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james_desantis 's review for:

100 Bullets, Vol. 1: First Shot, Last Call by Eduardo Risso, Brian Azzarello
3.0

I read these YEARS ago but decided to give it another go.

So first 3 parter is about a girl who gets out of prison and trying to figure out life. But once she does, she's handed a untraceable gun and told who killed both her husband and child. She wants to exact revenge, but she'd not such a bad person at heart, and tries to figure out through visiting her old "friends" what really happened. Second story is a bar guy's whole life was ruined years ago by being set up with pictures of children on his computer and he finds out who planted them there. He's also given the opportunity to go after the one who did it.

Both stories are solid looks into pieces of shit we know in life. A lot of it rides on the fact we as human seek revenge after being done wrong. And so it's easy to understand where both of these characters come from. Who's bad or good is very easily washed away with everyone being kind of a scumbag here. I will say I enjoyed the over the top cartoony art, made it more fun to read. And the pacing is solid, very quick. Stories are interesting enough.

The dialogue could use some work. Some feels forced as hell and stereotypical of characters based off their race. But I've come to basically except that from Azzarello, he has a tendency to do over the type stereotypes for any characters who aren't white.

A 3 out of 5.