So I recently picked up the first two trades of Brian Azzarello’s 100 Bullets.

The real kicker about this series is that it only takes off once you get to Volume 2. I’m told that the events of Volume 1 become supremely important once you get further along in the series – besides, how can you start anywhere but the beginning?

Volume 1

So this wasn’t as good as I had initially hoped. Don’t let that stop you though – you need to read it to get into 100 Bullets, and once you do it just keeps getting better.

If you like crime drama and gritty noir-ish comics, this is for you. Premise goes like this: dude shows up with an attache with 100 untraceable bullets, a gun, and irrefutable evidence that somebody did something bad to you – the cause of your misfortune. He offers it to you, saying that whatever you chose to do with it, you’ll get away with it, scott free. No police will hold you in custody.

What do you do?

And it goes from there. That alone might be compelling enough, but it turns out there’s more going on (isn’t there always?). Once you get into the storyline about what else is going on, it starts to get really good – but that’s not until the second trade really.

Volume 2

This is where 100 Bullets starts to get really good.

You start to see hints at the behind-the-scenes workings of everything – sketches of what’s going on to cause all of this, and how everything and everyone are tied together.

There’s not any reveal yet, and I don’t want it; not yet. Once they give that away, the real interesting part of the story is over, and it feels like it would become just another crime drama.

I hope the pacing stays about where its at, ’cause I’m really enjoying this.