100 Bullets Vol. 12: Dirty
In the penultimate arc of the long-running noir comic 100 Bullets, the body count escalates as the war between the shadowy secret society the Trust and its former enforcers, the Minutemen, enters its bloody endgame. One of the Trust’s most powerful family heads is sadistically cut down, former Minuteman Will Slaughter is lured out of retirement to execute a mysterious hit, and Lono escapes death through an element that’s in short supply in the world of 100 Bullets—mercy. Nearly 10 years on, neither Azzarello’s intricate plotting nor Risso’s elegantly gritty artwork shows any signs of exhaustion. --Gordon Flagg