This third book, The Wanderer's Road, came out in 1989 and collected issues 7-12 of the series - and there have been an additional thirty-six volumes since then, appearing roughly yearly.
This one has six one-shot stories, plus a jokey shorter piece from a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles jam. And, if I were a betting man, I would say that most of the following books are like this one - individual stories collected together - with maybe a quarter, maybe somewhat less, being more like Samurai, collecting larger storylines that advance the overall plot.
So here we see how Usagi gets his companion lizard Spot - and how Spot moves on to another "human" master a few issues later. (Is there a word that includes all humaniform characters in an anthropomorphic series? They're all standing in for human beings, but the fact that they're different fake-animal species always seems like it should be more important.)
We have some poignant tales, and some sillier ones. We have the return of several recurring characters, notably the blind swords-pig Ino and the roguish rhino ronin Gen. We have some eruptions of the supernatural, including the cover story, which sees Usagi battle a samurai who either has been touched by the gods or is just insane.
It's all solid work, and the changes of tone and level of seriousness help make the book work better - Usagi Yojimbo, even this quickly, was an engine for telling many different kinds of stories. As before, the tone is generally all-ages: these are stories about people killing each other with swords that are appropriate for tweens, which I will never not find an odd choice.
And, of course, if you like one of these books, there are forty or so more (counting Space Usagi and other oddball things) to follow it up with.
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