I don't know how many of you out there read Genre City, but you might have noticed a slight change in the procedure. If any of you are interested in getting on a biweekly mailing list to get info on the upcoming print collection and when the next completed chapter is going to drop, please drop me an email. There's a link to it somewhere on this page.
So, what have I been up to? It's been a bit of a while since I've last posted. Here are the highlights:
100 Bullets Is So Awesome.
I don't doubt that SPOILERS are ahead. But if you haven't been reading 100 Bullets, well, I don't have much sympathy.
I'm currently in the midst of a reread after discovering this little pocket of fantastic reference and discussion about the book. I'm on the third chapter of The Counterfifth Detective and I think this time around I have a much surer grasp of what's going on. Something I didn't have at all, first time around. What's really remarkable, aside from the otherwordly dialogue (that's the only way I can figure to describe it. It's reality plus, I don't know, Al Jaffe comics.), is the attention to detail by all parties, especially the colorist (Linda Mulhvill, I believe). Without her steady hand, the killer reveal on the splash page of issue 15 (where Eagle Eyed readers will recognize the two felons from the very first 100 Bullets preview) would completely miss its mark. The purple doo rag is the distinguishing characteristic. Also, Risso is uncredible. He's such a fantastic, nigh-visionary artist in terms of his choice of angles and attention to detail. There are certain shots he does, from the inside of pinball machine for instance, that are so audacious and jealousy-inducing. Also, the overarching story is so multi-layered but not in an annoying, willfully oblique way. Azzarello always has three things going on in every story.
a) The basic premise. In the case of Hang Up On The Hang Low; a father and son reunite.
b) In almost every other scene, the foreground action which serves as an analogue to the dialogue or action of the main protagonists. There's a great panel in the very first arc where Dizzy and her Homegirls are talking about the sorry state of their men and in the foreground we see two girls taunting a young boy whose pants have just been pulled down.
c) The overall, 100 issue arc. Here's where it gets hella complicated. I seriously considered using a notebook to sort everything out as I read, mainly to sort out the relationship between Graves and Shephard. To wit: Graves finds Dizzy, but Dizzy ends up with Shephard. We know that Graves and Shephard have worked together in the past, but that Shep Shep is believed to be somewhat responsible for some kind of betrayal in Atlantic City. It's clear that Dizzy is being groomed to become a Minuteman, to replace, at least, Lono. That would mean that Loop is being groomed, via contact with Lono in Chill In The Oven, to replace someone else, not necessarily Milo, who, although killed in The Counterfifth Detective, may have refused reactivation after the actions of Loop's first story arc. There are always seven Minutemen, recall, and we have yet to meet The Saint (most Message Board Pundits agree that Jack Daw is "The Monster" referred to by Graves.) This means that Shephard is responsible for two Minutemen Potentials. Why would Graves give him this responsibility? Graves has, at one point, referred to Shephard's "tightrope", obviously a reference to his playing for both The Trust's and the Ex-Minutemen's interests. There have also clearly been things that Graves has done without telling Shephard (the murder of Big Fat Trust Guy Whose Name Escapes Me) and things that Shephard appears to have done without Graves' council (trying to reactivate Wylie Times without knowing the code word, Croatoa). Again, I'm only up to Counterfifth in my reread and I'm quite sure that there are some major confrontations in the Six Feet Under The Gun solo issues that should add a bit more clarity. But not too much. I think the most compelling mystery is that of Mr. Branch's revelation in issue 26. He deduces that Graves wanted to quit before the big job refusal in Atlantic City and that this is where Dizzy comes in, playing a role so terrible, that Branch feels she would have been better off killing herself. Now, this could mean she in line for some kind of horribly devious manipulation, such as some kind of manufactured relationship between herself and Benito, giving Graves a bee-line to the heart of the inheritor of complete control of The Trust. Personally, the more that I think about it, all Branch realized was that Dizzy was being groomed as a Minuteman, to him, a fate worse than death. But there's also the dillema of his closing lines in Parlez Kung Vouz. He urges Dizzy to tell Shephard that she belongs to Graves, no matter what. So what the fuck is he getting at? Clearly the last three panels, Dizzy in between two sets of cannons, illustrate her fundamental predicament. But how exactly will it all play out? Only the next 50 issues will tell.
See how fucking complicated it is? And I haven't even gotten into my sincere belief that just as Echo Memoria played both Branch's prostitute and the woman who got Milo and Lono hella shot, the woman with the flower tattoo, all too prominent in both instances of her appearance, is also some kind of agent, either Trust or Minutemen affiliated. In the case of FlowerGirl, she plays the recent romantic interests of both Milo Garret and Cole Burns, after their post-Atlantic City brainwashing. Both FlowerGirls betray no knowledge at all of the Minutemen pasts of Cole and Milo which, especially in the case of Cole, means that basically the men woke up in jail with no previous memories and found themselves with these (or, as I believe, this) particular woman (women) as their girlfriend(s). Also keep in mind that Jack Daw's painter girlfriend had that same mole as Echo Memoria. It could very easily be the same kind of set-up. Jack Daw wakes from his brainwashing and a Trust and/or Minuteman player insinuates their way into their lives. Since the Trust don't know at first that any of the Minutemen survived, it's clear that if these women were manufactured, they were manufactured by Graves and/or Shepherd. There's precedent for this. Shepherd tells Cole upon their first meeting that "they" thought he would have liked being an Ice Cream Man, which means they completely manufactured his post-brainwash life. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to assume that they put an agent in his life as well.
Phew!
Deadwood Is Also Awesome.
Not much to say, in comparison to that friggin' treatise about 100 Bullets, except that Seth Bullock is so outragously bad ass. Tim Olyphant, the guy who plays him, is probably the most convincing West Protagonist, in that reverent Garth Ennis vein, that I've ever seen.
Watch it.
I'll be back later.
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