A man is killed by a poison dart as he is trying to talk to Toshiro. Toshiro goes home and finds Master Ki dead or dying. Ki manages to give Toshiro a warning. Toshiro bests the four or five Ninjas, getting stars in his jacket ("That does it. Another $200 jacket...ruined.") One of the Ninjas is good according to Toshiro but he beats him. A fire starts. Simon finds a Toshiro picture in Hotachi's room on the Naganata full of holesññdarts Hotachi throws at it. Moonlab is late checking in. Toshiro shows up at Gen's...after all thought he was dead. Archie Bodonie, a small times weapons dealer helps get Toshiro a shotgun with lots of shells. He and Homer are old friends. Toshiro calls the tenement a place with lots of tenants including Li Shan (Master Ki, Li Shan, Mr. Tsunññare these three names for one person or are these three characters or two...?). Only Toshiro escaped. Gee, it looked to me like Toshiro started the fire! Toshiro's attack on the temple the sword came from is FANTASTIC, better than the first issue's mobñfight scene. The boss seems to be a Great Yakuza Master. Toshiro uses guns on the suit dressed soldiers but when the almost naked bodyguards, tattooed, attack, he drops the gun and uses sword against swords. He slices through several, front and back, disembowels a few, and impales another, then turns the sword around and around and out. He also beheads at least one, runs another through and kills the boss. On moonlab Hotachi is attacked and finds all the people on it dead and their equipment smashed. A battlesuit is gone, of the KñSeries. The battlesuit attacks San Francisco. Homer gives Toshiro the name and address of a friend who runs a boarding school in Englandññone who knows all about Oriental folklore. Gen bids him goodbye. She tells him that she watched mom die alone. Gen fears Toshiro will die and hated dad for being a hero. She says goodbye to Toshiro, believing he will not be back.
Two boys hunt for a frog to torture. They are called for dinner and discard the one they caught...near nuclear waste. It mutates, grows, and the next day when they return to catch another frog, a giant one catches them to torture.
After escaping an assassination attempt, Toshiro goes to warn his friend Master Ki, an aged acupuncturist. However Ninja assassins have been there and already inflicted soon-to-be-fatal wounds on the Master, and in fact are still lurking unseen in the room! Master Ki has just time to gasp out that Toshiro must solve the mystery of his sword, then the Ninjas attack! There is a furious battle for 4 pages, then Samurai eliminates the last Ninja. By this time the room is in flames and Samurai leaves as the whole building burns down.
The next day Gennin and Homer are mourning Toshiro's presumed death. When they enter Gennin's night club they discover Toshiro still alive, though slightly wounded.
While Gennin is bandaging Toshiro's wounds a kid who looks a lot like Simon brings in Archie Bodoni, a sleazy small-time weapons dealer. He sells Toshiro an illegal sawed-off shotgun. Toshiro takes the shotgun and goes to seek vengeance upon those who sent the Ninjas. He enters the palatial residence of the "Great Yakuza" and has a very bloody and graphic battle in which he kills five armed guards with the shotgun, then another five with his sword. One of Barry's bloodiest fights, with decapitations, disembowelments, dismemberments etc. He finishes up by decapitating the Yakuza himself. The book ends with Toshiro at the airport preparing to fly to England. His sister Gennin is taking a tearful farewell, worried about Toshiro. Odds are she would do better to worry about England!
Issue 3 is penciled by Pat McEown and inked by Barry. This actually works out pretty good, as Barry gets a lot of his own style in when he wants to. The cover of number 3 has action--Samurai jumping onto a fire escape on a high building--but I don't find it very attractive. The inside rear cover has an ad for Elflord featuring Purebreeze, Brollo, Windblade and Hawk drawn by Barry in a really beautiful style. Indeed this the best drawing of Brollo and Purebreeze I've ever seen! The back cover has a pin-up of Li Huay Chen. Kind of jumping the gun as Li is not introduced until the next issue!