By Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-594-X
Originating as merely the best crime comic in decades, 100 Bullets grew into a terrifyingly imaginative conspiracy thriller of vast scope and intricate, intimate detail. With this eleventh volume (collecting issues #76-83 of the breathtakingly adult comic book) creators Azzarello & Risso apparently had all their ducks in position and began to earnestly reveal a few long-hidden secrets as they counted down to the inevitable big finish.
However, as always there’s far, far more going on than you might think, and there are still a few surprise twists in store…
Not long after Columbus landed in America, thirteen ancient European crime-families migrated to the New World and clandestinely carved up the continent in perpetuity between them. As the country grew cultured and a new nation was born The Trust embedded itself within every aspect.
To prevent their own greed and ambition from destroying the sweetest deal in history, the Families created an extraordinary police force to mediate and act when any Trust member or faction acted against the unity and best interests of the whole.
They were called the Minutemen and were always led by the kind of peacekeeper needed to keep them honest and actively cooperating – a man uniquely honest, dedicated, smart and remorseless.
Not too long ago though, some of The Trust’s current leaders decided they no longer needed overseers and acted with characteristic ruthlessness to remove them.
Minutemen leader Agent Graves didn’t take this lying down and has been gradually enacting a plan to rectify that casual 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 …
Some of those tragic beneficiaries have been revealed as Minutemen with their personalities hypnotically submerged in cover identities to hide and protect them from The Trust. Reawakened by Graves as he confidently proceeds with his long range strategy no-one really knows what the end-game and ultimate goals are…
Now the situation has spun completely out of control. Trust Fix-it man Mr. Shepherd is dead, killed by his most trusted agent Dizzy Cordova and the Minutemen are as divided, confused and fractionated as their erstwhile employers.
Moreover, Dizzy might have been the gun but it was Graves who pulled the trigger…
As always, pay attention when perusing: the uncompromising co-creators have never sugar-coated their work nor spoon-fed their audience and these stories need to be carefully studied: both the hypnotically spartan story and stunningly stylish visuals…
After an introduction and appreciation from groundbreaking TV innovator Tom Fontana the complex psycho-drama resumes with ‘Punch Line’ as Mr. Branch and Wylie Times baby-sit Dizzy and errant Trust heir Benito Medici in the desert whilst new Trust warlord Lono, prison buddy Loop Hughes and Minuteman Victor Ray decompress in typically sordid and anti-social style…
Graves keeps his distance and his plans from those most loyal to him but Remi Rome and Cole Burns know something is breaking when Wylie informs Graves that he will keep Dizzy from returning to him at all costs.
Wylie’s next call is to barely under control psychotic Lono, an angry man hungry to kill Graves and get his hands on the bitch who shot his buddy Shepherd…
With all factions on a collision course, mercenary bandit Coochie and his gang pick exactly the wrong moment to try and impress Graves by “rescuing†Dizzy and when Victor apparently switches to Wylie’s team the stage is set for the brutal removal of one more major player…
‘Split Decision’ records yet another shifting of alliances as, after still more mayhem and Machiavellian machinations, Dizzy returns to Grave’s team with everybody aware that she’s only there to kill the man who messed up her life and her mind…
The book concludes with ‘Tarantula’ as, thousands of miles away, the mysterious painting “La Morte dil Cesar†– which has tantalised and tempted assorted antagonists since The Counterfifth Detective – rises to prominence again when Remi’s brother Ronnie is dispatched to Rome to obtain it for Graves.
Once there the retired mob leg-breaker is swiftly enveloped in a tangled web of sex, double-crosses, murder, sex, art-fraud, triple-crosses and sex with deadly wild card Echo Memoria, who has been playing her own game at the edges of the action since she first seduced the hapless Mr. Branch in A Foregone Tomorrow, thereby setting up a catastrophic confrontation in the days to come.
This final story-arc blends the contemporary tale of Ronnie’s Roman holiday with Graves’ intimate revelations to Dizzy of how he first recruited Shepherd to his squad and the lousy reason his own mentor, veteran Minuteman Curtis Hughes, never got to lead the peacekeeping cadre…
Laced with telling flashbacks to the days when Graves’ team still acted for The Trust and packed with the kind of gratuitous smut and atrocity that we’ve come to expect and adore, Once Upon a Crime cranks up the action and tension to an almost unbearable degree as the grand denouement looms large.
Over months and years Azzarello & Risso painstakingly planted many seeds which grew into a tangle of shoots simultaneously entwining and growing off at tangents before coming together into a perfect mosaic of magnificent power and intensity.
These are some of the very best graphic novels ever crafted and demand your utmost attention. You need them all and the very best is still to come…
© 2006, 2007 Brian Azzarello, Eduardo Risso & DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.