From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

100 Bullets
100 Bullets
Publisher Vertigo Comics Schedule Monthly Format Ongoing Publication dates August 1999 – present Main character(s) Agent Graves Mr. Shepherd The Minutemen Dizzy Cordova Loop Hughes Creative team Writer(s) Brian Azzarello Artist(s) Eduardo Risso Dave Johnson Colourist(s) Grant Goleash Patricia Mulvihill Creator(s) Brian Azzarello Eduardo Risso

100 Bullets is an Eisner and Harvey Award-winning comic book written by Brian Azzarello and illustrated by Eduardo Risso. It is published by DC Comics under its Vertigo imprint and is slated to run for 100 issues.

Contents 1 Style 2 Plot 3 Characters 4 Issues/Story Arcs 4.1 Collected editions 5 Other media adaptations 6 Awards 7 Trivia 8 External links

Both the writing and artwork in 100 Bullets exemplifies the noir and pulp genres. It presents morally ambiguous stories with dark realism.

Influenced stylistically by films such as Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, Bryan Singer's The Usual Suspects, Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Paul Thomas Anderson's Hard Eight and by authors like Elmore Leonard, Eddie Bunker, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.

The plot of 100 Bullets hinges on the question of whether people would take the chance to get away with revenge. Occasionally in a given story arc, the mysterious Agent Graves approaches someone who has been wronged in some way, and gives them the chance to set things right in the form of a nondescript attaché case containing a handgun, 100 bullets, the identity of the person who ruined their life and irrefutable evidence of this. He informs the candidate that the bullets are completely untraceable, and any police agency that recovers these bullets as part of an investigation will, through some unexplained process, immediately drop that investigation and ignore any transgressions related to it.

Though all of the murders enabled by Agent Graves are presented as justifiable, the candidates are neither rewarded nor punished for taking up the offer, and appear to receive nothing other than closure for their actions. Several people have declined the offer.

Agent Graves was the leader of a group known as "The Minutemen", the enforcers and assassins for the shadowy organization known as "The Trust". The Trust was originally formed by the heads of 13 powerful European aristocratic families who offered to the kings of Europe to abandon the "Old World", where they had considerable influence and holdings, in exchange for complete autonomy in the still unclaimed portion of the "New World". When England ignored this proposition and colonized Roanoke Island late in the 16th century, the Minutemen were formed. The original Minutemen, seven vicious killers, eradicated the colony and left behind the message "Croatoa" as a warning. Since that time, the Minutemen's charge has been to protect the 13 Trust families from outside threats as well as from each other. They were betrayed by the Trust and disbanded after Agent Graves refused to re-enact "The Greatest Crime in the History of Mankind". Some of the former Minutemen had their memories wiped for their protection and were living normal, if lackluster, lives at the beginning of the story.

Many of those who are offered the chance for vengeance by Graves are actually former Minutemen, or people who have been wronged by the Trust or its agents. Trusting to luck and the importance of his "experiment", Agent Graves goes on to reactivate several former Minutemen and recruit potential new members during the course of the series, with the tentative help of the Trust's warlord, the shady and double-dealing Mr. Shepherd.

Main article: List of characters in 100 Bullets

Main article: 100 Bullets (issues)

There are currently ten trade paperbacks in publication for this series. The titles of the trade paperbacks all seem to be somehow related with their volume number ("First Shot", "Second Chance", "Foregone", "Counterfifth", "Six Feet", "Strychnine", "Decayed"), with two being indirect references ("Samurai" being book 7, for Seven Samurai, book 8 titled "the Hard Way," a reference to a roll in craps), and book 11 "Once Upon a Crime", once is Spanish for eleven. The exception to the rule is book 3, which was originally to be called "The Charm" - as in, 'third time's the...', but was given the title of the collection's largest plot arc, "Hang Up on the Hang Low," when it won the Eisner Award.

Title	Issues collected	ISBN	Story arcs reprinted
First Shot, Last Call	1 - 5 plus short story from Vertigo Winter's Edge #3	ISBN 1-56389-645-1	"100 Bullets", "Shot, Water Back", "Silencer Night".
Split Second Chance	6 - 14	ISBN 1-56389-711-3	"Short Con, Long Odds", "Day, Hour, Minute... Man", "The Right Ear, Left in the Cold", "Heartbreak Sunnyside Up", "Parlez Kung Vous".
Hang up on the Hang Low	15-19	ISBN 1-56389-855-1	"Hang Up on the Hang Low", "Epilogue For a Road Dog".
A Foregone Tomorrow	20-30	ISBN 1-56389-827-6	"The Mimic", "Sell Fish and Out to Sea", "Red Prince Blues", "Mr. Branch and the Family Tree", "Idol Chatter", "Contrabandolero".
The Counterfifth Detective	31-36	ISBN 1-56389-948-5	"The Counterfifth Detective"
Six Feet Under The Gun	37-42	ISBN 1-56389-996-5	"On Accidental Purpose", "Cole Burns' Slow Hand", "Ambition's Audition", "Night of the Payday", "A Crash", "Point Off the Edge".
Samurai	43-49	ISBN 1-4012-0189-X	"Chill in the Oven", "In Stinked"
The Hard Way	50-58	ISBN 1-4012-0490-2	"Prey for Reign", "Wylie Runs the Voodoo Down", "Coda Smoke".
Strychnine Lives	59-67	ISBN 1-4012-0928-9	"The Calm", "Staring at the Son", "The Dive", "New Tricks", "Love Let Her".
Decayed	68-75	ISBN 1-4012-0998-X	"Sleep, Walker", "A Wake", "Amorality Play".
Once Upon a Crime	76-83	ISBN X-XXXX-XXXX-X	"Punch Line", "A Split Decision", "Tarantula".

Acclaim announced plans to release a video game based on 100 Bullets. However, following the collapse of Acclaim's publishing house, the game has essentially been cancelled. It was intended that the player would be either Cole Burns or Snow Falls (a completely original character) and play in a third person view. The plot was generally unknown, aside from a supposition that it followed the plot of the comic book.

D3Publishing has obtained the rights from Warner Bros. to publish a 100 Bullets game. They intend to make a video game completely independent from Acclaim's aborted vision, but still heavily reliant on input and plotting from Brian Azzarello.[1]

The series won the 2002 Harvey Awards for Best Writer, Best Artist and Best Continuing Series, the 2003 Harvey Award for Best Artist, as well as the 2004 Eisner Award for Best Continuing Series.

• The Cobra Starship music video "Snakes on a Plane (Bring It)", promoting the movie of the same name, features a cameo by Samuel L. Jackson reading a copy of the trade paperback of Strychnine Lives.
• Taking Back Sunday named a song after the first set of dialogue, titled "What's It Feel Like To Be A Ghost?".

• 100Bullets.co.uk fan site, on material from which parts of this article were based

• Brian Azzarello interview to Sequential Tart (August 1999) regards the development of 100 Bullets, among other things
• Part three of a Brian Azzarello interview to Buzzscope (November 2005) regards the inspiration for several 100 Bullets characters
• 100 Bullets - Early reviews of the video game
• Newsarama.com article (June 2006) by Chris Arrant
• Website for series artist Eduardo Risso
• Website for cover artist Dave Johnson
• Website for colorist Patricia Mulvihill