100 Bullets: Strychnine Lives


By Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-252-5

Beginning as one of the best crime-comics ever produced, 100 Bullets developed into a staggeringly plausible and painfully visceral conspiracy thriller of vast scope and dazzling, intricate detail. Starting from the superb premise “what if you were given an untraceable gun, one hundred bullets and a damned good reason?”, Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso carefully planted seeds which grew into a tangle of disparate shoots simultaneously entwining and growing off at tangents before coming together into a perfect mosaic of mood, mayhem and murder.

What we know so far…

Soon after Columbus stumbled upon America, thirteen European crime-families migrated to his New World and carved up the continent between them. Establishing themselves in all aspects of the chaotic influx, they swiftly disappeared into the burgeoning masses flocking to the New World. When the new nation was born The Trust was embedded into the roots of everything and secretly controlled all the decision-makers…

To forestall their own greed and ambition screwing up the sweetest deal in history, The Families created an extraordinary taskforce to mediate and police any Trust members or splinter factions acting against the best interests of the whole. “The Minutemen” were always led by the only kind of peacekeeper capable of enforcing the rule of law on men of infinite power and unsurpassed ambition – a man uniquely honest, dedicated, smart and remorseless.

Some years ago Trust leaders decided they no longer needed overseers and acted with characteristic ruthlessness to remove them at a stroke. Betrayed Minutemen commander Agent Graves didn’t take his dismissal lying down and has been manipulating events and people to rectify that injustice ever since.

For years he has been appearing to various betrayed and defeated people as a “Court of Last Resort” offering answers, proofs, an untraceable handgun and 100 Bullets…

More recently The Trust has come under sustained attack from within and without. House leaders have been assassinated and as surviving members and newly promoted house-heads constantly politic to rewrite their 400 year old accord, scattered members of Graves’ old team gather in the wings.

But even the returned Minutemen all seem to have their own agendas now… or is Graves simply a far more subtle Machiavelli than anybody ever suspected?

With this ninth volume (collecting issues #59- 67of the 100 Bullets comicbook) comes a stunning ramping-up of suspense as even more players are removed from the game and the wary survivors consolidate their positions for the fast approaching apocalyptic finale. Pay attention: Azzarello & Risso have never been accused of underestimating their audience’s intelligence – or appetite for blood, sex, intrigue and ultra-violent action – and these stories need to be carefully studied: both the delightfully sparse words and the shockingly slick pictures…

The cataclysmic carnage and torturous tension begins with ‘The Calm’ as maniac former-Minuteman Lono and his jail-bird apprentice Loop Hughes (see 100 Bullets: Hang Up on the Hang Low and 100 Bullets: Samurai) meet up with Victor Ray, first member of the old crew to be reactivated by Graves and off the grid for a suspiciously long time. In that time Victor has been lying low with Christine, but now her abandoned, lovesick husband has tracked them down…

Meanwhile in ‘Staring At the Son’ recently ascended House-leader Megan Dietrich pays a visit to de facto Trust leader Augustus Medici – himself only recently reconciled with his out-of-control heir Benito – to discuss new alliances, but she is, as usual, playing her own game. Why else would she compel terrified rogue reporter Mr. Branch to return to America for a clandestine conference decades after he first uncovered the secret of The Trust and went on the run?

At the same glitzy hotel where Megan is confronted by cool killer Cole Burns, bellboy Tino makes the wrong connection and becomes embroiled in a drug-fuelled domestic tragedy provoked by an insane misunderstanding between major bad-ass gang-bosses Spain and Bosco.

As Graves and Augustus thrash out a few differences, Cole and Branch discover they have somebody else in common; sexy, enigmatic Echo Memoria – who seems to be playing all sides in the ongoing struggle – and has stolen a painting crucial to the very survival of the Trust. Everybody wants that damn picture and now Cole expects the ineffectual Branch to track down both her and it…

‘The Dive’ sees Graves further provoke recovering addict Jack Daw – now devolved into a troubled street-fighting brute immune to pain but wracked by indecision – who tries to make the manipulative Minuteman take back his untraceable briefcase of ordnance and tainted promise – with typical lack of success. As Victor Ray points Loop towards some unwholesome facts of his new life, Lono auditions for the role of Trust facilitator by making a stomach-churning example of one of Augustus Medici’s last rivals and the psychotic force of nature reveals the calibre of tactical brain hiding beneath his brutish sadistic exterior in ‘New Tricks’…

With another major player falling to a Minuteman-engineered hit – but perpetrated by which faction of the relentlessly shifting rogue team? – this captivating chronicle concludes with an apparent sidebar tale when ‘Love Let Her’ finds Benito Medici, Mr. Branch and conflicted Minuteman Wylie Times stumbling all over each other in the Mexican desert whilst searching for freshly de-programmed – or is she? – Dizzy Cordova, Graves’ prime agent and secret weapon. Trading booze, bon mots and bullets the situation looks bad for all concerned…

But we won’t know until the next volume…

Everybody lies and everyone has their own goals in this complex and impossibly clever yarn, so the magical skill shown in presenting these characters in their immediate actions and long-term machinations is dazzling to behold. This madly mature epic is a masterpiece of craft, with layers of incidental stories counter-pointing the major narrative thrust… but in which even the least depicted cameo of the most minor bit-player might be of crucial importance to the final denouement…

If there are still any thrill-starved readers – 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 thriller yet, for Pete’s sake go out and grab every one of these graphic novels at all costs! You need them all and the very best is still to come…
© 2005, 2006 Brian Azzarello, Eduardo Risso & DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.