There are stories that set a trend in the comic industry; Frank Miller’s Ronin is such a comic. Miller has taken the work of Kazuo Koike and artist Goseki Kojima in Lone Wolf and Cub and fused it with a future New York seething with industrialization and corruption that not only wants to corrupt society but its people and their souls. This future allows a demon to posses a form that allows for his ultimate desire of power over all.
I remember when I read this book for the first time. I was in University doing my first year and this new world just blew me away. Now many moons after this first encounter with Frank Miller’s Ronin it blows me away again. I can clearly see the Manga influence in Frank Miller’s work, but I also see an artist firmly placed in the western tradition of interpreting the fast pace of technological innovation and what it could lead to in a future dystopia of New York with a deep desire to turn back to a simpler life; a simplicity that is only a mask that could bring even worse entities to our lives, such as the demonic spirit that wants it all.
There are also many artistic traits in Ronin that would later come into play in such work as Sin City and other works of the later Frank Miller.