I'd never read any manga before Lone Wolf & Cub. It was those Frank Miller covers that first captured my attention, but it was what I discovered on the pages inside that kept it.
As I began reading the story of samurai Ogami Itto on a bloody road of assassination, revenge, and redemption, with his his three-year-old son Daigoro in tow, I felt like I had uncovered the root from which many of my favorite comics -- Western comics -- had grown. The deep characterizations with complex personal motivations, the beyond-kinetic action and cinematic violence, the rich serial narrative slowly unfolding through a linked chain of complete and satisfying individual tales, everywhere I looked, I not only saw brilliance I'd never experienced before, but a brilliance that had inspired the work of genius creators whose own work had changed my life -- creators like Frank Miller.
Among manga readers the importance of Lone Wolf & Cub is known and cannot be overstated. Among Western comics readers, it is not as well known, yet its influence in that sphere is no less. It is an undisputed masterpiece. No matter what kind of reader you are, you owe it to yourself to pick up Lone Wolf & Cub. It will take you down a storytelling road you've never been, and never will be again, and it just might lead you to roads you never knew where there. It did for me.