Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso’s 100 Bullets
Review by goldfish419
The following is a brief description of the plots
and stories from the comic series 100 Bullets, by Brian Azzarello and
Eduardo Risso. This content is furnished
for anyone inquisitive about the works’ content who is not able to procure any
last copy of it in the event it is out of print.
Vol. 1: First
Shot, Last Call
(Azzarello, Risso)
(photo Azzarello, Risso Vol.1, 54)
First Shot, Last Call
Dizzy
Dizzy
Cordova is a Latina girl in her early 20s.
She is a gang member with a teardrop tattoo. She is approached by a man in a suit named
Agent Graves. He tells her her own life
story—a history of robbery, arson, jails, and gangs since age 11. Graves gives her a case containing evidence
of someone that ruined her life, along with a gun and 100 rounds of untraceable
ammunition.
Dizzy
and her mother converse about pride, value, and earning life through blood and
violence. The women live life at home,
while the men are out on the streets and courts. Dizzy meets an associate of Graves, Mr.
Shepherd, in a church, where they discuss revenge on the police. Two crooked cops pick her up into a squad car;
there is a standoff—she’s armed. They
take her to meet a friend, who is found to have a load of heroin. The cops try to intimidate her, and she
empties into them.
Shot, Water Back
Lee
Graves
sits down in a bar, asking the barkeep, Lee Dolan, about a girl’s photo. The woman had framed him for a sex offence;
Graves gives him the case with dossier, gun, and ammunition. Lee is aging and well-groomed, but
unkempt. A pretentious party walks in,
the same beautiful blond girl among them.
It is Megan Dietrich’s birthday.
She wears a pin with a roman numeral XIII on her jacket.
He
later visits her office to return it. He
pulls his gun, describing her framing him for a crime. She bargains for her life, offering to wire
him $1 million. He agrees to leave, and
she then shoots him in the head. Lee
Dolan hesitated, and for that he was killed. (photo: Azzarello, Risso Vol. 1, 115)
Vol. 2: Split
Second Chance
(Azzarello, Risso)
Short Con, Long Odds
Chucky
Chucky
Spinks wears a cowboy hat and shoots dice between semi-trailers, banking
hundreds on a single toss. His black
girlfriend drags him away, yelling that he’s not looking for work. He visits a restaurant owned by Fat Sal, with
a bookkeeping office in the back.
Graves
informs Chucky that his friend, Pony, was the driver responsible for a DUI
accident they were in. Chucky took the
blame for it. Graves gives him his
gun. Chucky goes to meet his buddy Pony
on a bench on a water line. They discuss
the jail time and the talk of him being a cheat. They draw on each other, point blank. One shot goes off.
Day, Hour, Minute…Man
Lono
Men
deal money in shady offices. The one
describes Lono (a man in a Hawaiian shirt) as out of the picture. These individuals being activated are by now
identified as a group known as the Minutemen.
On
a restaurant patio on a beach, Lono and Graves sit dining and discussing conspiracy,
while babes in revealing shirts and bikinis walk past. They are discussing the Minutemen, and some
event in the past, and the Trust. Graves
gives Lono two million dollars, who then disappears.
Right Ear, Left in the Cold
Cole
Cole
Burns drives an ice cream truck. Cole
wears a suit, with long black hair, drinks tequila, and carries a blade. Graves wakes him up , giving him his
target. Goldy Petrovic is a
racketeer. Cole’s grandmother died in a
nursing home fire. Goldy did it. Cole meets him in a supply room. He and Cole discuss the people who want Goldy
dead, and the nursing home fire that killed both their grandparents. His men stick guns in Cole’s face. They all end up dead in a spray of
bullets. Cole steps into a car with
Graves and Shepherd. (photo: Azzarello, Risso Vol. 2, 91)
Heartbreak, Sunny Side Up
Lilly
In
a darkened home by TV light, with bottle beers sitting out, Lilly dresses into
a waitress’s uniform. At the burger
diner, Graves orders his food and then tells Lilly about her daughter. Her daughter was taken by a man who rented
her out. She then found drugs and
ultimately met the wrong man, who killed her.
She would be 16 today. Lilly goes
home, puts the gun to her heard, then shoots her husband.
Parlez Kung Vous
Mr. Branch
Mr.
Branch is a short, strong bald man.
Dizzy Cordova steps out of an alley to meet him. They sit in a rowdy bar, where men drink up. Branch and Dizzy go up the Eiffel Tower, look
down on Paris, and discuss Graves and the attaches. Their friend, Mr. Shepherd, had arranged for
them to meet. They eat dinner in a
restaurant, drinking wine. A man they’ve
had a fistfight with walks in. She
excuses herself. The bathroom is sprayed
with swastikas. She returns and the
dining room is empty.
Mr.
Shepherd works for a group called The Trust, represented by the logo of a hand
with roman numeral XIII on it. Dizzy is
a gangster, but Graves is a Minuteman.
Branch has access, resources, and a fluency in languages. Shepherd arrives and explains who are the
people that Graves knows.
Vol. 3: Hang
Up on the Hang Low
(Azzarello, Risso)
Hang Up on the Hang Low
Curtis and Lewis
Curtis
is a black man who wears a long coat and a hat, briefly introduced at the start
of this arc. Agent Graves meets Lewis
Hughes around a crime scene, introduces himself, and asks about his
father. Lewis arrives at the house of
Curtis Hughes. He pulls a gun and enters
a darkened living room cast in white.
There is whiskey, newspapers, and ironing. He holds him up at gunpoint and is ordered to
put the gun down. He does, the Curtis
decks him, and then hugs him.
They
meet a smallish old white man named Nino, who has a Chinese girl playing at a
billiard table in his room. They go on
various tasks, doing Curtis’s “rounds”, of visiting gangsters, businesses, and
bars. Lewis arsons a bar. Firefighters arrive on scene. Graves shows up as well. (photo: Azzarello, Risso Vol. 3, 61)
Epilogue for a Road Dog
Lewis and Carlos
Lewis
catches a baseball game with his cousin Carlos, remembering the words of his
father.
Vol. 4: A
Foregone Tomorrow
(Azzarello, Risso)
The Mimic
Mr. Shepherd
Shepherd
meets a young blond man, Benito, on a park bench. They speak about the Trust, Graves, and the
Minutemen. Two Minutemen are alive: Cole and Lono. They also discuss the events of Atlantic
City. There is a dual theme carried out
in the arc of this issue for, as the two men discuss, drug dealers stand
nearby. The three black hooded and armed
thugs are working this park. Their own
conversation is portrayed as well. They
deal drugs and speak about criminal contacts of their own.
Sellfish & Out to Sea
Jack
Junkies
lay about a den in torn rags and flannels, with needles nearby. Graves has given one of the men the gun: Jack. Jack
is muscular, has long reddish hair, and wears flannels. He looks out over a city river, on a brick
street under a steel bridge. He tries
picking up a girl in a bar and gets stopped by four guys in leather. Cut to him using a pay phone, his face cut
and bloodied.
He
crashes at a girl’s loft. She is a
painter. They have an emotional
conversation about the past and she begins to cry. Jack visits his mother in a sort of shipping
office. He goes to the restroom and
loads his gun, but does not kill her—she is his mother. Then, the other junkie opens the door to the
next room and finds the bodies of eight people. (photo: Azzarello, Risso Vol. 4, 43)
I
have tried to summarize the plot of these issues of this work without giving
away too much of the story. Hopefully it
is of some use to somebody.
This
blog is dedicated to anyone out there as frustrated as me when trying to
purchase something that is unavailable.
Goldfish419
Works Cited
Azzarello,
Brian, and Risso, Eduardo. 100
Bullets: First Shot, Last Call. New York:
DC Comics. 2000. Print.
Azzarello,
Brian, and Risso, Eduardo. 100
Bullets: Split Second Chance. New York:
DC Comics. 2001. Print.
Azzarello,
Brian, and Risso, Eduardo. 100
Bullets: Hang Up on the Hang Low. New York:
DC Comics. 2001. Print.
Azzarello,
Brian, and Risso, Eduardo. 100
Bullets: A Foregone Tomorrow. New York:
DC Comics. 2002. Print.
