Vagabond, vols. 3-6 (by Takehiko Inoue)

Volume 3 of Vagabond opens with a flashback to four years before. At the end of the events of vols. 1 and 2, the monk Takuan is giving the young Shingen Takezo the name by which he will be known to history: Miyamoto Musashi. Now Musashi, who has been training in the backwoods, has arrived in Kyoto with the aim of improving his swordsmanship. During the course of this and the next few volumes, the elite Yoshioka School of swordsmanship will be utterly destroyed, Musashi's old scapegrace friend Matahachi will reappear and find himself on the run, and Musashi will have some very disturbing (and educational) encounters with a self-appointed Yoshioka School assassin and with the current and former masters of the Hozoin School of spear fighting.

The artwork continues to blow me away. The color pieces are just ravishing: intense, bold, often completely in your face (I have to keep vol. 5 turned face down ...). There's a real feeling of place in the line drawings of rooms, villages, towns, monasteries - you can even see how structures are put together. The same care goes into people's clothes and, for the most part, their faces (although all the women tend to look rather the same ... maybe this will improve as the series goes on). But the fight scenes, emotional reaction shots, and so on are vividly simple, and the action sequences are easy to follow.

Vagabond remains vivid, exciting, and filled with carnage.

( Read more - includes some spoilers )