Hi {name},

I hope you'll forgive me getting a little experimental in this MUSEletter. Even going so far as to change its delivery date, but with all the activity surrounding our ongoing crowdfunding campaign (lot's of promotional writing) - I need this missive to be a little more personal. 

–But Why Samurai?

I'll answer that below –

• • Go Doggo!
  • HBD - Kazuo Koike
  • Campaign Update
  • Cool Stuff Dept.

Kazuo Koike was writer of the manga series Kozure Okami, known in English by the title Lone Wolf and Cub. The artist who have that series it's unique look was , along with artist Goseki Kojima. I understand both contributed to the 1970's film adaptations of that same series which starred the iconic Tomisaburo Wakayama. This movie was often the closing VHS for art-school movie nights when hosted by our resident Anime/Manga expert. 

All such media items were rare during the dark ages of New York's early 90's - or was it late 80's? Having a friend who got there first was always helpful at the time. It was not long before English (and flipped) translations of those fascinating black & white comics began to surface. Foremost among them was Lone Wolf & Cub.

That was until comics' first digitally colored comic AKIRA arrive revokable transforming the landscape - but that's a story for another time.

I was a much more devoted student of Martial Arts at that time. As an art student focused on comics, I'd only started realizing that the comics I'd been studying - even those black & white DEADLY HANDS OF KUNG FU magazine - were missing something in their depiction of martial arts. That vague absence became stark once exposed to works like Lone Wolf & Cub, Crying Free Man and soon after Tales of Blood Sword.

I carried this mix of early impressions and thoughts on capturing action in sequential art into my career at the iconic Kung Fu Magazine. I've since logged way more than 50,000 hours on magazine layouts meant to capture martial arts action. A side effect has been the accrual of many ideas and numerous notes like the one above. Maybe there's enough for a book of some sort. But as you may have noticed, I've begun to stray from that Samurai theme I started with - so let me add this. It's the 3rd episode of Tiger's Tale - originally printed in the June 1996 issue of World of Martial Arts magazine.

After funding overnight Let’s Go! A Kids Comic Anthology is going to look beautiful. We met each of our book upgrade goals in our campaign's first week. This leaves our ultra ambitious goal remaining: bringing this book to Comic-Con.

Amazing: Our campaign is more than two-thirds of the way to this epic goal. 

If I've done my math correctly that goal is only 297% of the project's initial funding goal. That's an ambitious number, but I've hit a similar one before - so not out of the question. I'll have to go into more meticulous detail sometime in the future over on PatrickLugo.com

This is just one facet to be found with-in the Kids Comics Unite crowdfunding campaign. Once complete, this campaign will provide a wealth of understanding to draw from this epic experimental project.

As Promised: preview pages by fellow anthologist Bert Tzeng.

I'll keep my goodbye brief, this time around...

–BEST!
PLUGO