Ronin Digital Express is a webcomic about an existentially burdened ronin and his adventures as he searches for purpose in his life.
He is an archetypical Man With No Name, a nod to the trope made famous by Toshiro Mifune, Clint Eastwood, and others in the chanbara / Spaghetti Western genres.
The setting
Ronin Digital Express takes place hundreds of years into our future, long after an unspecified “Cataclysm” ended society as we know it.
Rather than post-apocalypse, I prefer to think of Ronin Digital Express as mid-reconstruction. There is a society with some technology, some law, and some shared economy, but it’s still very much in recovery, and it will take some time.
The time of Ronin Digital Express is a dangerous, rugged, and violent one, but also brimming with possibility and adventure.
Combined, these elements give us our archetypical western setting, albeit in the far future.
You’ll love Ronin Digital Express if …
You like Spaghetti Westerns, old samurai films, 90s comics, and pulp stories that focus on a sole protagonist and his various episodic adventures.
The overall style is minimalistic, making use of sparse dialogue, fast action, poignant scenes, and subtext to tell a story that is both easily accessible and dense enough to reward the deep reader.
You can engage as much as you want, or not at all, and simply enjoy a cool protagonist’s serialized adventures.
Where can you read it?
If you’re interested in Ronin Digital Express, you can subscribe on Substack. All of “Season Zero” is currently available to read, for free.
When do new episodes come out?
Ronin Digital Express is currently on hiatus while we plan future story arcs.
In the meantime, there will be a 20-page one-shot available via Kickstarter, as well as a full-length OGN coming later in the year. To follow announcements for both, please subscribe to my newsletter.
Once the webcomic is running again, subscribers can expect ~50 new pages per year, possibly more if it grows and I’m able to focus on it more / hire some assistants.