100 Bullets begins simply enough, with a young girl (Isabelle 'Dizzy' Cordova) being released from prison and returning to the neighbourhood she grew up in. There, she learns that little has changed since she went inside. The players may be different but the rules are the same; the gangs still rule, the cops are still the enemy and a persons greatest weapon is still their reputation. The biggest change she finds is in herself; despite only being in her early 20's, Dizzy has grown old; too old, possibly, to ever walk these streets the same way again.
Dizzy
Not long after her return home Dizzy is confronted by mysterious black suited stranger Agent Graves. Offering her irrefutable evidence of the identities of those responsible for her greatest loss, and an untraceable gun with an equally untraceable 100 bullets to do about it what she will. Use this weapon and no law enforcement agency will touch her, she is told.
Will she use them,and in the process surrender herself to the life of violence she has paid lip service to leaving behind? And just as importantly, how will this seemingly small and personal conundrum support an ongoing comic book for any kind of lengthy duration? It is, after all, a fairly finite premise.
Agent Graves
The answer to the first question, and the journey Dizzy goes on to arrive at her decision, forms the meat of the story of the first three issues of 100 Bullets. It's a fairly straightforward tale of revenge and redemption that serves as a neat introduction to the concept behind the book and while the identities of the villains and certain revelations concerning Dizzys nearest and dearest are unlikely to surprise many hardened thriller readers it still manages to grip you throughout.
Sometimes the journey is King and the destination just an excuse to go on it and this journey is about the people; people caught in a cycle of violence and deprivation that they are powerless to escape from, short of going to jail or the grave. There is a moment in a park, with Dizzy and her old group of friends, as Dizzy realises that her generation are considered past it - "We old...We all in our twenties, we got our babies, we old girls" - that serves to remind us of this. These girls are stuck, and the truth is, some of them wouldn't have it any other way, because they don't know any other way.
The answer to the second question - How will this small, personal story propel an ongoing comic book? - is that it won't, this series is shooting for bigger things than that. In issue 4 we meet a new protagonist - we've left Dizzy behind for now, but I'm sure she'll be back - with his own tale of woe, his own cross to bear and his own revenge to take, should he choose to accept Agent Graves offer of those oh so tempting 100 bullets.
Lee Dolan
Lee Dolan, once successful in business and with a happy family life, is now living working as a bartender in a slum bar, a shell of his former self, his business gone and his family having disowned him. All of this because someone else, someone much more powerful than he, decided to play games with his life. Graves points him in the direction of the person responsible, one Megan Dietrich, and lets him make his own mind up what to do about it. Dolan makes much the same decision as Dizzy did, but his enemies are of a different nature to hers and events have a very different outcome.
Megan Deitrich
Hints are dropped that Agent Graves has an agenda totally apart from helping his bullet recipients and there is obviously a lot more to Dolans tormentors than meets the eye, so we leave issue 5 - and this first trade collection - with the sense that the world of 100 bullets is much vaster and much scarier than Dizzy Cordova or Lee Dolan have ever dreamed, and that they and no doubt plenty of others, are mere pawns in the games of some very powerful people. I for one am champing at the bit to see what the next move is.
Brian Azzarello
Eduardo Risso
No comments:
Post a Comment