kazuo koike Columns 

In Memoriam: Kazuo Koike

By | December 25th, 2019
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Late last year, I began a full reading of Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima’s “Lone Wolf & Cub.” It would be my first time fully absorbing the series from beginning to end, and my first time engaging with the series now as someone who has a stepchild. I knew early on in my reading that “Lone Wolf & Cub” would be one of those cornerstone comics of my life: something I needed to have as a permanent fixture on my bookshelf. In early 2019, I had the great fortune of finding and completing my collection of the “Lone Wolf & Cub” Omnibi published by Dark Horse Comics in 2013, several volumes of which were long since out of print and difficult to find. Right around the time I was finishing up my reading, and after I had at last secured those final, elusive volumes, we lost Kazuo Koike.

Koike wrote several influential works apart from his undisputed masterpiece: most notably the entrancing assassin saga “Lady Snowblood” and “Samurai Executioner”, which is quite good though treads similar ground as “Lone Wolf & Cub”, yet doesn’t have the undeniable hook. Active for 4 full decades, Koike has so much material, and so much of it is so very long as to stagger the mind. I hope to one day seek more of it out, but for now I feel fortunate to have been able to read his unimpeachable masterwork. It’s such a massive, career-defining tome that if it were the only thing Koike ever did, it would represent a full life lived. The series is loaded with the dense history of feudal Japan, challenging the reader to absorb outdated power structures, historical references both legendary and factual, and the American translation (a very well-deserved tip of the cap to Dana Lewis) is unapologetic in its maintaining of Japanese phraseology that do not have suitable English equivalents.

You can tell just how thorough an understanding of history Koike carried with him and how to honor that while applying his own philosophical concerns to the characters. In any language, I would imagine the core values of honor, duty, and fatherhood shine through. And what is a full life without humor? It is relatively rare, but this humor most often stems from visual situational comedy. The effectiveness of the visual should of course be attributed to his longtime artistic collaborator Goseki Kojima, but it is clear that Koike was focused on finding places to put such scenes within his sprawling epic, as they are as true to life as anything else.

“Lone Wolf & Cub” may be about the grim path a doomed samurai walks with his son, but also takes a break for its little protagonist, Daigoro, to urinate on a bad guy’s head. For all the seriously good art that Koike has inspired since (“Road to Perdition,” Samurai Jack, parts of Kill Bill, “Wolverine,” even this year’s Disney+ smash hit The Mandalorian etc…), I immediately recalled the bootleg images of Bill Watterson’s Calvin peeing on the Ford Truck logo. That’s me bringing in my own baggage. Kazuo Koike’s ability to inspire future generations of talent contained multitudes.

It’s a shame whenever we lose someone of such tremendous talent in the art world, and it is a rare thing for a creator to endure for as long as Koike did making relevant work. “Lone Wolf & Cub” itself only ran for 7 years, which is unbelievable when you consider how thick all of it is stacked together. Seven years to unravel nearly everything that it means to walk a path, make your choices and live with them, and do your best. I will never directly relate to the wandering samurai walking the road to hell on his way to revenge, but I sure related to a lot of the sense of duty and the warmth and the humanity held within the pages of Ogami Ittō’s journey.

I could never relate to the warrior physically trading blow after blow with his enemy, but through Koike’s work I felt the power of what it means to endure and rise to an impossible challenge. And I may not understand the spiritual aspects of the Lone Wolf’s quest, but Koike brings it across clearly the reader with a sense of gravity every time. “Lone Wolf & Cub” is a long, challenging, and ultimately rewarding adventure that never hits a wall or a lull. From beginning to end, seven years, 28 volumes, and something like nearly 9,000 pages, the series is as good as comics get and it stays good. How many can lay claim to something like that? How many others can say they worked on writing and collaborating on even one thing for that length of time, that was that physically long and enduring, that was as influential and all-encompassing, and will be remembered until the sun dies and the Earth goes cold?


//TAGS | 2019 Year in Review

Vince Ostrowski

Dr. Steve Brule once called him "A typical hunk who thinks he knows everything about comics." Twitter: @VJ_Ostrowski

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