Frank Miller's Ronin

Frank Miller is nothing if not diverse. I wrote a few weeks ago about his works, the various superhero works like Daredevil and Batman that made him famous and the groundbreaking works he's done outside of the genre since then, especially in regards to 300, a work of historical fiction. Aside from 300, he has also gone into a futuristic sci-fi setting in his Martha Washington stories, and with his Sin City tales he explored gritty crime drama. And then there's Ronin, a book that defies easy categorization. Imagine it is the beginning of summer in 1983 and you are first discovering this book. (Unfortunately I too must imagine here, since I didn't find the book myself until a few years ago.) Unlike every other book you come across, Ronin #1 is a whopping 48 pages, completely free of ads. The colors are richer, deeper than the average book, and somehow more muted as well, giving the book a darker look than most of the garishly bright superhero tales it sits beside. The style is different too than what you are used to; like he did with Daredevil, Miller is experimenting here with how to construct a comic book page. Many pages feature long panels that stretch across the page, sometimes top to bottom, sometimes from one side to the next. Of course, Miller often uses the staple he has become known for today, a device he used throughout 300, the full two-page spread, to splendidly establish the world Ronin is set in. The drawings themselves featured in these pages can also easily be separated from the rest of the fare you find in the racks. The motions are fluid, the fight scenes dynamic, avoiding all the normal clichés. In fact in the sixth and final issue of the miniseries (which reached stores in late summer of 1984-Ronin was published bimonthly but suffered delays between issues four and five), at the end of the story the action explodes off the page with such force that it literally cannot be contained. So Frank Miller does the only thing he can do, something unseen in comics up to that time; he lets the scene unfold on a beautiful four-page fold-out spread. Ronin featured widescreen action years before the term became popular in comics, employed to serve a story unlike any other being published at the time. On the one hand, it is the story of post-apocalyptic New York City; on the other, it is a tale of samurais in feudal Japan. Miller balances these two influences in his tale deftly, mixes them together in one tale that is about demons and magic swords and biotechnology and artificial intelligence. It is a story in which reality and fantasy blend until the only thing the characters can trust is their sense of honor, duty, and loyalty, especially to those they love most. Luckily it is not 1983, and you don't have to wait for over a year for the entire story to be complete. Ronin is available now in trade paperback so that you can explore its world for yourself today, as I did, without any of the wait yet still with all of the assets I listed above.

Frank Miller used to be one of the comic creators I admired most but then the satisfactory, but somewhat less than impressive Sin City happened and I was turned off him a little bit. Don't get me wrong, Sin City was good, but it was standard fare, nothing to write home about. I just got the impression that Miller, like John Byrne, Chris Claremont, Chuck Dixon and others, was just past his prime. It was with this in mind that I sat down to read Ronin for the first time recently and I didn't have high hopes. I had forgotten that this was the Miller of old I was reading and as the story progressed I got the same enjoyment I got when I read some of Miller's masterpieces like Dark Knight, Year One, Daredevil and so on. Its such a fast paced story that you can barely put it down even to get a drink of water. So many twists and you can never guess what is going to happen in the end. Great dialogue, characters you really want to see again and an excellent apacalyptic theme. I really love the way that Miller mixed Samurai legend with futuristic technology. These two themes shouldn't work because they are too different, but somehow they do here.I haven't read any of his recent stuff, including DK2 buteading this has made me interested in checking Miller out again.

If I had to choose one work by Miller that explains why heis the greatest living comic book artist/ writer, this wouldbe it.His economical and powerful lines are the very definition ofart as communication. He has a better internal sense of formand figure than 90% of today's artists, and he tells a terrificstory in words as well.Some of the break-out pages in the original book series arejust awesome, humbling showcases of talent and creativity.Anything I've ever learned about drawing, inking, framing apose, shortening my lines, bolding others, comes from his workin this series. I appreciate it on so many levels, but strictlyas a reader, this is his finest achievement.

Back in the days when I was collecting comics, when Marvel was a name that still meant something, Jack "King" Kirby was still alive (yes, I'm that old), and the X-Men title was still just a metaphor and not a marketing frenzy, I remember certain names to whom one could look for consistent, intelligent, meaningful, quality work. Some of those names: Chris Claremont, John Byrne, Alan Moore, Berni Wrightson, Kirby, and perhaps the best of them, Frank Miller. In much the same way as Moore's Watchmen did, Miller's The Dark Knight Returns took established ideas (and in Miller's case, established characters), then deconstructed them and put them together in completely new ways. Miller gained a lot of renown for Dark Knight...but before that there was Ronin, which established the already-respected writer/artist as a force to be truly reckoned with.Ronin, at first glance, is a science-fiction/fantasy tale of magic, demons, masterless samurai, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology...but first glances, especially where Miller's work is concerned, can fool you. Once you learn to look past the surface (and the fact that there is anything beyond the surface is itself a major triumph in comic art), you find in Ronin a story of incredible richness and subtlety, full of wicked humor, three-dimensional characters, and action scenes so intelligently, sensitively delineated they are breathtaking. The story itself is as full of twists and turns as the best science-fiction novels; it takes the overused "mad computer" concept and runs with it, ringing some fascinating changes with it at almost every step of the way. All of this is so far beyond even Miller's own highly mature work on Daredevil and Elektra:Assassin, that it is unsurprising to me that it is not to some readers' tastes -- readers of the type who want their comics to be ice cream instead of a gourmet meal, if you ask me.Ronin succeeds on many levels, starting with the artwork. Miller is well-known for his fascination with the two very different worlds of hard-boiled crime stories a la Raymond Chandler, and of the Japanese middle ages (the era of warlords, samurai, and ronin); this work is one of his earliest attempts to fuse those worlds together. The results are incredible, from the dirty, rubble-strewn street scenes and overhead city drawings beclouded with smog, to the abovementioned action sequences of Miller's nameless Ronin in action; the fighting is so cleanly rendered, the participants become, in Miller's own words, "human motion lines", and the effect is memorable; I can sit here and recall any of dozens of panels in Ronin which are prime examples of what I mean. One of the best sequences is that of the Ronin and Casey McKenna doing battle with Agat's minions in the snow; the moment is worthy of Akira Kurosawa's samurai epics.Then there are the characters. Miller has never subscribed to the notion of comic characters being, in the memorable words of Alan Moore, "muscle-bound oafs uttering mu

Probably the most unappreciated of Miller's work, "Ronin" is nevertheless one of his greatest achievements. It was originally shunned by many because of its wild combination of art styles and overall departure from Miller's typical work, but it is this uniqueness that makes it so memorable. Miller creates a convincing, if unrelentingly brutal, vision of the future, and fills it with strong characters you'll never forget. The story unravels in a fascinating way, as the reader realizes that nothing in the story is what it appears to be. I won't spoil it for you--just read the thing. You don't even have to be a Miller buff to enjoy it--any fan of good science fiction will find this one hard to put down