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Mars Will Send No More

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Mars Will Send No More

Tag Archives: 100 Bullets

tiger

05 Wednesday Jun 2013

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in art studio

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100 Bullets, Eduardo Risso, painting, Tiger

A panel by Eduardo Risso serves as the source image for this painting. The panel comes from a page of 100 Bullets, a masterpiece of crime fiction by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso, colored by Patricia Mulvihill.

100 bullets page
tiger by Risso - with grid

This is our first painting working with our new grid system. Instead of tracing and then drawing a grid and then enlarging, we tried something slightly different. We made a digital grid we place over the source image in a graphics program. Next, we drew the grid on paper and did a study of the image in pencil and marker. Instead of using the grid on the canvas, we felt confident enough after the study to go freehand on the canvas.

Why this image? Other than the sheer awesomeness of big cats, this one has meaning in the context of the 100 Bullets story. Jack has been told that the person responsible for messing up his life is none other than himself. Like other characters in the story, Jack received a pistol and 100 bullets along with this revelation. Jack is a heroin addict, prone to violence, and troubled by his past.

In this chapter of the story, Jack confronts a caged tiger. The tiger has been put there, but the cage is clearly a metaphor for Jack’s self-created confinement. Jack sees a kindred spirit in this tiger. Eventually, he sets this tiger free. Similarly, Jack kicks his heroin habit and leaves his old life behind him. Jack suspects that nothing good awaits this tiger, but at least the tiger will live his remaining life free and true to himself.

100 Bullets: The Zen Guerilla Poster

19 Friday Apr 2013

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in crime, music

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100 Bullets, Eduardo Risso, Green Room, Ypsilanti, Zen Guerilla

One of these days we’ll tell you how much Azzarello & Risso’s 100 Bullets rocked our world. But today we remember something else that rocked our world: Zen Guerilla. What’s the connection? Check out this page from 100 Bullets. Right in the middle, on the wall outside the bar where this scene takes place, Risso includes a concert poster for the band Zen Guerilla.

That’s not just a clever name Eduardo Risso came up with. It’s a real band we had the pleasure of seeing several years ago in downtown Ypsilanti, Michigan.

The venue was a now-defunct coffee shop/concert venue called The Green Room. The Green Room was one of our favorite places. Most of our favorite local bands played there from time to time, and occasionally we would get avant garde visitors like Eugene Chadbourne. We also discovered the Northwoods Improvisers there, a fascinating acoustic modern jazz trio from Mount Pleasant.

The Green Room also hosted poetry readings, a scene we avidly took part in for many years. We met some really interesting cats there and made a few friends we still keep in touch with. The Green Room sat just across the street from The Elbow Room, a cool dive bar that featured local and touring hard rock bands, and which outlived the Green Room by several years.

One summer, circa 1998, we made one of many trips to the Green Room to check out a local band. It might have been Morsel, an Ann Arbor favorite with a dense, heavy, trippy sound that defied classification in just about any genre of rock.

Regardless, Zen Guerilla came as a surprise to us that evening. They unleashed a brain-smashing onslaught of super-heavy blues riffs at top volume. The singer – who, if we recall correctly, doubled on harmonica – rocked like a man possessed by atomic blues demons.

Don’t get us wrong. These guys didn’t play blues like Lightning Hopkins or B.B. King. The chords and song structures may have been similar, but the delivery was pure hard rock. We just kind of stood there with our mouths open for a few songs, dumbfounded by rock power. Eventually we made out way to the stage to whip our long hair back and forth in heavy metal tribute.

Afterwards, we bought their album. In fact, it was a cassette tape. It was lost many years ago, and the internet isn’t helping us identify it for you. But, you can jump to Amazon and see the Zen Guerilla Artist Page for a brief bio and some cool samples. Our tape never came close to matching the raw power of what we saw and heard on stage that night, but it was a performance we will never forget.

Thanks to the creators of 100 Bullets for slipping in this Zen Guerilla poster. It brought back some very fond memories of our years in Michigan, and reminded us how awesome it is to show up somewhere and have your mind blown by a band you never heard of before. Rock on!

Jim Lee: Lono from 100 Bullets!

10 Wednesday Apr 2013

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in crime

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100 Bullets, Jim Lee, Lono, Vertigo Comics

Collector’s Guide:
– From 100 Bullets #26
– Reprinted in 100 Bullets TPB #4
– Reprinted in 100 Bullets Deluxe Hardcover #2

100 Bullets 11: That’s Why I’m Here. There IS Something You Can Do!

06 Friday Jul 2012

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in crime

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100 Bullets, Agent Graves, Brian Azzarello, crime, DC Comics, Eduardo Risso, Vertigo Comics

100 Bullets reads so intensely that I mgiht need to create a Volume Two of our Top Ten Favorite Single Issues just to include it. The hook of the series is that Agent Graves shows up one day with a briefcase. It contains a photo of the person responsible for the mess of your life, plus irrefutable proof of this. Also, you get a Smith & Wesson semi-automatic pistol with 100 untraceable .40-caliber bullets that, if found, will end any investigation into the incident. Graves gives you both the full evidence and the knowledge you will act “above the law”.

What you do with it is up to you.

As the series progresses, we learn more about Agent Graves and his shadowy organization, and his true motives. But in the early issues, before the plot thickens and a web of intrigue spins out of control, a few stories focus more on the hook than Azzarello’s unfolding epic.

In issue eleven, for example, Agent Graves tells a grieving mother the final fate of her missing daughter. While the scene relies on exposition, the previous scene establishing her daughter’s absence is told entirely without words. Eduardo Risso uses a stark but tender moment in an empty child’s bedroom to convey the mother’s sadness. The scene in the diner, though, and the matter-of-fact delivery from Graves, suggest that despite horror he relates, Graves has seen many such horrors in his life. What could possibly compel him to present these briefcases, to open these personal wounds, and to offer these opportunities?

This episode of 100 Bullets raises questions about Graves’ motives and morality. On the one hand, he seems cold and cruel, chomping on a piece of pie as he relentlessly relates a tale that touches on just about every nightmare a parent could have for their child. On the other hand, while many of these scenes turn out to be part of the larger plot where Graves gets his old crew back together, this episode has nothing to do with that. Graves gives this poor woman the brutal truth and the means for justice (or revenge, depending on your perspective) with no gain for his organization or larger plan.

This suggests a much deeper moral characterization for Agent Graves. Often accused of simply playing a game, Graves seems to be either a sadist or a firm believer in a kind of higher justice. Moreover, Graves never takes matters into his own hands to right wrongs such as these. He puts that power in the hands of the injured party. He seems driven to pose this moral question to those he confronts. Yet, on the final page of issue eleven, where Graves witnesses the outcome of this woman’s choice, he takes no sadistic glee in the moment. Rather, he appears wordlessly somber, sober, serious. This is no laughing matter for Graves, not something he takes lightly.

Azzarello and Risso never, not in 100 issues, give us any thought bubbles or voice-overs to convey what’s going on inside Graves’ head. They leave us to judge him existentially — by his actions alone — through his dialogue, body language, and facial expressions, which Risso masterfully depicts throughout the series. Graves, therefore, poses the essential moral themes of the story to us, asking the question but never explicitly giving the answer. Just as he does with the briefcase and the bullets, Graves leaves the reader to draw the conclusions on their own.

It’s a great story, and I highly recommend the entire series. What you do with it is up to you.

Collector’s Guide:
– From 100 Bullets #11; DC/Vertigo,.
– Reprinted in the 100 Bullets TPB #2
– Collected in 100 Bullets The Deluxe Edition Book One




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