five books that make me think of this time of year

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4.

RONIN

Frank Miller and Lynn Varley

DC Comics, Absolute Edition 2008

There's a double page spread of New York– I think it's supposed to be New York, I think it's supposed to be the Lower East Side?– after the first snowstorm in forever that stands as immaculate and great. Whenever it snows in a city, whatever city, not just New York, and I see it, I can't help but think about that spread a little bit.

That says something about this book– and me, but that's sad and easy– and how Miller makes it lodge in the mind. Big chunks of these pages, looser and more experimental than Miller'd get for decades, can stay stuck there, knots to be untangled and savored. Why'd he never draw like that again? What was he thinking here? What the hell is going on? There's a young samurai. Who fails his master and is killed by a demon. But it's not a demon, it's a computer. And he's not a samurai– or even a ronin, now that the master is dead– but a limbless psychic boy in techno New York circa 1999 or whatever. Uh… then there's this girl…

You know what, the story doesn't even matter but, god, he goes for it here. There are stories, all apocryphal but all repeated with a kind of Samizdat-seriousness, about where the book came from and how and why; about Miller's page rates and the industry's reaction to the thing. All that matters, though, is this: RONIN is the first time an American master is absolutely unshackled by anything other than the depth of his own vision and the limits of his ambition. It is brutal and messy and glorious. It's fearless in the way young people are fearless, never bothering to ask permission, only wondering why not. You'll see Japan in these pages, you'll see France. The weird stylistic flourishes that made for odd fits on his DAREDEVIL run are given free reign.

The stories about how RONIN came about might not be true but it feel like a blank-check book.

This is my favorite work by Frank Miller who's got, by my lights, three masterworks to his credit, a slate of incredibly strong works in addition to that, and, as of late, has either turned into some kind of unknowing parody of himself or has vaulted so far ahead of everything else he might as well be Mondrian in Manhattan, depending on who you ask.

The best thing about Ronin it's seams split at the sides with all that possibility.

And then right in the middle of it all, a blanket of snow obliterates everything leaving only pure intention.