100 Bullets #1-67
The stack of new comics continues to overwhelm me, so I turned my attention in the last week to the 9 volumes of 100 Bullets the Multnomah County library provided me with. I had tried reading the series a year ago, but only made it a couple story arcs in before I got bored with the seemingly unrelated structure of the stories.
This time, though, I pushed on enough to realize that this story - which seems, on first reading, like an anthology series based around a common narrative element - turns out to be more complex than it seems by several orders of magnitude. Characters that appear as background figures in one story show up years later as central characters in another. And stories that feel like they should be throwaway stories end up being critical to the overarching plot - a plot which didn't really show up at all for the first 9 issues. From a narrative structure standpoint, this is possibly the most impressive comic I've read.
Often, when shooting for a fixed run, writers seem to run a little dry (see my complaints about Ex Machina below - or, for a more dramatic example, reflect on the endless cycle of "Jesse leaves Tulip behind, Tulip gets angry, Herr Starr gets anally raped" that dragged Preacher out well beyond its natural story cycle). So far, Azzarello's 2/3rds of the way done, and nearly nothing in here seems to be wasted. Sure, there are one-off stories that (so far, at least) are just that, but they're still good. And, really, sometimes we need a little break from a main story as headache-inducing as the one he's telling.
All said, it's not quite perfect. Risso's art works well most of the time - the jagged minimalism is a great pairing when Azarello really cuts loose with noir-inflected narratives - but often it can be a little hard to distinguish between hulking, black-suited men. This may be deliberate (and is certainly exacerbated by Azarello's tendency to refer to characters by nicknames with no easy relation to the characters to which we've been introduced), but, given the complexity, seems a little cruel.
But, really, I'll forgive almost any series that gives me an awesome faux-Steranko cover like this:
This time, though, I pushed on enough to realize that this story - which seems, on first reading, like an anthology series based around a common narrative element - turns out to be more complex than it seems by several orders of magnitude. Characters that appear as background figures in one story show up years later as central characters in another. And stories that feel like they should be throwaway stories end up being critical to the overarching plot - a plot which didn't really show up at all for the first 9 issues. From a narrative structure standpoint, this is possibly the most impressive comic I've read.
Often, when shooting for a fixed run, writers seem to run a little dry (see my complaints about Ex Machina below - or, for a more dramatic example, reflect on the endless cycle of "Jesse leaves Tulip behind, Tulip gets angry, Herr Starr gets anally raped" that dragged Preacher out well beyond its natural story cycle). So far, Azzarello's 2/3rds of the way done, and nearly nothing in here seems to be wasted. Sure, there are one-off stories that (so far, at least) are just that, but they're still good. And, really, sometimes we need a little break from a main story as headache-inducing as the one he's telling.
All said, it's not quite perfect. Risso's art works well most of the time - the jagged minimalism is a great pairing when Azarello really cuts loose with noir-inflected narratives - but often it can be a little hard to distinguish between hulking, black-suited men. This may be deliberate (and is certainly exacerbated by Azarello's tendency to refer to characters by nicknames with no easy relation to the characters to which we've been introduced), but, given the complexity, seems a little cruel.
But, really, I'll forgive almost any series that gives me an awesome faux-Steranko cover like this:
posted by padgett at
2:32 AM
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