I finally got to meet Jared Cullum in person over the past week and it was a great experience, there was a popup gallery comic art show and Free Comic Book Day, both of which he appeared at. In preparation I fast tracked one of the blank cover editions of his book Usagi Yojimbo: Kaito '84. Which by the way, is a fantastic series so far co written by Zack Rosenberg.
Now a little background; as an Usagi fan, and the character Tomoe Ame is one of my favorites in the series. This new series has its own rendition of the character, a descendant of the original who is a detective on the force in Japan. Its a pretty neat twist on the original character, who was a retainer and personal guard of the Lord of the land.
I got pretty excited when I found out she would also be in this Kaito '84 series. Even from the concept art, I loved the design and the concept of her being a no-nonsense detective and a sort of obstacle for Usagi in this story.
Running into Jared a bit sooner than I anticipated gave me the opportunity to have him take the blank with him and do a colored piece. Initially, would've just asked for Tomoe to be included somehow. However I came up with the idea to ask that he feature Tomoe from the 80s series but to allude to the original Tomoe Ame in some way. That was all, and this is the end result.
Its pretty wild to own this; I couldn't picture a better result and this manages to be a great representation of both incarnations of Tomoe Ame. He captures the steely demeanor on them both, their similarities and their differences. Plus its just painted phenomenally, he used watercolors on this and despite the tricky nature of the black cover paper was able to make it exude a ton character. I highly recommend you hit Jared up to get one of your own, you will NOT regret it.
