100 Bullets #1-3
This is the first work I’ve read from Brian Azzarello who also
wrote the Jonny Double mini-series for Vertigo. The premise of 100 Bullets
is a mysterious man known as Agent Graves offers you the ways and means to get revenge on
someone who’s done you wrong. In the first story arc he offers the means for revenge
to one Dizzy Cordova, a former Latina gang-banger whose husband, Hector, and baby,
Santiago, are gunned down in a drive-by shooting while she’s serving time in prison.
Agent Graves tells Dizzy the true killers of her husband and child are two cops. He also gives her an untraceable gun and one-hundred rounds of ammunition. They’re hers to use or not. The three issues then follow Dizzy as she meets up with friends and family and comes to terms with her place in a world without Hector and Santiago and just exactly what she’s going to do about avenging herself on their killers.
Azzarello’s street-speak rings true as do Eduardo Risso’s depictions of the characters right down to the tear tattoo under Dizzy’s left eye. Dizzy’s world is bleak and colorless and filled with shadows. Smiles are of the toothy and menacing variety. Dizzy herself is likeable but also a figure of pity. She blames herself for the death of her husband and child—a kind of "payback from God" for all of the bad things she’s done in her young life.
I haven’t really been paying attention to the Previews blurbs for 100 Bullets so I don’t know if Dizzy will appear in future issues of the series. The end of the arc did give me the impression that Dizzy was going to join the team in some capacity, however. The series should still read like more of an ongoing anthology series with different stories reflecting different "clients."
A solid start to a new series but not one that I’ll be purchasing on a regular basis. Not due to any lack of skill or artistic merit on the parts of the writer and illustrator but just because the series concept didn’t grab me enough to want to come back.
You should be able to get this series through your local comics retailer. You can also check out the DC Comics web site at www.dccomics.com.