100 Bullets: The Hard Way

New Extended review

By Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-041-0

When as perfect a story-hook as “what if you were given an untraceable gun, one hundred bullets and a damned good reason” is in the creative hands of talents like Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso you know the resultant drama is going to start big and end spectacularly but even after fifty issues the breakneck pace and heart-stopping tension of this series never faltered and indeed intensified…

With this eighth volume The Hard Way (collecting issues #50-58 of the 100 Bullets monthly comic) comes a ramping-up of suspense as a lot of questions are (partially) answered and the myriad players take their positions for the apocalyptic finale – still half a c-note away…

The key piece here is the full, complete and true history of the United States of America and the origins of the Trust: illicit brotherhood of hereditary crime-kings who have controlled the nation since before it even was a country.

In ‘Prey for Reign’ a guy walks into a bar…

So many stories start that way, but when the guy is reactivated Minuteman Victor Ray (100 Bullets: First Shot, Last Call) and the beer-and-buddies yarn he spins concerns the secret history of America, you’d better listen…

Not long after Columbus stumbled upon America, thirteen European crime-families migrated to his New World and clandestinely carved up the continent between them. When the new nation was born the Trust embedded itself in every aspect of it.

To prevent their own greed and ambition screwing up the sweetest deal in history the Families created an extraordinary taskforce to mediate and police any Trust member or faction acting against the best interests of the whole. Dubbed the Minutemen they were always led by the kind of peacekeeper needed to keep them honest and actively cooperating – a man uniquely honest, dedicated, smart and remorseless.

A few years ago Trust leaders decided they no longer needed overseers and acted with characteristic ruthlessness to remove them. Betrayed Minutemen leader Agent Graves didn’t take his dismissal lying down and has been manipulating events and people to rectify that injustice.

For years he has been appearing to various betrayed and defeated people as a “Court of Last Resort” offering answers, secrets, an untraceable handgun and 100 Bullets… Now Victor sits in bar spilling secrets, knowing that since all the listeners are murderous thieves awaiting a payoff that will never come, there’s little chance of this history lesson going public…

The Trust is under attack. House leaders have been killed, and as the surviving members convene to utterly rewrite their 400 year old accord, scattered members of Grave’s old team circle in the wings. Wylie Times (100 Bullets: A Foregone Tomorrow) resurfaces in New Orleans on another mysterious mission and takes up temporary residence in a jazz bar whilst waiting to make his move…

‘Wylie Runs the Voodoo Down’ finds him confronting Trust facilitator/fixer Mr. Shepherd and newest Minuteman Dizzy Cordova (also 100 Bullets: First Shot, Last Call) whilst stumbling onto a particularly grisly murder. Hunted by the brutal killers and torn by guilt over his lost love Rose, Wylie becomes too involved in the tragic lives of (relatively) ordinary folks until the grim reality of his past painfully, horrifyingly reminds him that his old masters have a long reach and their dirty fingers in every pie…

For someone like Wylie however, the safest escape plan is to remove all possible threats and the cataclysmic conclusion of this compulsive seven-chapter saga sees more than one major player taken off the board…

The book ends with ‘Coda smoke’ as dishonoured Minuteman Lono and cellmate Loop Hughes (100 Bullets: Samurai) get a shocking phone call and rush to Shepherd’s aid. It appears the man with all the answers was betrayed by his most trusted agent. How bad must it be if an ex-con and a sociopath with impulse-control issues are the first number on your speed-dial…?

Beginning as one of the best crime-comics in decades, 100 Bullets imperceptibly grew into a terrifyingly imaginative conspiracy thriller of vast scope and dazzling, intricate detail. Azzarello and Risso have never been accused of underestimating their audience’s intelligence – or appetite for blood, sex, intrigue and action.

If there are still any shock-starved story fans – grown-up, paid-up, immured to harsh language and unshaken by rude, nude and very violent behaviour – who aren’t addicted to this astounding epic crime-thriller yet, get out there and grab every one of these graphic novels at all costs! You need them all and the very best is yet to come…

© 2004, 2005 Brian Azzarello, Eduardo Risso & DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.