450 100 BULLETS
Th e series is rife with unrelenting brutality. Acts of violence—sometimes calculated,
sometimes shockingly random—pervade nearly every issue, ranging from the absolutely
savage to the grimly humorous. Extraneous violence even takes place in the background
of many panels in such threatening forms as muggings, ravenous dogs, and drunken pos-
turing. Risso renders this vicious world and its inhabitants with expressive and often
elegant linework. His economical style, combined with his deft handling of shadows and
silhouettes, gives the series its distinctive atmosphere of perpetual danger and tension, an
atmosphere that is everywhere etched in the wrinkles, scars, snarls, and sensuous curves
of the main characters. Risso also displays a remarkable array of page-layouts and pacing
techniques that propel visceral confrontations and intense conversations alike, setting
everything against richly-detailed backdrops (enhanced by particularly eff ective coloring)
extending from inner-city slums to decadent highrises.
Th e other distinguishing feature of 100 Bullets is its language. Characters exchange
cryptic, fragmented dialogue that refers to events the reading audience has never been
privy to; interlocutors constantly fi nish each others’ sentences with razor-sharp puns;
rivals spar with veiled truths, pointed threats, and expletives galore. Language is, as
in much of Azzarello’s work, not just a means of communication, but an expression
of power. Fittingly, the series involves a devilish investment in onomastics: character
names include Cole Burns, Wylie Times, Will Slaughter—one hardly bats an eye when,
at a well-advanced stage of the series, readers learn that Graves’s fi rst name is Philip.
Causal naming practices even help to order the series’ trade paperback collections: the
initial collection is First Shot , Last Call , followed by Split Second Chance ; the 10th vol-
ume is Decayed , and so on. Its interest in emblematic language and names suggests that
100 Bullets is a kind of modern morality play, though such a comparison is both apt and
misleading. Th e backbone of the series involves temptation and opportunity assaulting
the morality of individuals who are jolted from a seemingly mundane existence and
forced to refl ect on how their lives have been shaped by great personal tragedy produced
by forces beyond their control. While this underlying emphasis on sanctioned retribu-
tion and the possibility of redemption provides so much of the series’ energy, 100 Bullets
is much more than an allegorical struggle between virtue and vice. Th at is, the series as a
whole greatly complicates simple distinctions between right and wrong. In blurring—if
not destroying—the line between good and bad, right and wrong, the series returns
time and again to matters epitomized in Graves’s Faustian bargain: humankind’s thirst
for power and control, the violence upon which this power inevitably depends, and the
widespread and always irreversible ramifi cations of life’s decisions. If its intimate noir
sensibilities help sustain the story’s intensity, it must also be said that the series has a
truly all-American scope: seemingly all major American cities—from New York to Los
Angeles, New Orleans to Seattle—become a part of the narrative’s landscape, imme-
diately recognizable through the combination of Risso’s stylized detail and Azzarello’s
sharp ear for regional dialects, as well as slang and street talk. Th e series also employs
both women and ethnic minorities in major roles, further extending its scope. 100 Bul-
lets is momentous not only for the duration of the collaboration between Azzarello and
