APPENDIX: How RDE almost ended

Original versions of Ronin Digital Express included bigger action setpieces and unused characters. Some of the threads pointing to my original plans still remain in the final episodes.

How do you end a comic?

Ronin Digital Express was always intended to be episodic — serialized one-offs with minimalistic scripts, and a scant few overarching threads to tie it all together. I wanted it to be a sort of Corto Maltese or Torpedo of the webcomic scene.

Originally, I’d an outline that would produce 8-10 episodes at a time (per year, roughly). I’d keep producing these “seasons” for as long as I could stand it.

Each season would end with a more traditional “bang.” That is, a big, climactic action setpiece to put a big ‘ol exclamation point on the end of a series of episodes. There’d have been hints peppered throughout the season that lead into the final act, but the arc would be loose enough that the finale could also stand on its own.

So what did that look like for the batch of episodes we have so far?

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V.1: Volonte (originally, “Sentenza”), the Big Bad

You might recall the Lee Van Cleef-esque villain of episode 3, “Ronghua,” a former SINC Regulator (basically, a retired, or fired, cop in RDE) named Volonte.

In early drafts, there was no Volonte. In his place was this guy (from an early “test” page of RDE):

The same general plot of “Ronghua” followed, with this character having met his untimely demise.

But by the time of “Sho,” two other SINC Regulators would have caught up to the Green-Eyed Ronin and arrested him for killing this character.

The finale would have been a two-part episode featuring Volonte (initially named “Sentenza”) and a female Regulator named Corto escorting the Green-Eyed Ronin to whatever the RDE version of jail is.

Corto was written as a rookie (and a big talker) in this episode who taunts the Green-Eyed Ronin as they drive. She also had an established relationship with Sentenza, sort of a mentor / mentee with a sprinkle of father / daughter.

The twist here would see Sentenza betraying Corto to collect a bounty on the Green-Eyed Ronin offered by Bigman Massimoto (an unseen, background threat mentioned a few times in other episodes).

The episode ends with the Green-Eyed Ronin using his magnet glove to call his sword back to him, cutting his bonds, and facing Sentenza in a good old-fashioned standoff.

The sequence would connect all the way back to episode 1, with Sentenza repeating a line offered by that episode’s antagonist:

Point being, here’s the ultimate test! Can the Green-Eyed Ronin outdraw the fastest gun in Sheji?

And the answer is, uh, NO.

Then, we’re on to part 2, in which Corto wakes up, sees the Green-Eyed Ronin dead, realizes she’s been betrayed by Sentenza, and confronts him for something emotional.

This ends with the Green-Eyed Ronin revealing he was wearing his armor from “Gaijin” under his poncho, allowing him to survive Sentenza’s gunshot (a la A Fistful of Dollars). He cuts off Sentenza’s fingers, and Corto delivers the coup de gras, killing her mentor (with his acceptance and blessing).

Finally, she lets the Green-Eyed Ronin go, but asks for his real name. We cut before he gets the chance to answer.

There were a lot of problems with this ending. Why wouldn’t they have searched the Green-Eyed Ronin and discovered the armor when they arrested him? Why do we care about Sentenza and Corto and their relationship? Why does Corto let the Green-Eyed Ronin go at the end?

Ultimately I decided it was unsatisfying and ridiculous, but I did like the idea of SINC officers looking for the Green-Eyed Ronin all along, so…

V.2: Corto and the assault on Ronin Digital HQ

In the next version, we start with a couple of heavily-armed APCs firing on Ronin Digital HQ (from “Gaijin” [Part III]) while the Green-Eyed Ronin and Satoshi (the chimera cat from the same episode) duck for cover inside.

This version also has Corto again, albeit less the rookie and much more the grizzled, battle-tested detective:

I never finished the script for this one. The most I got was a first draft monologue introducing us to Corto and her worldview, set against scenes from previous episodes, showing that SINC has been on the Green-Eyed Ronin’s tail every step of the way:

We eventually would catch up to the present, with Odin Watanabe (the bald Japanese guy who runs Ronin Digital) firing a rocket-propelled grenade at the APCs, destroying them.

Corto would confront the Green-Eyed Ronin in the ruins, and after a short fight, this Vargas guy she’s partnered with would betray her (just like in V.1, only he’s an iredeemable character just interested in money and doesn’t have any sort of personal relationship with her).

The resolution is largely the same as V.1, with Corto letting the Green-Eyed Ronin go. This time it makes more sense because after her long lecture about the law and justice, to see herself betrayed by SINC gets her thinking maybe she was wrong about all that.

In a post-episode stinger, Watanabe and Satoshi reveal the “Ronin Digital Express,” a mobile headquarters that hadn’t been seen yet at that stage (readers will remember it from Legendary Ronin Warui Hito, which wasn't originally part of the season 1 outline).

This version was almost, almost, almost the actual version you got. I had the characters designed:

You get a real sense here of how different this Corto is from the rookie in V.1, and how far I wanted to get away from that.

You’ll also notice that Vargas is largely recycled from the original test page villain above.

What’s more, both Corto and Vargas are actually in the final comic, in “Mon Chou” [Part II].

You can see them investigating the aftermath of the Green-Eyed Ronin’s fight with the SINC impostors, mirroring an excerpt from the script with Corto’s monologue above.

So why didn’t I go this route?

While I think it would have worked, and I did want to bring Odin and Satoshi back into the comic sooner than later, I felt that it was a bit of a tonal break from what had come before it.

At the time I was scripting this, I was also drawing “Legendary Ronin Warui Hito,” which I intended to launch on Kickstarter or sell digitally on Gumroad as a one-shot taking place in between this season and the hypothetical season 2.

I got really absorbed into Legendary Ronin Warui Hito, and it was shaping up to be my favorite chapter of RDE I’d worked on so far.

So, I made the decision to publish it as a special 4-part presentation instead, and to come up with a different ending altogether.

V.3: The poignant option

“Huang Jui” was one of the first scripts I’d written for Ronin Digital Express. It was almost the first episode, in fact.

It’s a good little story, and I was keeping it in my back pocket just in case I needed a chapter that could serve as a quieter, more ambiguous ending to the webcomic. I wanted an easy out in case I decided to go on an extended hiatus, reboot the entire thing down the line some other way, or quit altogether.

So, without a clear ending to the first arc, and no definitive plans for the future of RDE, I decided to use it as the final chapter.

Of course, now that I’ve taken my break, I’ve decided that there’s much more to do in Sheji, and will be back to it soon enough. There are still too many interesting questions about the Green-Eyed Ronin that need to be answered.

But “Huang Jui” serves as a proper, poignant conclusion to this version of Ronin Digital Express, and it’s one that I’m happy with.

But you tell me. What did you think of the original plans for Ronin Digital Express? Did I make the right call with what I ultimately published? Let me know below!