Tuesday, December 5, 2017

Book Review: Ronin

book cover for RoninIn this tale of a legendary warrior, the Ronin, a dishonored, masterless 13th Century samurai, is mystically given a second chance to avenge his master's death.Suddenly finding himself reborn in a futuristic and corrupt 21st Century New York City, the samurai discovers he has one last chance to regain his honor: he must defeat the reincarnation of his master's killer, the ancient demon Agat. In a time and place foreign and unfathomable to him, the Ronin stands against his greatest enemy with his life and, more importantly, his soul at stake.

When I first encountered comic books in the 70s, I thought they were garbage. The stories weren't worth the tissue paper they were printed on. But when I went to college, a roommate of mine told me that was no longer the case (more on that here). He used three graphic novels to make his case: Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, and Ronin.

Suffice it to say, I was convinced.

Having had a warm reunion with Watchmen, I decided to re-visit Ronin to see if still held up after all these years.

The artwork certainly isn't as good as I remember it. Most of the art strikes me as a rough draft or conceptual sketches meant to be passed on to the illustrator. I can see what imagery Miller was attempting to convey and the feelings he wanted to evoke, but the execution seemed amateurish.

And the color palette! Blech! Algae green and muddled browns. Scenes of the facility viewed from above reveal it to be an amorphous mass of greens ovals infecting the grey and brown straight lines of the city like a fungus.

However, I still enjoyed the story. We have a samurai who's lost his master (hence ronin) battling a demon in the distant past only to be carried into the future (the inspiration for Samurai Jack?). In the future, we have a limbless child (Billy) attempting to master telekinesis with the help of an AI (Virgo) with a grandmother complex. Both work for an advanced biotech company looking to resurrect Manhattan from severe degradation.

When the storylines converge, the tale hits its stride. All is not as it seems. Magic, technology, fantasy, identity: It all blurs. Caught up in the middle of it all are Peter and Casey, a couple who work at the facility. Peter is a research scientist responsible for most of the science behind the technology. Casey is head of security. Each tries to hold firm to reality despite what their eyes are telling them. When people start dying, they refuse the easy answers and dig deeper to find the truth.

Since I first read the story, I'd heard about Miller's negative view of Manhattan. To paraphrase, he felt that the city was overrun by degenerates. He projected the future Manhattan in Ronin to be filled with racists, criminals, and cannibalistic mutants. Life holds very little value. It makes me question why a biotech company would bother building a mammoth (and expensive) facility among such filth and decay. The corporate directors talked about revitalizing the city, but we never saw anyone outside of the company that wasn't a degenerate. So why bother? But such a viewpoint works perfectly for Batman, which Miller would write (but not illustrate) not long after this one.

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