.:what would you do?:.
i never really got into comic books. don’t get me wrong…they’ve always been something interesting to me…but i just never wanted to spend the money on them.
when i was a kid, i had a friend named shawn, and shawn would extol the virtues of the comic book to me even though i didn’t really care about them too much. i remember one time for my birthday he bought me several pretty expensive comic books that i think are probably worth some money now. but i remember this funny look in his eye that basically said, ‘i’m buying them for you, but i’m hoping you’ll just give them to me.’
i kept ‘em. i don’t know where they are…but i still have them.
and then my next door neighbor jeff…wow. jeff had (and i think still HAS) a LOT of comic books. he bought all of the essential batman and x-men and superman comics.
the most into comics i ever got was when i went through a phase of buying conan the barbarian comics. then i stopped. then i started buying ‘the shadow’, and i thought those were pretty damn cool. then i stopped. then i bought a few ‘batman’ comics…specifically the ones where robin got killed for the first time by the joker. then i stopped. and that was about it.
my interest has been piqued again as of late by a couple of things. first off, stephen king is collaborating with marvel to create ‘the dark tower’. the dark tower, for those of you who are not well informed in the ways of fictional reading, is absolutely fantastic. if you were to crush any number of great western movies along with lord of the rings together and sprinkle it with a little bit of steampunk/sci-fi stuff, you’d have the dark tower. now, put that into the form of a really beautifully illustrated comic, and you have what will probably end up going down as one of the greatest comic experiences ever…
but that isn’t what i want to talk about…
what i want to talk about is ‘100 bullets’.
long story short, i have this little ‘the dark tower’ postcard advertisement for the comic hanging up in my cube, and one of the guys i work with, andy, started talking about ‘100 bullets’ to me. it sounded pretty interesting, and it just so happens that he has all of the trades for it to date. that weekend, i went and picked up the first trade, and low and behold, i was hooked. it’s a pretty dark comic, feeling a lot like film-noir in comic form. it’s seedy, dirty, seductive and raw…pretty much not a kids comic in the least.
chew on this: let’s say you’re sitting there minding your own business at your local starbucks, enjoying a nice steaming-hot grande mochafrappuchinocaffeinealiciousmachiato made upside down with double sugar, triple shot white skim syrup extra foam with carmel apple sauce…hold the whipped cream. you’re sipping away, feeling the caffeine pulse through your veins…and you all of a sudden start thinking about your moronic, incredibly stupid bimbo of an ex-girlfriend…and for the sake of the story, let’s call that ex-girlfriend jenny…………for the sake of the story……..
and let’s say that thinking about jenny does not conjure up very fond memories. for one, you remember how stupid and schizoid she was. and then you remember all of the annoying things that she used to do, like…for example……….exist. and then you remember how you wasted 2 1/2 years of your life…time that you’ll never, ever get back…on this incredibly foul piece of trash posing as a human being. and then you remember that she cheated on you…several times…
…and that, folks, is when agent graves shows up.
agent graves comes up to your table and puts a neat little brief case in front of you. he explains a few things to you, like how he knows that your ex-girlfriend jenny used to hang out with some giant toolbox names ‘rami’ (say it with me in the most annoying stoner voice you’ve ever heard, ‘raaaaami, dude….raaaaami is a skater….’…like ‘ramen noodles’….), smoke a ton of weed, and then pretend to like pitbulls (’raaaami has a sweet-ass pit’ (but you say the word ‘pit’ like ‘pet’…stoner style)). you feel pretty stupid that agent graves knows this, because god knows that this is certainly a black mark on your intelligence to have even entertained the thought of wasting 2 1/2 years of your life….time that you’ll never, never, EVER, EVER *doh* get back. agent graves then opens up the briefcase, and you are greeted with the site of 1 gun, a case of 100 bullets and pictures of jenny doing stupid things…like, for example, taking a sharpie and going up to the us bank ATM on calhoun street and ‘tagging’ it with her stupid giggling friend ‘carmen’ because she thinks she’s a cool graffiti artist skater kid. she’s tagging it with some kind of star…the magnificently creative<—(sarcasm meter = 11 out of 10) ‘5 star’ (it’s a star with a 5 in the middle of it…because a star has…five points….?….and 5 represents…uh…life or something like that…? yeah…)….and all the while you’re sitting at home, knowing that she’s doing this, thinking things like, ‘my god….i’m dating a ‘mentally challenged’ girl. what the hell am i doing’ but knowing that at the end of the night you’re going to see her and say, ‘wow, that’s a really great unique form of artistic expression and i’m really proud that you decided to participate in the ongoing fight against ‘the man’ by tagging the ATM.’
*2 1/2 years…wasted….time…never get it back…blah blah…*
as you’re looking at these pictures, agent graves is telling you that the gun is untraceable, the bullets are untraceable, and you’re above the law if you decide to take revenge. you can’t be caught. you can do whatever you want, and you won’t be thrown in jail or looked down on or anything like that. you walk away scott free.
what. do. you. do. WHAT. DO. YOU. DO!??!?!?!
well, if it were ME…i would probably shoot myself directly in the head for being such a numnuts. i mean, who the HECK would EVER date someone like the person described above? certainly not >this guy<. no siree. i’m far to smart for that tripe. but what would YOU do?!
that’s the premise of the comic. and then of course you tie in all kinds of spy vs. spy government intrigue where a group called ‘the trust’ is calling all of the shots and you are just a mere pawn in the game. it’s pretty cool.
if you’re gonna’ read a comic, i think this’d be a good starting point. i’m enjoying it with all of it’s little twists and turns.
March 2nd, 2007 at 5:04 pm - Edit
you should be a writer for this comic… tell me that atm thing really happened.
March 2nd, 2007 at 5:09 pm - Edit
the ATM thing really happened. i’m not kidding. but wait…we’re not talking about me here………..right? right.
March 22nd, 2007 at 2:37 pm - Edit
See, here is where being a super duper asshole (like me) would have come in really handy. On date #1 (right around minute #4 I would guess), when she said something stupid about raaaami, or fat rob, or asked me what I thought of ‘her walk’ or referred to herself as a rock star, my instinctual response would have prevented the 2.4999 extra wasted years our character had to suffer through. What response is that, you ask?
“You’re a fucking idiot.”