Catching Up With 100 Bullets

A couple years ago, I took advantage of an increase in free time brought about by a dotcom layoff to get back into reading comic books, since I'd always wanted to read Astro City and Grant Morrison's run on JLA but was always too busy summarizing books about Bill Clinton's sex life. I also took a glance at First Shot, Last Call, the first 100 Bullets collection. The two story arcs it collected had a good pulp feel to them, and though I wasn't entirely sold on Eduardo Risso's ultraexpressionist teeth and eyes, the stylized art generally appealed to me, especially when it most seemed like a colorized stab at Frank Miller's Sin City style.

I didn't pick up on the underlying narrative details, but then I wasn't supposed to figure out that much that early, I realize in retrospect. But I put the comic aside in favor of more Grant Morrison stuff, and it wasn't until the latest installment, 100 Bullets: Samurai, was reviewed in the NYTBR a few weeks ago that my curiosity was really reraised. The artwork's gotten better and the storytelling's gotten tighter. The first story arc is a prison story with an air of authenticity fans of Oz will instantly recognize, while the second changes pace completely--a disastrously wrong night at a roadside wildlife attraction that wouldn't have been out of place in an old Black Lizard tale. The deep story is definitely rising closer to the surface now, becoming more apparently integral to the other stories around it; one assumes that will continue as the second half of Brian Azzarello's grand narrative unfolds in future issues. And I'm a little more intrigued now by the notion of combining gutter-level noir tales with a much higher overarching conspiracy...and you can get a (frustratingly opaque) hint at where things are headed from this downloadable excerpt (with nasty words blacked out for all ages).

Azzarello has done interviews about comics writing and 100 Bullets