My Disappointment in Brother Lono Trumps my Completist Tendencies

Most of the money I spend on comics goes to single issues. Even if I am looking for full runs of things published long ago, I'd much rather get a pile of back issues than a collected volume. It's just my preferred way to read, even though it sometimes costs me extra money, and it is slowly taking up more and more space in longboxes, and digital exists now, and lots of other reasons, probably, why it's not the best approach to comicbook collection. I just get such satisfaction from gathering all the pieces of something rather than having someone else do that for me and repackage them as a single entity. It's not a judgement on people who would rather read trades or graphic novels or prose books or the newspaper or whatever—to each his own. I'm a single issue guy, and it works for me (so far).

     Which is why I've always been a little bummed about being turned on to 100 Bullets so close to the end of its life. I was eager to read it based on the little bit I'd seen at the time, as well as the arc Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso did together on Batman, but I knew it was a series to be read from the beginning, and I just didn't have the patience to seek out all 100 issues in order. So I have the whole thing in trade paperback, the largest set of consecutive trades I own. And I adore that series, to the point that I'm reading it (for the first time) at a one-issue-a-month pace, mostly so I can space out the pleasure and examine it in a new light. It has some serious flaws, and perhaps a gradual downward trend in quality from start to finish, but there's more good than bad and some moments of astounding ambition.

     Long story short, I was excited when a sequel/spin-off mini-series was announced. Even though it was going to focus on Lono, possibly my least favorite of the major characters in 100 Bullets, it still meant an opportunity to get some small piece of the larger work in the format I most enjoy.
     As a primarily single issue collector, I loathe gaps in my collection or unfinished runs. If I begin to invest in something I want to do it right, in order until the end without any breaks. It's easier for me to stop buying ongoing series if I don't like them since they are a more long-term commitment, and because neither my time nor money are in infinite supply, I don't like to waste them indefinitely on bad comics. But a mini-series I usually see through, even if I don't like it right away. Anything ten issues or less generally feels worth it to stick with, if only to learn how the story ends. If I've already started it and it'll be done within a year, might as well ride it out.
     But Brother Lono is just not worth it. Even though it's connected to 100 Bullets, and even though I've already spent money on a full half of the issues that are ever coming out, I've got to walk away. I don't feel like I'm missing out on the end of the story because the story is hardly there. Some drug dealers are letting their criminal activities spill over into the orphanage/church where Lono works now, and he's doing his best not to be violent anymore. It's taken four painfully slow issues to introduce and then repeatedly hammer at those two ideas, and then at the very end of last week's Brother Lono #4 there was the tiniest stumble of plot progression when (gasp!) the super-flirtatious nun who dresses like a farm girl in a porno movie indicated she may not be what she seems. No shit.
     That's a very unsatisfying amount of narrative in half of an eight-issue book. And the problem is I can see where this is going, and I've seen it since the debut. Lono and the bad guys are going to have some kind of confrontation, and Lono will either get all crazy violent one last time or he'll rise to the occasion and control himself. Either way, I'm bored. I am so deathly bored by this series, every single issue, and I can't go through that any more.
     Azzarello and Risso both feel off their game. Risso's art is so straightforward, without the background details or silent extra scenes that made 100 Bullets so much fun to study. And what's with the animal cruelty? Is Azzarello calling for a bunch of dead dogs in his scripts? Whoever is responsible, enough already. We get it. It's a vicious, twisted, unforgiving setting. Now do something there. The dialogue comes across as Azzarello aping himself, not as genuinely clever or human as it used to be, but trying its hardest to get there. And Lono without his swagger is not a character. He's a walking scowl.
     I literally spent days weighing this decision, because having four issues of something in a longbox and four out there in the world that I don't own is always going to bug me. Every time I pass Brother Lono on my way to something else I want to read, I'll think, "Ugh, that stupid half-thing." It's a rare occurrence, but I happen to dislike this title more than I dislike incompleteness.

Digging the Goals but Disliking the Results of Loveless

I bought all three trade paperbacks of Loveless at the same time one day a few years back, a pure impulse buy based on almost nothing. I had read most of Brian Azzarello's 100 Bullets by then and quite liked it, so his name is likely what drew me to this series, but it wouldn't have been enough for me to get the whole thing. The way I remember it, I had some extra money for one reason or another, there weren't a lot of new comics in the shop I wanted that particular week, and so I thought to myself, "Hey, if I can get this entire series in only three volumes, what the hell?" It was just a 24-issue commitment for the cost of about $45, it was a western by a writer I dug, and paging through it, it seemed to have some interesting artwork. So the full run came home with me.
     I've read it a couple times since then, top to bottom, and what I've noticed about Loveless is this: while a lot of specific scenes and concepts are strong and stick with me, on the whole it's a pretty bad and forgettable book. I think it wants to have more to say than it actually does, about race, war, America, and many other topics of similar scope. But instead, it ends up being about a handful of characters so despicable and one-dimensional that I can't really connect with anyone, so whatever grander messages their stories are supposed to deliver get stifled. At the end of its life, Loveless made some interesting narrative moves, choices I would almost deem brave. Sadly, because the title was canceled, these final few issues end up as more of a tease of what could've been, rather than successfully improving the series overall. There's too much muck to wade through before those final chapters, and the overarching narrative that connects the first 21 issues is too dark and takes itself too seriously for its own good.
     The two protagonists of those issues are Wes and Ruth Cutter, a former Confederate soldier and his wife, both of whom have less-than-stellar reputations in their home town of Blackwater, MO. Wes is hated by pretty much everyone because he's an abrasive ass who could not care less what others think of him, and indeed seems to get some perverse pleasure out of pissing people off. He returns to Blackwater after some time in prison, aiming to reclaim his land from the Union. Failing to do that, Wes demolishes his former home with dynamite, but not until after he's made sheriff of the town in a futile attempt by the local government to smooth things over. Instead, having Wes in charge just gets everyone else's ire up, and gives him cause to be as unapologetic a bastard as he wishes. He gives Blackwater and its citizens no end of grief, and does almost nothing in the way of actually enforcing the law, so in the end the townspeople hire an assassin to kill him. So Wes dies, which leaves the door wide open for Ruth to get the revenge she's always wanted.
     While Wes was fighting for the South and then imprisoned by the North, Ruth got involved in a gun running operation with his brother Jonny. When the Union found out what she was up to, the biggest prick in Loveless, Captain Lord, had every one of his men rape her before dragging her out into the street, pissing on her, and publicly shaming her for the whole town to see. After that, Ruth disappeared, and as far as the rest of Blackwater is concerned, she never came back. In truth, she returns at the same time Wes does, but stays hidden, living in the woods and biding her time while Wes fucks with everyone more openly. Once they have him killed, though, there is nothing in Ruth's life to keep her grounded, no joy to keep her from melting down and attacking Blackwater with everything she's got. So she shoots a bride-to-be, steals her dress in order to infiltrate the wedding, and then blows the whole thing up, killing dozens of people who had nothing to do with her past abuse or her husband's death.
     The Cutters are unquestionably the focus of Loveless, and arguably the book's heroes, though that word doesn't really fit them. If the reader roots for them, it's only based on the merits that they are marginally less unlikable than most of the rest of the cast. That and, because of how brutally she was abused, and because no one from Blackwater did anything to save her, it's easy to understand Ruth's desire for vengeance and, by extension, Wes' anger at what happened to his wife. Even keeping that in mind, though, these two aren't exactly sympathetic characters. They're selfish to the point of narcissism, or like a weird kind of dual narcissism where neither of them cares about anyone but themselves and each other. Wes' sole purpose in life seems to be stirring up the shit, and Ruth's only goal is to help Wes do so. Then, after he dies, all she wants to avenge his death and her own damaged past in the most violent way possible. She specifically targets the one good event Blackwater has seen in ages, and one where she knows there will be an abundance of innocents, wanting to deliver as devastating a blow as she can. Wes and Ruth are vindictive, insanely so, and their unwillingness to let a single bygone be what it is gets one of them killed and makes the other into a mass murderer. They may not be the worst characters in this story, but they're still terrible people, not so much tragically flawed as stubbornly tragic.
     I can see that, like so many members of this series' cast, Ruth and Wes represent the horrific consequences of war, and particularly the American Civil War, which turned members of the same country and community against each other. That conflict is practically its own character in this book; it touched the lives of every character and, for many of them, the fighting continues even though the war is technically over. Boyd Johnson and his crew hide in the woods and murder black people in a futile, immature effort to send the message that the South hasn't given up the fight. In response, Atticus Mann—which has got to be the most uninspired, stereotypical, practically offensive name given to an African-American character in a good long while—hunts Boyd and company for the bounties placed on their heads. When Captain Lord is brought back to Blackwater to try and maintain the peace, he treats every member of the town like an enemy, torturing and killing them with enthusiastic sadism. Loveless seems to be of the opinion that wars cannot end, or at least that in the United States, the nation's problems and inherent evils are too great to be overcome simply because the government says the fighting's over. And that's a fine point to make, one I maybe even agree with, but Azzarello makes it very powerfully very early on, and then keeps making it over and over again incessantly. Things don't even get worse, they just stay as hopeless and despicable as they are when the book begins. There is rampant racism, violence, cruelty, dishonesty, and greed. It never lets up, it never changes, it just goes and goes and goes until everyone and everything in the series becomes intolerable.
     Not to say that this is an unrealistic depiction of the era in question. I'm not historically educated enough to know whether it is or isn't. But from a narrative standpoint, once you've made your points, repeating them ad nauseam serves little purpose. Azzarello buries the reader in one tragedy after another, but he doesn't go anywhere specific with it. Everything builds up to Ruth's massive attack on Blackwater, which is no more shocking or unthinkable an evil than much of what precedes it. Instead of having different things to say about the various topics touched upon, Loveless says the same thing about all of them: they're awful. It is unfiltered negativity, a stagnant cesspool of humanity's worst attributes and America's biggest flaws. I have no problem with a work criticizing this country or examining the human potential for evil, but there's got to be more to it than merely displaying how bad things can be. Unfortunately, Loveless doesn't seem concerned with anything other than piling on the darkness.
     This is true of the artwork, too. Originally drawn by co-creator Marcelo Frusin, the title established itself right away as gloomy and gory. Not that the blood and guts were exaggerated or overdone, but they weren't shied away from, either. And most of Frusin's art on this book is heavy on shadow, so dark and grim as to someimes be unclear. This remained the case when Werther Dell'Edera was on pencils later on, and was even truer of Daniel Zezelj's issues. Zezelj has a style that's sketchier than either of the other two artists, and even darker and more obscured because of it. His first three issues (#6-8) are used to fill in some of the background details of Atticus, Ruth, and Wes respectively, and a lot of the information covered is already established or, at least, could have been guessed at by an observant reader. These are the issues where Loveless begins to wear on me, to feel like it is spinning its wheels in the puddles of its own filth, and Zezelj's extra dark pencils are definitely a factor in that feeling. To his credit, though, he also draws the final three issues (#22-24) and those are the most interesting, original, and standout stories that Loveless ever tells.
     All three of the final issues are standalone tales, and each of them connects in some way to the events of initial saga of the Cutters and their personal war against Blackwater. There is the story of two escaped convicts who hate one another but are chained together, and stumble upon the shallow grave in which Ruth buried Wes in a hidden cave behind a waterfall. The fleeing prisoners kill each other in the same spot, so that the cave holds three corpses rather than one by the issue's close. Following that, we see what became of relatively minor character Jasper, the only citizen of Blackwater for whom Wes felt anything other than disgust. Jasper's tale is no cheerier than anyone else's, but he does at least get to spend a few years as a successful jockey before he dies. Finally, there is an issue centered on Foley, an Irishman who was one of the Union soldiers in charge of Blackwater, and who developed a vicious rivalry with Atticus Mann. In his solo story, Foley is released from prison after serving thirty years for murder, and then explains to a prostitute that the man he was convicted of killing is not only still alive, but wildly successful and rich. So Foley aims to finally commit the murder for which he's already served so much time, a compelling hook and an unexpected development for a character I didn't care about one way or the other beforehand. Loveless' last issue feels more like the first issue of an entirely different series, since none of Foley's time in Blackwater really matters in order to appreciate it. I would have rather liked to see who it is Foley's after, and to learn the circumstances of how he could be convicted if his victim is still alive. It's the most sympathetic any of the asshole characters in this book ever gets to be, and the most interesting story hook. Too bad it came so late in the series' history, and never got to be expanded upon at all.
     Too worried about being as ugly as possible, Loveless fails to contribute much of real value to the discussion(s) in which it wants to participate. After rapidly demonstrating the hideousness of post-Civil War America, the title stalls out, continuing to show the same things and make the same points for far too long. It opens with a lot of promise, and closes with the same, because in its last three issues it finally breaks free from itself and looks at some fresh material. In between, though, it drags dramatically, so that on the whole it's a lot more bad than good. If there was anyone to relate to, or if the book's point of view ever changed, I think it'd be a much stronger series overall. Instead, it's a relentless assault of depression and pain with too little purpose or reason behind it.

The Cheese Stands Alone: 100 Bullets #38

The Cheese Stands Alone is a semi-regular column featuring examinations of single issues that can be understood and appreciated on their own, without reading any of the preceding or following issues of the series.

Cole Burns will always be my favorite Minuteman. I'm sure it's partially because he's the first one we meet, and maybe somewhat because he has the coolest codename ("The Wolf") but mostly Cole just won me over with his understated swagger and love of fine tequila. So in a series with numerous successful standalone stories, I choose 100 Bullets #38 at least in part because it is a Cole-centric issue. And a hell of a fine one, too.
     Titled "Cole Burns Slow Hand," 100 Bullets #38 actually tells two complete stories that are largely self-contained, only tying together through the titular character in the final six pages. Each of the two tales is pretty straightforward and familiar---a man rejected by his former lover and an armed robbery at a bar---but they're told so tightly and laced with such humanity and humor that they hit the reader hard and remain memorable long afterward.
     The robbery portion of the narrative has an interesting shape to it. What at first seems like a pair of hardened criminals pulling an easy, small-time caper slowly reveals itself to in fact be two total amateurs losing all control over a simple crime. As Joe and Ronnie's complete lack of preparation and skill becomes more and more apparent, the tension in the room gradually builds. The hostages don't know what to expect from these half-cocked masked men, and the crooks themselves fall victim to infighting, steadily exacerbating an already tenuous situation. It's very well-scripted, but the real star of these scenes is artist Eduardo Risso. The perfectly menacing-yet-comical animal masks worn by the robbers, the goofy-but-sincerely-terrified bartender, the dirty looks passed between Ronnie and Joe, Cole's face when they open the door and point a gun at him---all of these purely visual details enrich and enliven what could've been an overly dark or ridiculous story in the hands of a less capable artist. That's not to say writer Brian Azzarello doesn't shine in the bar scenes, too, but where his script really pops off is in the other half of the issue, the conversation between Cole and his lost love Sasha. 
     All it takes is two lines, one from each character, and the relationship between Cole and Sasha is fully explained to the reader. He lobs a bit of sexual innuendo her way, and not only does she dodge it entirely, she immediately goes on the offensive, trying to get him out of her apartment since he no longer has a place in her heart. From there what we get is Azzarello writing some of his best, most human dialogue. Cole tries every tactic he can think of to talk Sasha back into loving him, and Sasha steadfastly refuses, explaining to Cole that after the damage he did the first time out and the amount of time that's passed since then, his shot at a second chance is long dead and buried. Their back-and-forth is so quick, so casual, so full of quips and jabs and things unsaid or half-said, it is immediately clear how well these two knew each other once, and also how strained things are between them now. We don't get all the details of their past romance because we don't need them, and because this issue isn't really about their history. If anything, it is about their futures, their ability to get over each other and move on. Sasha, through what was clearly great effort, has already brought herself to a place where that's possible, and so she never buckles to Cole, always ready with an answer to his various pleas. And as their conversation develops, we get to watch Cole himself arrive at a similar place. He may not be happy about it, but in the end he truly and fully accepts that he lost Sasha forever, and when he does leave, the long-term finality of the exit is clear.
     And then he wanders over to the bar, and we get one of the most satisfying conclusions of all time. Everybody gets just what they deserve in the end: Joe and Ronnie die, Sasha is free of Cole for good, and Cole...well, Cole goes right back to being the cold and efficient killer he was trained to be. If there is any way in which 100 Bullets #38 doesn't work on its own, independently from the rest of the series, it's that the end of the issue might be a tad confusing if you weren't familiar with Cole as a character beforehand. How, exactly, did this random guy manage to take down two armed felons who had the drop on him? But I would argue that, really, the final scene could just as easily clarify who Cole is as cloud the issue. It makes us all the more relieved that Sasha didn't take him back when we see him in the role of a merciless, callous, talented murderer. At the same time, because Cole's killing was not only in self-defense but also in defense of everyone else in the bar, and because Ronnie and Joe are such irredeemable characters, having Cole take them down in the end casts him, ultimately, as a hero. Well, hero of the robbery story, anyway.
     And therein lies the true genius of "Cole Burns Slow Hand." The main character gets to be the bad guy in one of its narratives and the good guy in the other. We are most certainly not upset to watch Cole leave Sasha's place, but we are equally pleased to see him arrive at the bar. Like many people, he's not particularly likable or despicable. He's human, as are all of Azzarello's characters, and that means he brings the good with the bad like the rest of us.
     There's a lot more I could discuss in this issue, because it really is brilliantly crafted. Like how deliciously paced the whole things is, never spending more than two or three pages at either location until the very end when the two tales collide. Or the awesome transitions Risso throws in, like when a smack or a fist clench or outstretched arms carry over from one story to the other. Or how when Sasha first enters her apartment, we hear Joe off-panel saying, "...and nobody gets hurt," so we know right away that Sasha is going to get hurt before the issue concludes. From the very beginning to the incredible closing line, 100 Bullets #38 is a fun, well-paced, thoroughly enjoyable read. But you don't have to take my word for it, because you can read and fully appreciate every page of it yourself right now.


100 Bullets #38 was published by Vertigo comics and is dated October 2002.