Consumed by Errata: Usagi Yojimbo, Book 5: Lone Goat and Kid

The more I settle into my new job as a manuscript editor, the more distractingly aware I am of every typo, misprint, howler, and printer’s error in everything I read. I’m Consumed by Errata, and with this ongoing feature, you can be too.

Stan Sakai is the creator of Usagi Yojimbo, one of the most universally beloved and longest running (25 years and counting!) independent comics ever. And he doesn’t need much help to do it, either. As writer, penciller, inker, and letterer, Sakai does it all, and all with an elegance and sophistication that belies the strip’s “funny animal” milieu.

One thing he could use some help with, though, is copyediting. Because dude does not have a firm grasp on subject-verb agreement.


Appendix: Why is it that it doesn’t bother me at all when an artist like Sakai wants to give an anthropomorphic animal a beard—or even hands for that matter—but chin stubble?

Isn’t that just weird?