If someone had told me I'd realize my goal of owning a complete RIsso 100 Bullets story before the end of 2002 at the start of 2002, I'da told 'em they were nuts. But the art gods for whatever crazed reason were smiling on me and I was able to pick up this, the earliest complete issue of 100 Bullets, from my favorite Risso dealer, Enrico Salvini.

I had my eye on another issue, but when I inquired about its availablility, I learned Eduardo had broken the issue up by giving someone a page from it. So I was undecided over which issue I'd get in its place. Enrico eventually pointed out that this one, though technically the continuation of the issue before it, works as a standalone. (The note at the bottom of this page is a post-it, but the page is all original art, not a stat.)

Plus, Enrico said, there's plenty of "babe action" in it, as you can see from pages 2 and 3. I'm not big on good girl art, and these two pages don't hang on my office wall along with photocopies of most of the rest of this issue's pages for fear of offending my female coworkers. But I can see why some assume I bought the issue to get these two pages.

Another fabulous example of Risso's mastery of laying out a page so it both serves to tell the story and functions as an integrated piece of art. Note also the helicopter, which serves as the beginning of one of Risso's infamous sideline stories.

More brilliant use of shadow and light. I was suprised to find that Risso used an unknown brand of pen for fine detail inking that has a redish cast to it on the pages. It also bleeds through the back of the page and shows up as yellow, but causes no other damage.

There's that helicopter again, spicing up what amounts to a page of talking heads, not to mention a big a** gun. I love the way close ups, profile shots, and over the shoulder/under the table camera angles are intermingled.