Ronin

Ronin (formally written as Rōnin) is an American comic book limited series published between 1983 and 1984, by DC Comics. The series was written and drawn by Frank Miller with artwork painted by Lynn Varley. It takes place in a dystopic near-future New York City in which a ronin is reincarnated. The six-issue work shows some of the strongest influences of manga and bande dessinée on Miller's style, both in the artwork and narrative style. Concept and creation The ideas for Ronin came together while Miller was doing extensive research into kung fu films, martial arts, samurai comic books and samurai ethics for his work on Daredevil. He remarked that "the aspect of the samurai that intrigues me most is the ronin, the masterless samurai, the fallen warrior. ... This entire project comes from my feelings that we, modern men, are ronin. We're kind of cut loose. I don't get the feeling from the people I know, the people I see on the street, that they have something greater than themselves to believe in. Patriotism, religion, whatever — they've all lost their meaning for us." Ronin was in part inspired by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima's manga series Kozure Ōkami. Though Kozure Ōkami would receive an English localization several years later as Lone Wolf and Cub, at the time Miller could not read the text and had to rely on the artwork for his understanding of the story. According to former Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Jim Shooter, Ronin was originally slated to be released as part of Marvel's Marvel Graphic Novel series. Ultimately, however, Miller was persuaded by publisher Jenette Kahn that DC Comics would give him as much freedom as he desired for the series, and DC published Ronin beginning in 1983. Despite being both written and drawn by Miller, Ronin was created using the full script method; a full panel-by-panel script was written for each issue before any of it was drawn, though in some cases Miller made revisions to the story after he began drawing. For example, Miller has said that when he began drawing Ronin #1: "There was no explosion, no demon shot across the city. I'd planned a brief skirmish between the demon and the ronin, from which Virgo rescued the ronin. But, as I was working on the sequence, I realized that I had been building and building tension across the story and hadn't done anything to release it. The feeling of the story ... was that it needed something big to happen there, something to release the tension".