An OGN that imagines the Yojimbo/Fistful of Dollars crossover that was never filmed.
In 1961, Yojimbo, directed by Akira Kurosawa, was released in Japan. It starred Toshiro Mifune as “Kuwabatake Sanjuro”, a mysterious ronin who is drawn into a gang war at the end of the Edo period.
In 1964, Yojimbo was unofficially remade into the iconic Spaghetti Western A Fistful of Dollars by famed director Sergio Leone. It starred Clint Eastwood as the “Man with No Name”, inspiring a trope with many imitators in the years to come.
In 2023, Fistful of Yen, a webcomic created by Renton Hawkey (Ronin Digital Express), imagines what it would be like if the two characters joined forces in a hypothetical sequel that launches a shared universe of Kurosawa and Spaghetti Western films.
Where you can read it
Subscribe on Substack, and you’ll be able to read the serialized webcomic in full, for free.
Fistful of Yen would violate way too many copyright laws to be printed by any publisher. If you run into anyone selling PDFs of this, or some idiot steals it and puts it on Tapas, that ain’t me. Fistful of Yen lives on Substack, and only will ever live on Substack as far as I can control it.
It is a passion project. A fan-zine webcomic — art for art’s sake — imagining a team-up between the endlessly-imitated characters made famous by Mifune and Eastwood. It’s intended to be a gift to fans of the genres.
The series is in 3 parts, each 20-30 pages. Additionally, chapter breaks will include annotations detailing meticulously-placed easter eggs and references to famous films in the Spaghetti Western oeuvre. We go far outside the Dollars Trilogy and borrow characters from films like Once Upon a Time in the West and the Franco Nero classic Django to enrich the setting and suggest a massive shared canon.
If you’re a fan of Spaghetti Westerns and post-war samurai films, this love letter to those genres is for you. I hope you enjoy it.
Fistful of Yen is created by me, Renton Hawkey, and edited by Brittany Matter. All characters featured therein are copyrighted by their respective owners.