Customer Reviews

Frank Miller's Ronin

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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 muscle-bound dialogue while attempting to dismember one another". Perhaps nowhere in Miller's work is that ethic as strongly embodied as it is by one character in particular, of Security Chief Casey McKenna. Casey is an intelligent, adult human being, full of faults and foibles like all real people. Her relationship with her husband, in fact, is very telling. The very adult moments between them, even as sensitively handled as they were, caused a sensation -- nobody in comics had ever dealt in such mature notions, and it was galvanizing. Casey's relationship with the Ronin, misleading as it is at first, is also handled in an extremely mature and intelligent fashion -- particularly the moment when Casey realizes that in order for the madness to end, she has to "break the myth". Miller has a gift for character, as well as for dialogue -- that cannot be understated. It is one of the main reasons his work succeeds where that of so many other so-called "auteurs" in the field (Todd McFarlane springs immediately to mind) fails miserably.

One final aspect of Ronin I'd like to mention is its ambiguity, its refusal to be simplistic and one-dimensional. Miller knows that good and evil are highly subjective terms, and refuses to make judgments or paint simple pictures. Characters who at first glance seem evil, become good; other characters who are at first shown as good are later revealed as something else entirely. Others sit on the fence for almost the entire story, and their true natures are not revealed until the endgame. More than anything else, this indicates that Miller is working on a completely different level from most of his contemporaries, and it is a huge reason Ronin works as well as it does. The story ends on such an uncertain, haunting note, it will stay with you for a long time to come. This so-called "lack of resolution" has led some to say Miller's story was muddled -- wrong. It was very well-thought-out...think about it: How many things in your life ever ended with the clarity of a movie or comic book? Miller's awareness of this makes the end of Ronin extremely powerful. You draw your own conclusions, make up your own ending based on what he's already told you, use your imagination rather than let Miller imagine everything for you. For that reason alone, Ronin is far more than a comic book; it is indeed a graphic novel, and I use the word novel here in its best sense, as I would use it to describe a work of prose. Mille and Ronin are both that good.

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

If I had to choose one work by Miller that explains why he
is the greatest living comic book artist/ writer, this would
be it.

His economical and powerful lines are the very definition of
art as communication. He has a better internal sense of form
and figure than 90% of today's artists, and he tells a terrific
story in words as well.

Some of the break-out pages in the original book series are
just awesome, humbling showcases of talent and creativity.
Anything I've ever learned about drawing, inking, framing a
pose, shortening my lines, bolding others, comes from his work
in this series. I appreciate it on so many levels, but strictly
as a reader, this is his finest achievement.

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 but
eading this has made me interested in checking Miller out again.

A very difficult book to review, and not only for the reason that I am forced to review a book very much trail-blazing for the eighties, and approach it from a modern context and expectation. This was Frank Miller's breakthrough solo book, so its naturally treasured (often fanatically) by a lot of fans. That said, it has a LOT of faults.

The plot premise starts off simple but not particularly original: A Ronin (a disgraced masterless Samurai) is transported into the future to inhabit the body of a limbless machine-arm tester, to do battle against his Demon opponent. The plot plods along with some okay battle sequences, and just when things start to get a bit dull, Miller starts to reveal that the Ronin may not be what he seems... The twist is actually fairly unexpected, a pleasing suprise and quite original. What the story is ACTUALLY about turns out to be a LOT more interesting than its initial 'Ronin in the future' premise.

The stoic hero doesn't get to speak much, which is an advantage given the typically terrible and macho dialogue Frank Miller has always given his lead men. The character is obviously inspired by the silent Lone Wolf from the Lone Wolf and Cub comic (Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima), which simply put is a better Samurai story than Miller's... Of course, this crude pop-samurai is intentional and ties into the twist.

Now, moving onto my main problem with this book. The artwork, simply put, is terrible. I should explain. I usually like Miller's artwork. His Sin-City designs are incredible, as is his Dark Knight Returns and 300.... If you're a fan of those works, chances are you WON'T like his art here. Its messy, and uncertain, and all over the place... Gone are the bold direct inks of his later works, here replaced with a kind of amateur scribbly 'pubic-hair' inking style. His character designs are nice, and some of the backgrounds show a lot of promise (for those familiar with the work of groups like Archigram, you'll recognise a lot of the source of the Architecture), but without some control excercised by a talented inker, it all falls apart. For Miller's later book 'Dark Knight Returns' Klaus Janson took over inking duties, best presenting Miller's unique pencilling style, but in this book, with Miller inking his own pencils, the lack of quality shows. Lynn Varley's colors are nasty, a far cry from her exquisite work on 300 or even her solid effort on Dark Knight Returns... this book's coloring is more in line with Dark Knight Strikes Again, which had some of the most garish and outright revolting coloring of any modern comic book to date.

With all of the criticism I've levelled at this book, I have to point out that it has its strong points. Some sequences are excellent, including one later where the lights slowly return over several pages to the giant plastic-organic facility after a blackout. There are some story-telling devices which were quite novel at the time of its publication in terms of panel sequence etc, which have since become a standard in comics today.

This book came at an important time and gave Miller the popularity and profile to later move onto better projects. It is considered a 'classic', but it has clearly not aged well, any originality or novelty it once had has worn off, and it now simply comes across as a simple/crude story with an excellent twist but some horrible artwork. The books strength is that it inspired so much to come later, but it no longer holds up as a very good read.

I would have given this book 2 1/2 stars. It is an average read at best, worth it if you want to see Miller's evolution as an artist and storyteller, but otherwise not really worth your time.

I should note, I ordered this book through Amazon, and cover is different to the one shown on this Amazon page (it looks more like something from the Dark Knight Strikes Again style: putrid high-lighter green with a crude drawing of a Samurai which doesn't look anything like the character in the story... ugh)

This story comes across much better than the parts would suggest. It has elements of fantasy, history, and science fiction woven together. It's an eco-catastrophic world with clean, livable enclaves for the few. It has demons, heroes, and some who tried and failed. A lesser writer would have made those parts sound like a formula: "Attach Hero (a) to Villain (b), then connect the Mysterious Source of Vast Power (c)."

The artwork is strong, but mostly not the kind I'll remember in a week. Well, there is that four-page foldout spread at the end. The rest is expressive, varied, and communicative, but greatness requires more.

Other comics have a more thoughtful pace, but this at-a-run style works too. It switches often between scenes, times, and levels of awareness. This still leaves time for multiple reversals in the marriage of security chief to science chief, but the human relationships aren't very subtle or central to the story.

Frank Miller is brilliant, and this proves it again. The style is very different from the choppy chiaroscuro of "Sin City", but works for this piece. I'll keep buying Miller's work.

//wiredweird

PLOT SYNOPSIS:
Ronin begins in feudal Japan, when a samurai's master is killed by Agat, the demon who has been his archenemy for years. Forced to become a disgraced ronin to avenge his master's death, the samurai finally confronts and slays the demon, but at a terrible price. Leap to the 21st century, where the Aquarius Project and its biotechnological wonders are the last saving grace for a New York that has become a festering corpse. A telepath named Billy Callas becomes the focal point for the renewed battle between the ronin and the demon, a battle which will take on horrific proportions as the violence and corruption brought on by the enemies' resurrection spreads. Who will survive?

Ronin is everything I expect from Frank Miller-a solid, hard-hitting story that deftly mixes action, intriguing characters, intelligent dialogue, and some biting social commentary. My only complaint is the artwork, which I've always felt was very crude and amateurish-looking. The cover artwork and character designs are very good but overall everything just looks like storyboard-quality drawings that were colored instead of finished artwork, especially anything that features Aquarius and its products. This is a purely subjective gripe, however, and should not disuade you from dropping what you're doing and immediately buying this book.

Like Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Garth Ennis; when you hear the name Frank Miller the entire list of classic comic book tales comes to mind. From Daredevil, to Batman, down to Sin City and in the thick of the battle of 300; Miller has crafted classics with what seems like relative ease. Ronin is not only a change of pace for fans of Miller's more notable works, but it is also one of his finest. A disgraced and masterless samurai, a ronin, finds himself reborn in the lawless and oppressive world of 21st century New York, which has become a technological jungle. Also reborn is the demon Agat; whom the Ronin died fighting in an effort to avenge the death of his master. I don't want to say any more for fear of spoiling the story, but I will go as far as to say that Ronin packs in all the pulpy dialogue, conflicts, action, and artwork that anyone remotely familiar with Frank Miller would come to expect. If there's any real negative to Ronin, than it's the ending, which may leave some scratching their heads, and others wondering just what Miller was trying to really get across here. That aside, Ronin is an overlooked classic from the great Frank Miller, and if you're a fan who has never given this book a chance, you should definitely pick this up.

Of all Miller's significant works this is perhaps the most overlooked and one of the most atypical. Heavily influenced by Japanese Samurai Manga, notably Lone Wolf and Cub, this appears to both stylistically and thematically riff on the genre. To claim such does the book a disservice.

Ostensibly the story of a telekinetic cripple who is possessed by the reincarnated spirit of a masterless samurai (the ronin of the title) and his fight with a demon this is a story that can be read on many levels. The characterisation is better than most of Miller's work, with the art owing a debt to Moebius and the story showing why Miller must be considered a master of comic book pacing. There are flaws, however: certain plot points are inconsitent and explained away off panel. The paper stock and reproduction are also perhaps a little lacklustre for a work of this calibre.

Overall this is a great read of surprising depth, and personally I prefer it over the Dark Knight Returns, which was Miller's next work.