Lone Wolf and Cub, Volume 28: The Lotus Throne Book

Here at the end of all things, I can't help but be thankful it all happened. Across an impressively voluminous 140+ issues, all stretched out over just a few years in the early to mid 70's, Koike and Co.'s work of historical fiction doesn't merely hold up but continues to brilliantly shine nigh 50 years down the road.

As always, the deft sword work amazes. As also, the emotional connectives glow too. However, when they're combined, that is when Lone Wolf and Cub truly shines at its highest luminosity. Combining the fictional with the real, the excellence is inseparable at all levels.

As incredibly awe-inspiring as it all really is, the greatest lesson of this series is that as Watchmen (a decade down the road) ironically presented in its deconstruction of such, comics (while they typically have been) don't have to be insipid spandex-laden boyhood fantasies - which are utterly deserving of their puerile stereotypes and thus disdained as such by intelligentsia and lay-readers alike. Conversely, the melding of images and words can be a perfectly legitimately way not to just tell a story, but as this gem exoneratingly exposits, can tell a truly seminal one.

Firmly binding the sacred with the profane, the sublime with the lurid, the graceful with the bloodletting, a deeply human story emerges to delight, entertain, and inspire awe almost half a century down the road.