dinosaurs.” This love shines through, not just in how often they appear, but where, when, and how they manifest in his comics.
As if sending Ol’ Longears into space wasn’t enough of a fascinating and engaging departure from historical Japan, Stan infused these science fiction tales with, you guessed it: dinosaurs. The cover to Space Usagi #1 (Mirage, 1993) features both a chrome-plated version of our favorite tokage (S.P.O.T. 2000, for those in the know), and, Usagi riding a mounted, harnessed saurian of some kind. Interior pages reveal additional dinosaurs, some that are teal with green backs and yellow heads, sharp teeth and raptor-esque protruding claws, other red and yellow beats scavenging a fallen kameyama, a giant flying space turtle. That Stan opens this iteration of Space Usagi not just with a flying space turtle, but with dinosaurs, accentuates the fantastic nature of Usagi’s tales: science fiction genre markers infused with prehistoric beasts (alongside massive insectoids and aliens of different stripes). These dinosaurs vary greatly from the saurian tokage, with increased details, clearly-defined scales, teeth and claws made for ripping, etc. Yet, because we know that Usagi is anchored and tethered to tokage, to prehistoric beasties in his own time period, these larger, menacing dinosaurs don’t seem out of place in Space Usagi. Of course Usagi rides around dinosaur mounts, just the same as he fights with laser swords and beam pistols. It all just makes sense!
But, I’ll be honest: all of that is just me waxing poetic and critical here. In reality, I just think that Stan’s dinosaurs are fun. In the same way that making the star of this samurai epic into a rabbit adds a great, unique layer of depth discussed in previous fanzines or in those fabulous intros to the Usagi omnibuses. We can find more of his dinosaurs in pin-up drawings, promo features for San Diego Comic-Con, short stories in other comics’ properties, variant covers, sketchbooks, and beyond. Stan has even brought dinosaurs and saurian creatures into Usagi Yojimbo throughout the years, including Zylla, larger-than-life kaiju beasts, and alt-covers like the limited edition Usagi Yojimbo #123b (Dark Horse, 2009) showcasing Usagi and Gen fighting off a horde of velociraptors and, what looks to be, King Kong hucking some of these dinosaurs at our heroes.
Because this is an essay borne of fandom, I want to close by talking about my two favorite Stan Sakai dinosaur drawings (a very niche pool, I know).
The first is his variant cover for Deadpool: Black, White & Blood #3 (Marvel, 2021). Deadpool leaps high overhead, silhouetted against smoke that leads our eyes downward to an erupting volcano, spotlighting a flying pterodactyl in the process. Stan draws the one, the only, DEVIL DINOSAUR, in full samurai gear, colored by the incomparable Emi Fujii, and I mention all of this here because Stan (together with Emi) manage to create a cover where Deadpool is *outshined* by not just another character, but a *dinosaur*. The rest of the story is great (highly recommend tracking down a copy for yourself), but this is undoubtedly my favorite of Stan’s dinosaur drawings.
My personal favorite Stan Sakai Dinosaur Drawing comes with a quick anecdote. When I successfully defended my dissertation in 2022, my wife surprised me with a sketch from Stan himself. Apparently, when she wrote in explaining what it was for, Stan’s team gave her a choice between a Happy Usagi or a Fierce Usagi. Sam chose Happy, given that I was celebrating being done with my PhD.
Stan not only drew a peaceful, jubilant Usagi, but drew Spot in the background, for good measure. I got my dinosaur drawing after all. And? I teared up when I finally got to see it.
Stan loves drawing dinosaurs.
And me? Well, I love that Stan loves drawing dinosaurs.
