100 Silver Bullets

Let’s hear it for comic book vets taking a bite outta originality. New York gangsters with Tommy guns and spats go up against Appalachian hillbillies and their missing teeth for remarkably distilled hooch during Prohibition. And oh yeah, there’s a werewolf or three out there on the prowl going all Gary Brandner because, man, this is comics!

Brian Azzarello excels – in short bursts – when working within the crime genre. His plots are quick, at times convenient, and his dialogue rat-a-tat fun as his work on Jonny Double and the first two-ish years of 100 Bullets can attest to. With Moonshine, his double entendre is as fun as his characters are cliché, completely fitting the bill for an Edward Robinson meets Lon Chaney, Jr mash-up. Eduardo Risso is never finer then when drawing a femme fatale or a Ford Model A, and he gets the chance to showcase both, along with a bunch of shadows, negative space, and man, that full moon, throughout this first volume.

Moonshine tells the tale of Lou Pirlo and how he gets caught in the world of, well, moonshine and, in a way, silver bullets. Written in a noir style, Lou quickly realizes he is in trouble and completely out of his New York state of mind. He’s drowning while gulping down every last drop of that nectar. Azzarello builds on the mystery while Risso paints trees of orange and rivers of red – along with the requisite shoot-em-ups.

Yeah. Good stuff. Tons of fun that will hopefully never become a show on HBO.


As Always,
theJOE

John Constantine, Cell-blazer

Prison is a dirty place. You know the whole “Abandon All Hope…” warning Dante immortally etched over the gates of Hell? I’m sure a lot of prisoners in the American penal system would agree that sentiment parallels their condition. After all, prison is the ultimate bogey-man – in both society and its invasion in popular culture, which contains a king’s ransom worth of prison dramas and prison breaks. So it only makes sense that the pop/counter culture king of dirty, hopeless places arrives to deal with said bogey-man and stakes a claim as his own.

Hellblazer:Hard Time has John Constantine stripped of his trademark overcoat and thrown into an American prison – for reasons not explained until deep in the ultimate chapter, and even then the reasoning is more set-up than answer – courtesy of American crime writer Brian Azzarello. And Azzarello doesn’t pull any punches showing prison life as a hard, dirty, hopeless place. Even smart-talking Constantine begins to have his grasp slip as he falls into nicotine depravity.

Richard Corben’s art is something of an acquired taste. Whereas his cartoony technique works perfectly for the likes of Hellboy, his approach is definitely a deviation from the established styles of artists from previous runs, such as Will Simpson, Sean Phillips, and Steve Dillon. Corben, however, is a master of showing, heat, dirt, sweat and oppression.

Hard Time sets up Azzarello’s successful and defining run on England’s bad luck, con artist magician that will place him firmly on American soil for a while. At times, Azzarello can be explicit and gratuitous, a style that will grow weary as his run continues, but brother, such an edge fits exceeding well for this story.

As Always,

theJOE