My friend, Stan Sakai, has been drawing his terrific comic book Usagi Yojimbo for the past twenty five years. Two weeks ago, the San Diego Comic Con paid tribute to Stan and his creation with a panel and by featuring it in this year’s program book.
I belong to an LA based professional comics writer and cartoonist organization known as CAPS (Comic Art Professional Society), even having served as it’s president for four years or so. Stan Sakai is one of the founding members of the 30+ year old organization. Somehow, without Stan knowing, we all got together and did drawings of his famous character for a special tribute page in the Comic Con program book.
Compiled by fellow member Jim MacQuarrie, many of the guys participated with their version of Usagi. In case you can’t read their signatures in the image below, beginning with the top row, here are the names of the contributing artists: Mell Lazarus, Stan Lee, Jim Wheelock, Chad Frye, Dan Spiegle, Dean Yeagle; 2nd row: Gary Goldstein, Nat Gertler, Bob Foster, Scott Shaw!, Mike Gray, Jim MacQuarrie, Tim Burgard; 3rd row: Andy Mitchell, Steve Greenberg, Randy Reynaldo, Benton Jew, Michael Aushenker, Rubèn Procopio, Sergio Aragonès; 4th row: Kazu Kibuishi, Bill Morrison, Doug Gray, Anson Jew, Mike Kazaleh, and Floyd Norman.
If you are a professional in the cartooning biz, and are interested in learning more about CAPS, please visit their website at CAPScentral.org.