100 Bullets: First Shot, Last Call

Brian Azzarello

Brian Azzarellos' new series 100 Bullets starts with First Shot, Last Call, which introduces the world to the mysterious Agent Graves, a man who goes around offering a gun and one hundred untraceable bullets to people who have been wronged and posing the question: if you could get away with murder, would you?

As a result, so far, the only character going between stories is Graves (though both the end of the first story and the very end of the book seem to say that such will not always be the case); this is not necessarily a bad thing, because some of the characters who form the meat of each story are apt to get on your nerves. The dialogue, especially, is apt to get a touch cheesy at times. But usually not for more than a couple of panels at a time. Besides, 100 Bullets is not about dialogue. Like all good noir, it's about soul-searching combined with relentless, ugly action. And there is more than enough of both to go around here.

A fine beginning to the series.