100 BULLETS Is Coming To Showtime
I really loved Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso’s crime/conspiracy comic 100 Bullets, even if every time I bought a new trade I had to read the whole series from the beginning just to hope to maybe understand a little bit of what was happening. Risso’s art was some of my favorite in years and years, and Azzarello wove intriguing - if highly confusing and super continuity-heavy - stories. In the comic a mysterious man named Agent Graves shows up in people’s lives with a briefcase. In the briefcase is incontrovertible proof that someone has ruined this person’s life, and a gun with 100 untraceable bullets. If you use the gun, you will not be arrested or charged with a crime. Do you take revenge? Over time the briefcase schtick begins to connect to a larger conspiracy involving crime families who secretly run the United States of America.
It’s a title that’s long been talked up by fans as a potential TV show and now they’re getting their wish - Showtime is bringing the comic to TV. That’s the good news, that it’ll be on cable, where the violence and sex can stay intact. The bad news - at least for some of you - is that David Goyer will be writing and producing the show. Goyer can do no right by some comic fans, who go out of their way to discount his involvement in the Nolan Bat-films, or to claim that the only role he had in them is to write the stuff that’s bad. I don’t think that’s particularly fair, and I think Goyer’s a nice guy with some talent who just hasn’t always had a chance to showcase it. This could be the chance.
There’s no other info at the moment. Will the show stick very closely to the comics’ 100 issue structure? Will the show create new one off briefcase stories? Will it streamline the complicated story? Will it mix the episodic with the larger mythology stories like the comic did? And who would you cast in the roles of Agent Graves and the rest of the Minute Men?
