All samurai all the time day
3 May 2009 08:52 pm![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
firecatThe OH and I went to the Cartoon Art Museum of San Francisco. We've been meaning to visit it for years but they finally lured us over with an exhibit of Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo art. We've been following Usagi Yojimbo, of which there are now 22 volumes, since the mid 1990s, so there wasn't a lot there we hadn't seen on the printed page. But it was great to see the pencils and full-size inked story pages and covers. A couple of full-size color pages were especially beautiful.
The museum also had an exhibit of The Watchman, co-created and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, which was recently made into a movie. Out of dozens of pencils, thumbnails, inked pages, and props from the movie, there was this one piece of cover art that included the unfamiliar name Alan Moore. Wonder who the heck he is.
Back home, we watched Hidden Blade directed by Yôji Yamada, about samurai in a small village in the mid-19th century who were unhappy about having to learn how to handle guns and cannons. Afterward we had a friendly argument about whether the protagonist Katagiri was Neutral Good or Chaotic Good. On the one hand, he believes in the samurai code of honor to the point of upbraiding his superiors when they ask him to break it or when they break it themselves. On the other hand, he ignores the parts of the code of honor that say you shouldn't go around with holes in your socks or kidnap other men's wives (even if the wife in question is ill and not being treated properly).
The museum also had an exhibit of The Watchman, co-created and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, which was recently made into a movie. Out of dozens of pencils, thumbnails, inked pages, and props from the movie, there was this one piece of cover art that included the unfamiliar name Alan Moore. Wonder who the heck he is.
Back home, we watched Hidden Blade directed by Yôji Yamada, about samurai in a small village in the mid-19th century who were unhappy about having to learn how to handle guns and cannons. Afterward we had a friendly argument about whether the protagonist Katagiri was Neutral Good or Chaotic Good. On the one hand, he believes in the samurai code of honor to the point of upbraiding his superiors when they ask him to break it or when they break it themselves. On the other hand, he ignores the parts of the code of honor that say you shouldn't go around with holes in your socks or kidnap other men's wives (even if the wife in question is ill and not being treated properly).