Abrams ComicArts and Kana provided an early galley for review.

I remember well when the first Ronin series was published, but I did not pick it up or read it. I knew of Miller's work though, mostly from The Dark Knight Returns and some of his work over at Marvel Comics. Going into this I read a summary of that first mini-series.

This is very much a sequel to that first story with very little effort to do much recap for new readers. It dives right into the action, very violent action which is rendered well in the art. The page layouts take advantage of two-page spreads to convey the immense threats and the action against them. I think the art will be very impactful in the printed final product as long as it does not suffer from gutter loss down the center (where the book is bound). This story was laid out very much for a print experience rather than a digital one.

That same art layout also guides the reading experience. In some ways, it is a faster read if one is only focusing on the words (mostly via dialogue bubbles). However, if one takes the time to pour over the art, it can be a slower read. I suspect the latter is something readers might do on subsequent re-readings.

Miller himself did the artwork on chapters 4 and 6, while Tan and Henriques did the rest. The differences are a bit jarring and, admittedly, I preferred the latter's work to Miller's. Theirs is much more detailed and textured; Miller's comes across less so. However, I did appreciate that Miller's dialogue bubbles were larger and easier for these old eyes to read.

In the end, what readers take away from the experience, I think, will greatly depend on their view of the original tale and its presentation

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Abrams ComicArts Kana for an advance copy of the graphic novel sequel to one of the most mesmerizing comics of the early 80's that mixed many of the interests of the creator with the dynamic storytelling and fantastic art that he was known for.

Explaining comic book collecting to people who are younger than myself, one gets a lot of looks. In my day, I always start we didn't have the Internet so people like me would have to get parents to drive us all over the state to find back issues. Miss an issue and it was time to hit the road, or borrow a credit card and explain why one had to order 20 dollars worth of stuff to get one issue and free shipping. This explains why in the early part of the 80's I was going crazy trying to find the issues of Ronin, written by Frank Miller, my favorite comic creator at the time. I had found issue 3 on a shelf, but couldn't find any others. Not for lack of looking. Maybe it was a money thing. I read issue 3 over and over, trying to figure out what I was reading, all I knew was this was amazing. Success came and a year later the graphic novel came out, again a rarity at the time, and all was good in the world. Imagine my surprise, and well trepidation when I heard that Miller was going back to Ronin, creating a sequel almost 40 years later. And how glad I am to admit that I like it just as much. Frank Miller’s Ronin Rising Manga Edition is written and illustrated by Frank Miller, with art also by Philip Tan and Daniel Henriques, and is set in a world just as messed up, with art that still makes one stare at the pages in awe.

The comic gets rolling with a woman running through the streets of a city that is dying in inches, with the cries of people all around her, asking for help, or sweet release. On her back is a bamboo pack that contains a child, one she talks to as she runs avoiding who knows what, or where these dangers might be coming from. A demon is stalking them, or maybe has always known where they are going to be. The demon uses words likes weapons, insulting them, reminding them of the demon's strength, its will, and the weakness these two humans contain. As the confrontation looks bleak, the woman throws the child deep into the demon's mouth, where the child stabs and stabs, bringing the creature down, maybe. The child, a boy, can now speak, and the woman calls him Billy. The boy is the son of the Ronin, and from here the story truly begins.

To approach something that was so important, and so new at the time, after forty years must be difficult. The young man with so much to prove, has become an older man, with a long tangled history. However I have to say I enjoyed the story. I do recommend reading Ronin again before reading this. I think it might have been 25 years since I last looked at it, and the reread helped quite a bit. One can see the influences. A bit of Lone Wolf and Cub,( I still have the covers Miller did for those comics) a bit of Tetsuo the Iron Man, a large dash of filmmaker Takashi Miike's weirdness. And of course Frank Miller. There is a lot of dialogue that sounds like Sin City, along with a lot of violence, but that was also in the comics, so that is fine. And a story that goes to a lot of places and yet, is rather contained and told really well. Miller does the art in two of the chapters, the other artists do a very good job. My advance copy lacked color, and a clearness sometimes, but I liked the art alot. It was like finding an old copy of something one never knew existed, and falling back in time in enjoyment.

I know there will be a few different editions of this, a manga edition, and collector's edition. The buyer needs no input from me, except that I thought it was good, can't wait to see the finished work, and look forward to more releases from Frank Miller's new collaboration with Abrams books.

Let me preface this review by saying that I am a huge Frank Miller fan and loved his Batman work (okay maybe not the Dark Knight Strikes Again) and I was incredibly excited to see him launch the Frank Miller Presents line of comics. That leads me to Ronin Rising and how I even though I did enjoy it quite a bit, I just wanted more from it. There is a huge risk/reward with revisiting a story like Ronin and overall, I think it had more reward than risk, but only by the slimmest of margins.

Special Thanks to Abrams ComicArts and Netgalley for the digital ARC. This was given to me for an honest review