“I never told you to kill him. I just gave you the opportunity.” — Agent Graves
Brian Azzarello’s 100 Bullets stands as one of the strongest examples of mature storytelling to emerge from DC’s Vertigo imprint. From the outset, the series announces itself as something more than a standard crime comic. It is a hardboiled noir thriller, but one that pushes beyond mere style and atmosphere into the terrain of moral ambiguity, personal trauma, revenge, and consequence. In that sense, it recalls the classic detective and crime fiction of Dashiell Hammett, Mickey Spillane, and Raymond Chandler, while also feeling like a darker, more intricate evolution of the hyper-noir sensibilities Frank Miller explored in Sin City.
It would be easy to compare the two and simply declare one superior to the other, but the truth is more complicated than that. Sin City thrives on stark immediacy: its stories are blunt, violent, and stripped down to their most primal elements. 100 Bullets, by contrast, is more layered and methodical. Its stories take their time, constructing a web of motives, betrayals, and hidden histories that slowly reveal themselves. That extra complexity gives the series a different kind of power. Where Miller’s work depends on the force of simplicity, Azzarello and Risso create something that feels colder, more deliberate, and more psychologically unsettling.
The first collected volume, First Shot, Last Call, serves as a perfect introduction to the series’ central premise and tone. It introduces Agent Graves, the enigmatic figure who functions as the series’ catalyst and perhaps its most important symbol. Graves looks like the kind of man who has walked out of a government conspiracy, a private war, or a decade-long nightmare and come out the other side untouched. He approaches recently paroled Dizzy Cordova with an offer that sounds impossible: an attaché case containing a gun, 100 untraceable bullets, and proof that the people responsible for destroying her life are known and reachable. The choice, however, is entirely hers. Graves does not force revenge; he simply places it within reach.
That premise is the genius of 100 Bullets. On the surface, it is a crime story built around assassination, hidden conspiracies, and the promise of vengeance. But underneath, it becomes a series about free will and the burden of choice. The question is never just whether a character will kill. It is whether revenge can ever truly heal the wounds that created the desire for it in the first place. Azzarello understands that vengeance is seductive precisely because it feels so simple. It offers closure where life has given none. Yet the series continually suggests that closure is an illusion, and that the acts people commit in the name of justice or revenge often become the first step toward deeper destruction.
Dizzy Cordova is a strong opening example of this theme. She is not written as a simplistic victim, nor as an idealized avenger. She is angry, wounded, and psychologically cornered, but she is also complicated and fully human. Her eventual decision feels earned because the story understands her pain rather than merely exploiting it. Azzarello writes her as someone whose past has stripped away the comfort of easy morality. The same can be said of Lee Dolan in the second major story arc. Dolan’s life has been shattered by an accusation that contaminated both his public identity and his personal relationships. He, too, is offered Graves’s case and the temptation of retaliation. But his response is different from Dizzy’s, and that difference matters. It shows how carefully Azzarello constructs his characters as individuals rather than as variations on a single revenge fantasy.
What makes these early stories especially effective is that each one feels self-contained while also contributing to a much larger design. Even in this first volume, Azzarello is laying the groundwork for a sprawling narrative that will eventually run exactly 100 issues. The structure gives the series an unusual density: every issue matters, every choice matters, and every seemingly isolated encounter feels like it may be part of a larger hidden architecture. That sense of design keeps the book from ever becoming repetitive. Instead, it feels like a slow-burning conspiracy thriller where the real mystery is not just who is manipulating whom, but why these people are vulnerable to manipulation in the first place.
Eduardo Risso’s artwork is the perfect visual counterpart to Azzarello’s writing. His style is often described in relation to other noir-influenced artists, but it would be inaccurate to call it merely minimalist. Risso’s pages have a cinematic rhythm that gives the book a visual identity all its own. His compositions are deceptively economical: characters are posed with dramatic clarity, shadows are used with purpose, and every panel seems designed to move the eye like a camera tracking through a scene. Even in moments where little physical action occurs, there is a sense of tension and motion in the framing.
Risso also has a strong eye for character design. His people are not rendered with perfect realism, nor are they reduced to exaggerated caricatures. Instead, they occupy a space that feels stylized but believable, which is ideal for a story like this. Their faces and bodies communicate attitude before they even speak. That matters in a noir story, where so much of the drama lies in what characters conceal as much as what they reveal. The women in particular are drawn with a confident sensuality that reflects the hard-edged world of the series without reducing them to empty decoration. Characters like Dizzy Cordova and Megan Dietrich feel distinct not just because of Azzarello’s writing, but because Risso gives them physical presence, posture, and visual identity that reinforce who they are.
What is especially impressive is that Risso’s art enhances the noir mood without becoming self-conscious about it. The book never feels like it is trying too hard to imitate classic crime fiction. Instead, the visuals and writing work together to create a world that is stylish, dangerous, and morally unstable. That balance is difficult to achieve, and 100 Bullets succeeds because both creators understand that atmosphere alone is not enough. The mood has to be supported by character, and the character has to be supported by consequences.
100 Bullets: First Shot, Last Call is therefore more than just a strong debut volume. It is a declaration of intent. Azzarello shows that he is willing to write adults as flawed, desperate, and self-deceiving people rather than as heroes or villains in any conventional sense. Risso, meanwhile, gives the story a visual voice that is sleek, uneasy, and unmistakably noir. Together, they create a comic that is intelligent, hard-hitting, and deeply memorable.
As an opening volume, it does exactly what it should: it hooks the reader, establishes the mythology, and makes clear that this is a story about choice, consequence, and the cost of acting on one’s darkest impulses. More importantly, it does so with confidence and style. 100 Bullets earned its reputation not because it imitates the best noir stories, but because it understands what makes noir endure: wounded people, dangerous opportunities, and the terrible freedom of deciding what to do next.
Through the Shattered Lens 