The Adventures of Nilson Groundthumper & Hermy

“Usagi Yojimbo” creator Stan Sakai lays out the origins of the title characters in his introduction to this collected edition.  For what it’s worth, it sounds like he had a solid plan for it.  The story of wandering rabbit swordsman Nilson Groundthumper and Hermy the guinea pig, his naif traveling companion, was to have been a 2,500-page epic that started off with short goofy comedy stories about the pair and their incompatibilities that slowly gave way towards longer, more dramatic stories that eventually led to a war between the humans and anthropomorphs.  Usagi himself was set to play a role when the narrative turned towards a Nipponese setting.  So what happened?  Sakai started telling stories about the rabbit ronin and the adventures of Nilson and Hermy fell onto his backburner.  Semi-permanently.

As you might have guessed, this collection of the title character’s adventures hews more towards “goofy comedy” than anything else.  Nilson plays the straight man to Hermy’s innocently ignorant antics that cause as much trouble as they solve.  In the course of the stories here, the two find themselves looking for an ancient well, passing off a fake (or is it?) cloak of invisibility to a thief, encountering the dreaded “Golfer,” and taking on a nutty wizard — thrice.  These stories are more amusing than laugh-out-loud funny, but they’re as solidly constructed as you’d expect coming from Sakai.  Still, there’s nothing here that suggests we lost out on a masterpiece of graphic literature when the writer/artist made the decision to focus on chronicling Usagi’s adventures.  This volume will provide a good amount of entertainment for Sakai completists, and make for a nice stopgap for “Usagi” fans looking to read something in the annual wait between volumes.  Besides the single issues of the series, I mean.