Frank Miller's Ronin!

For a long time I really rather resented Frank Miller. Let me explain. When Miller first showed up in the comics world it was clear he had a specific talent, a particular way of telling a story. He proved himself on Daredevil and that's where my dislike set in. Daredevil had long been one of the Marvel books I found refreshing in that for the most part Matt Murdock didn't really whine so much. He was a blind man who had overcome that and more and despite some woes on the romantic front he was a self-assured superhero. Then Miller showed up and the DD backstory was thrown into chaos and a darker grimmer approach to the character dominated and since it sold changed the character utterly for all time. DD quit smiling and for that I resented Frank Miller. 

So, when Miller left to do other things, I admit to not being as open to them as I perhaps ought to have been. That brings us to Ronin. Now at the time I was not focused on DC, preferring to build up my Marvel collection, so when Ronin dropped, I wasn't that tuned in. But seeing it I wasn't all that impressed. It seemed chaotic and confusing. So, despite picking it up many years ago from the back issue boxes, I never really grokked it. At last, I think I get it and I have to apologize to Miller for holding a grudge for so many years. 

SPOILERS AHEAD! 

The story is set in what a near-future NYC, a city in world which had deteriorated into barbarism save for some few islands of technological civilization. The streets were ruled by racist gangs and cannibals roamed the underground. That near future could actually be today, so it turns out things are better than that. In this future exists a living computer named Virgo in a complex operated by the Aquarius Corporation. But our story seems to begin eight hundred years earlier in feudal Japan when a samurai fails to protect this lord from a demon named Agat and becomes a Ronin.  

Somehow that Ronin is brought into the future world and bonded with a quadriplegic named Billy. They are cast out into the wild of NYC while a woman named Casey McKenna and her troops search for him. He has many wild adventures using his sword to do all kinds of damage. 

It seems the demon Agat has come to the future as well and has taken control of Aquarius and is planning to turn the advance tech there to create new weapons for a new war, which in all likelihood will be the world's last war. Good people try to stop this and pay the price. 

Meanwhile the Ronin has more adventures in the barbaric streets and sewers of NYC saving Casey. It turns out that Billy loved Casey and that motivates the Billy-Ronin hybrid to seek her out. 

Somehow or other Casey comes to possess some sword skills and uses that to infiltrate Aquarius to stop the scheme to create weapons of war. 

In a blistering finale the Ronin meets his ultimate fate with the help of Casey which in turn frustrates the war-making machinery. The ending is a bit of a puzzler though. 

END OF SPOILERS!

So, I finally read the story and I immediately I read it again. It's compelling but sufficiently opaque in places to require some revisiting, at least for me it did. I find the story a dandy one and Miller really showcases some neat tricks of storytelling. I admire Ronin as a work of art, I really do. And I apparently have timed my appreciation perfectly because I learned that a sequel is in the works from Miller and a company of his own design. Alas, Miller is only writing this potential sequel and not drawing it. 

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