In my journey of getting back into comics, I started getting bored with the same old superhero comic. Even though Spider-man, Batman, and all the rest will always have a place in my comic library (and useless knowledge for trivia) sometimes you want to read something new. Something different.
Sometimes you get lucky and its phenomenal (Tranmetropolitan, Sandman, SCUD)
Sometimes you get unlucky and it's shitty and you're not sure why you read the whole thing and why everyone seems to love it (Y: The Last Man, Nextwave)
Sometimes you just don't know what the fuck to think. That's the category 100 Bullets falls into.
I've liked other things I had read by Azzarello (Joker graphic novel and a few one shots along the way) and saw 100 Bullets often being talked about as one of the best non "cape" comics out there. Not just that, but most likely the defining book of the "crime" genre. The premise? An old man is appearing out of the shadows with a briefcase. In that briefcase is an untraceable gun with 100 untraceable bullets. Also in that briefcase is evidence showing who put your life into this shitty state. Sometimes it's the person you'd expect. Sometimes other powers are at work. This sounded awesome. I was stoked to start and..
ended up reading maybe the first 8 issues in about a year? Like other great crime works (The Wire), this one started slow. As cool as the premise was, it just didn't grip me. This may have been due to it jumping around a lot early on, or it may have been just a lack of any character to relate to. Eventually I sat down and forced myself into the first 20 issues or so.
Then it gets good.
The premise goes much deeper than what's on the surface. It turns out that old man is the leader of a group called The Minutemen. The Minutemen were a large crime cartel's enforcement squad. When a score had to be settled, rather than having all out war, the minutemen took care of this. Each of the thirteen families in the cartel (called The Trust) agreed to and accepted this established order. It allowed them to thrive without all the violence of the past. Until they decided to pull the plug on the Minutemen and agree to just not fight anymore.
Did I mention each Minuteman is an insanely skilled Assassin? All with their own style and personality, but all get the job done. Their targets are always dead. Period.
After the Minutemen kill an important figure to get back at the Trust, the old man sends the agents back to normal lives...having a codeword when he'll need them to come out of hiding. The book follows the "reactivation" of the agents and who allies with who. Its a giant espionage clusterfuck and I'm still not sure how much of the events were "plans" and how much was just shit happening. The ending is so insane, even after reading the wikipedia about it, I'm still not sure what happened. Its that insane.
So what's great about this? If you stick with it, the characters are great. Flawed, but wonderful badasses. Every Minuteman gets focused on for a bit and you really get a sense of their personalities. You see them clash, drink together, and kill each other. It's a phenomenal depth interlaced with the already insane enough "classic" crime story. Another highlight is the dialogue. Azzarello really tried to get regional and ethnic dialects worked into the comic. It makes it hard to read on occasion but it's that extra effort that always impresses me when I'm reading a comic. The final bit is simply the genre. There's not a lot of noir out there today, but this definitely fits. Its reminiscent of a classic pulp crime, detective story with twists and turns.
The bad? Shit goes absolutely crazy to the point you can't keep up. I'm not sure if he was rushed to finish at 100 issues or if it was just so many characters. Maybe it's I read it with large gaps. I'd recommend if you're going to read this, do it in the course of a few days.
I dont know what to make of this. The elements are great, but somehow don't add up to a "fantastic" work for me. When I got done, I was just like "huh" rather than "Oh God that was perfect" (end of Sandman and Transmetropolitan). Is it still worth your time? Sure if you read fast and have some time to kill. Otherwise, give this one a skip until you have time to devour it all at once. It'll make a lot more sense.
Wonders what my Assassin nickname would be
-Oz
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