firecat

The 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. ( spoilers )