Ronin

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic sci-fi
Review: A technical masterwork, although it lacks the societal and ethical punch of DARK KNIGHT RETURNS. Possibly one of the best pieces of hardcore science-fiction I've read in a long time, with a new twist on the normally obnoxious omniscient-living-computer archetype (For an even better one, check out the work of William Gibson). Plenty of turnabouts, climaxes, and stunning imagery. Great stuff.

Rating:
Summary: Masterpiece
Review: A truly brilliant work that blurs the line between art and literature. Miller's artwork is beautiful and filled with bold stylistic flourishes, and complimented by an intriguing story which takes several twists. Compelling, violent, heartbreaking, exciting, and powerfull; a must-read.

Rating:
Summary: original and stylish but too fast
Review: Among writer Frank Millers best work, Ronin will please fans of his comics. Original and brilliantly stylish it is a must read for those of the comic genre.However, it moves along too quickly and at times is hard to take in.

Rating:
Summary: An Underappreciated Classic
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: "...the uniquely stylish art is what makes this shine..."
Review: Frank Miller is best known for his work with Daredevil and his cult-classic graphic novel THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS. After reading THE DARK KNIGHT, I was looking around for other graphic novels by Miller, and RONIN seemed like a good choice. Right away, I was amazed by the book's illustrations. Frank Miller uses a very interesting style here, using excessive lines to texture, animate and detail his work. Standard shading is replaced by lines going everywhere. There are certain pages in the book made up entirely of lines going one way, which gives a completely mind-blowing effect, usually of motion. The characters themselves are also unlike anything I've seen before, with sketchy faces and narrow, mean-looking eyes. They're almost bordering on an anime/manga style, yet still very Superhero-esque.

The storyline, on the other hand, isn't quite so fantastic. A nameless samurai is transported to a futuristic New York, where he pursues his arch-enemy. Don't get me wrong, it's imaginative and ambitious enough, but I found that it wasn't scripted all that well, and the pictures were the main medium for storytelling here. The uniquely stylish art is what makes this shine. The words are merely a compliment to the visuals. You would expect it to be the other way around, especially in a comic book, but once you see this, you'll know what I'm talking about. It reads very quickly, because there are often full-pages devoted just to a single action or picture. The book is only 239 pages, and thanks to this fast-paced style, you might be able to finish it in a couple of hours. However, don't let this turn you off from buying it, because you'll probably re-read it at least once, and the art truly is a sight to behold.

I'd recommend this to everyone, so long as they're willing to love the art more than the words. WATCHMEN could be classified as a stylistic opposite of RONIN, not only because the aesthetics are all-around different, but the words play a much larger part than the pictures do. Plus, in WATCHMEN, everything feels very un-animated, and the panels are mostly free of motion-lines, sound-effects and other standard, cinematic comic-book fare, while RONIN is chock-filled with such effects. Read this if you want action, style and a combination of story and art unlike any I've ever encountered.

Rating:
Summary: Miller's diversity is astounding
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: HAVE A NICE APOCALYPSE!
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: Haunting and and disturbing, Ronin goes from formal horror to the hopelessly comic and has a twist ending that kept me guessing until the very last page. This is one of the best graphic novels I have read. It is easily on the same level as Kingdom Come and The Dark Night Returns.

Rating:
Summary: Overhyped crap!
Review: I found this book to be extremely boring. So boring that I only read half of it before I quit. The only reason this book gets two stars is because of Miller's artwork. And, as far as I'm concerned, his artwork is vastly overrated.

Miller's best work continues to be his classic run on the "Daredevil" comic book series which I had the pleasure to read back in my comic days. If they ever collect those stories in a graphic novel format, then you will see Miller at his best.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent, leaves you guessing
Review: I often reread this superb book. The artwork is of the finest calibre, and the story line is brutally effective and subtle in the extreme. It leaves you guessing at the end, and in my case mildly hoping. Combines all the subject matter of a good science fiction story along with that of anexcellent and unusual psychological thriller. Definitely Millers best, if least acclaimed work.