100 Bullets: A Foregone Tomorrow


By Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-84023-466-0

From being one of the best crime-comics in decades 100 Bullets gradually, cunningly transformed into a startlingly imaginative conspiracy thriller, with this fourth volume (collecting issues #20-30 of the much missed adult comic book) finally seeing a disparate range of previously seen strangers revealed as vital components in a vast and intriguing cast.

The tension begins with ‘The Mimic’, a captivating multi-layered allegorical vignette which features a conversation on a park bench between the mysterious Mr. Shepherd and young Benito Medici disclose some pertinent facts and intriguing conjectures about the enigmatic Agent Graves and his old associates “the Minutemen”, all whilst the life or death drama of a street corner gangsta’s life plays out to a lethal inevitable conclusion around them.

In the two-part ‘Sell Fish & Out to Sea’ “High” Jack Daw, sometime bouncer, doped-out addict and one more lost soul is offered a way to change his life with the now inescapable consequences. When he is handed a gun and those eponymous bullets he revisits all the family and friends he had left; looking for the reason he’d fallen so low. Only when he finally ascertained who was really responsible for his fall did he start using that untraceable weapon and ammunition…

East Coast gaming capitol Atlantic City is the venue for ‘Red Prince Blues’ and sees the return of super-bitch Megan Dietrich (see 100 Bullets: First Shot, Last Call) and ice-cold Benito, both scions of the mysterious Trust, but busily conspiring for their own unscrupulous futures as inveterate gambler Hank tries to win one last pot…

With a dying wife the last thing he needed was to get into a poker game with young Medici, but everything goes into a terminal spin when Graves, Cole Burns and Dizzy Cordova hit town. This three part saga provides more useful clues about the thirteen families that rule America, and when the head of one of those Trust clans dies after a parley with Graves the stakes are raised to a level that no one can afford…

‘Mr. Branch & the Family Tree’ returns us to Paris and Dizzy’s old instructor who unwisely reveals the secret history of The Trust and The Minutemen in a saucily novel manner; a classy yarn that sees guest artists Paul Pope, Joe Jusko, Mark Chiarello, Jim Lee, Lee Bermejo, Dave Gibbons, Tim Bradstreet, Jordi Bernet, Frank Miller and J.G. Jones supplement the always superb Eduardo Risso with a series of narrative pin-ups identifying the major players in this increasingly convoluted, compelling chronicle.

Next comes possibly the best single tale of the entire run as Agent Graves encounters a geriatric baseball star whilst delivering another briefcase. This is no mere fading star however, but a man who once wed the most glamorous movie star of her generation, a tragic woman who had an affair with a President and – apparently – took her own life. The still grieving widower is also someone a younger but just as resolute Graves left a briefcase with in early 1963…

‘Idol Chatter’ is a conspiracy nut’s dream, blending legend, myth and history into a clever, witty and punishingly poignant tale, even though the mordant black humour is never too far away…

This edgy epistle ends with the three part ‘¡Contrabandolero!’ as lowlife El Paso gas-station attendant Wylie Times meets Dizzy and Mr. Shepard before getting sucked into a crazy criminal scam to smuggle contraband from Mexico into the USA. Unfortunately things quickly go south in Juárez when the “exporter” insists that the illicit entrepreneurs also provide an over-sexed, under-age girl with a ride back to the Land of the Free…

Wylie just might be another Minuteman waiting to be reactivated, but you wouldn’t know it from this calamitous comedy of errors and terrors…

Bleak drama gradually gave way to dark gallows humour and the major characters were slowly showing softer sides but this high-octane thriller had lost of its verve with this volume. The unfolding saga remains an astoundingly accessible and readable thriller as the mystery of the Trust is revealed and Agent Graves begins the final stage of a plan decades in the making: 100 Bullets promises that the best is already here, but even better is waiting…

Entertainment starved story fans – grown-up, paid-up, immune to harsh language and unshocked by rude, very violent behaviour – should make their way to their favourite purveyor of fine fiction immediately and get these graphic novels at all costs.

© 2001, 2002 Brian Azzarello, Eduardo Risso and DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.