4. Brian Azzarello And Eduardo Risso On '100 Bullets' (1999 - 2009)
You may look at the title of this entry and think that we've cheated a bit, and you may be right. Yes, 100 Bullets began it's run in June 1999, but over 90% of the subsequent issues were released in the 2000's, so we feel safe including it in the list. Lets not get bogged down in details, right? Right. 100 Bullets is a criminal masterpiece from two creators working at the top of their game. Brian Azzarello (Wonder Woman, Loveless) and Eduardo Risso (Batman: Broken City) masterfully married the noir and pulp genre's of crime fiction on this series, making 100 Bullets essentially reading for any fans of crime novels or movies. The concept is simple, at first. What if you could get away with murder? Agent Graves approaches someone who has been the victim of wrongdoing and gives them a briefcase containing a handgun, 100 bullets and documented evidence of the person who wronged them. He tells the person that the bullets are untraceable and as soon as they are found, any criminal investigations will cease. It's a concept that shoots right to the core of human beings. If someone had murdered your loved one, for example, and you were given the opportunity to exact your revenge with no chance of being caught, would you do it? 100 Bullets asked these uncomfortable questions that we might contemplate in our darkest hour. Over the course of the 100 issues of the series, Agent Graves and his attache case were revealed to be a smaller part of a much larger story, and Azzarello masterfully peeled back the onion on a conspiracy regarding The Minutemen, a group who served as the enforcers of a clandestine organization known as The Trust. With each and every story arc, the reader fell further down the rabbit hole of Azzarello and Risso's tough world, and the series grew richer and richer with time. Easily one of the best series' ever published by Vertigo, it would be a crime not to read 100 Bullets.
