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100 Bullets


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7 issues left. LET THE COUNTDOWN BEGIN!

 

I gotta go back through and reread the last few arcs so I can cobble together a progression of events here as opposed to the Jackson Pollac of action I have in my head. Honestly though, all you really need to know is it's a race between Graves' Minutemen & the remaining members of the Trust in collusion with Trust Warlod

Lono and his Minutemen

as to who can drop the most first, but with Graves' game officially over(that's an intentional spoiler to tease you into reading), who's really handicapped*?

 

 

*

oh, that's a poor choice of words given Remy's fate as he tries to murder Trust member Joan D'arcy

. By the way, the meeting that's going to end all of this is getting ready to take place at Augustus' estate, so this outta be interesting.

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  • 2 months later...

Well shit. Looks like I missed #94 possibly, they're on my desk upstairs and right now I'm downstairs training new staff so I can't check, but what I just read(#95) follows on directly from my last post's terrible event, and to see what happens to a decommisioned Minuteman. Seriously, is anyone reading this?

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Just read # 95...

 

 

still dont know who dropped between Lono & Dizzy, (thanks for that, azarello) though its hinted at Dizzy...still, lost another minuteman this issue. shit's harsh. skeeter, you've only yourself to blame for reading these.

 

 

shit, but the ending's gonna be ridiculous. also, i accidentally grabbed # 65 at first, instead of # 95, and was reminded just how fucking nasty Lono can be by that earlier issue. jesus.

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Hah. Is that Lono's 'interrogation' of the house of Javier? That shit was Nasty

 

ANd yeah, I do, but if I posted spoilers in the shield thread you'd fully expect to be caught up wouldn't you? I think at this point it's safe to start laying bets on how this is gonna end. Should we discuss final outcome or just speculate survivors? The story's on such a big fucking scale how the hell is it supposed to end?

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  • 2 months later...

Just read # 97...

 

 

ok, the hot blonde chick and her 2 buddies (why dont i remember them?) are like a joke, right? are they the faction trying to go toe-to-toe with medici and graves? there's gotta be more players left on the board, besides the old assassin guy running around.

 

why the fuck wont lono die?! im just reading at this point to see it happen. I want it to be cole if anybody, so yeah, good job shooting someone in the fucking mouth, agustus. tool.

 

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  • 1 month later...

Jumped back to #94(managed to find it in back issues) but still don't have #96 or 97. Agreed, that fight between

Dizzy & Lono

was intense, but goddamnit I'ma have to Ebay this shit or something, because christ knows my technologically crippled arse ain't figuring out the secrets of bittorrent any time soon...

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  • 3 months later...

So I finally got #100 today. Felt Rushed. Didn't care for the ending. A more conclusive review to come when I reread the last arc in one block & can hopefully get an understanding.

 

Here's what I'll say about the series: The thing that attracted me to it was the crazy-free-flow wordplay, the incredibly 'street' dialogue, and the morally ambiguous(at best) characters. In the first 60 or so issues, Azzarello crafted some compelling character stories, ranging from redemption(the Dimaggio/Munroe single), balls-deep noir(The Counterfifth Detective), revenge(that gambling arc from the second volume), and overall just the coolest fucking premise in comics for it's time being 'If you could get away with murder, would you?'. From there, for me, it got mired in it's own style & got all caught up in the business of focussing on the deeply intricate web that connects all these characters, resultantly all the poorer. Rizzo's a great character artist, and can draw some eerily shady settings, but he can't sell action sequences for shit. Not to say he can't draw an impossibly cool if not sweaty Victor Ray holding a couple of 9mms, or a bullet-riddled merc with the best of 'em, it's just for me the action sequences muddied things up & took away from the great cast of characters.

 

What I'd wanna see is an ongoing(not sure how they'd sell the premise with established characters) that focussed entirely on Graves' game & the different choices & scenarios that spawned from that. For me, that's what 100 Bullets should have been.

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I've gotta play catch-up with the last dozen issues or so before I can wrap this up, but I pretty much agree with your assessment of the series as a whole, Skeet.

It got me with it's incredible potential, it didn't really pay off (at least not to the degree I expected), but it's still a damn cool book. It just coulda been better.

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Did you read the last ish yet though? Pheasibly

Victor Ray and Slaughter

could carry a few minis which continue Graves' game, maybe in an early arc address the strange fact that

Loop

was one of the last characters standing. Don't get me wrong, I like said character quite a lot & kinda see them as the closest thing the book has to an 'everyman' through which we can percieve events in context, but how did they live? It makes no sense. Especially coming from the perception of them being the entry point, it'd make sense that when the reader's 100 Bullets experience ended, so should they.

 

Unrelated to ending question: Of all the characters in the large cast of 100 Bullets, who was your favourite? Also- addressing my statement- who was your gateway to the series, through whom's eyes you percieved events?

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My gateway was Wylie Times, I guess he'd be my fav too just because of the fond association.

I just realized I'm further behind than I thought. I was downloading this pretty regular a while back, but upon googling I've determined that I stopped around the late 60's or so.

I haven't read #100, I'm gonna be spending the next week or so doing a marathon of the whole series, then I'll be back to chat about it.

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Yeah, I can see Wylie being a perspective point for a lotta folks. The best thing about this series & most of it's characters is you get to know them as everyday people before you come to understand their greater roles in the series. I'd hate to see the one identifies best with Lono, though...

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Yeah, Wylie was cool. I dug him, even more than Cole who i was a fan of....but it was indeed Milo that got me to pick the book up again.

 

that said, rushed ending was indeed rushed.

 

ok, so Lono got his, but uh...no more trust, then, or did they just leave it all to the remaining/dissolved families? eh.

 

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  • 5 months later...

it was a fun read at first, kinda felt like it wasnt really going anywhere after a bit but the characters were enjoyable/different enough that i stuck with it, you know? never at the top of my read pile but it was fun...then the ending was so rushed/forced, i can only assume they were told like a week in advance this was the last issue and were clearly unhappy about it or something, it really crapped on whatever they were going for there. After Outlaw Nation, it fell off to my next most forgettable/least favorite vertigo read.

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Y > 100 Bullets > Preacher

 

Never read the others...well, started Sandman and Transmet but stopped cos of the shit factor.

 

what is this i dont even

 

 

i cant say what's worse here, ranking 100's ending over preacher's (damn, man!) or "shit factor" of sandamn. i recall you gave up early on transmet and felt overhyped, where'd you quit out on that one?

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You know how and why I feel as I do about the preacher ending.

Yeah i get the western ending thing. But still, that story was no run of the mill story and deserved more than cheesy hollywood crap. Also one of 'em should've died, it/he pussied out. He should take lessons from Brian K who I think we're all in agreement knows how to finish a fucking story.

 

 

Sandman, I read the first graphic novel, seemed very boring, childish, deprived of anything I would call interesting. Were you grasped after vol.1?

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i was, at least not too long after anyway...for me, the one that hooked me was called "Season of Mists", and it was a direct ramification of some of the first arc's actions, really good the way it dealt with various mythologies.

 

though honestly, if you felt it was pretentious or uninteresting (not sure how it struck you as childish?) you may very well find some enjoyment from the arc but id not say the book's tone changes drastically, might not be to your liking overall if that's the case.

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haha, it is. i like that Death was trying to counter-balance that.

 

bear in mind, this hwas something big and important in the early/mid-90s when big superheros were the only game in town, so Gaiman really does the avant-garde thing here as almost a contrast. the Vertigo line got established at some point early on (i wanna say) of the book's run, and paved the way for a lot of the titles we love since, cause it proved there was a market for all kinds of non-super stuff (now that i think about it, i shouldve mentioned this in the "return of Pulp" thread). but yeah, i know its hard to contemporize but this was like a decade at least before emo took off, things predating Hot Topic kinda get a pass from me sometimes.

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