posted 02-18-2002 05:33 AM               

If you’re expecting the third 100 Bullets collection to shed more light on the Minutemen, the Trust, and the assorted conspiracies hinted at in Split Second Chance, you will be disappointed. Hang Up on the Hang Low collects a single story arc that initially seems disconnected from the overall plot of the series, and even when Azzarello shows that this is decidedly not the case, there are no answers to be found here – only more questions.

‘Loop’ Hughes is a young black man growing up in the inner neighborhoods of Philadelphia, living on the outskirts of gang life and trying not to get drawn in. Agent Graves shows up with his attache case of untraceable bullets, puts Loop on the trail of his father Curtis – a man Loop has never known – and gives him a choice: he can get revenge, or he can, at last, try to build a relationship with the man. Loop chooses the latter, which draws him further into the criminal world; Curtis Hughes is an enforcer for a local loan shark, and soon the son is following his father on his rounds, with results that are both better than Loop could have hoped for and straight from his worst fears.

Azzarello does a solid job on the characterization here; Loop is an effective protagonist on the level of Dizzy from the series’ first arc. The themes of estranged-fathers-and-sons and honor-among-thieves have been repeatedly mined by writers, but these are rich veins and Azzarello strikes a good lode here. (All right, enough with that metaphor.) When Loop and his father argue about the merits of baseball versus basketball, or discuss the best way to address someone who might be trying to cheat you, the bits are far from throwaways; they’re a real glimpse at these people’s minds. Those elements lift this beyond the typical hardened-crooks-go-for-the-big-score story into the realm of truly affecting drama.

As I mentioned, there are no real new answers to the underlying plot here, although it’s quickly clear that on this particular case, Graves has an agenda of his own in giving Loop the gun and bullets – many of the characters here have prior connections to each other, unbeknownst to Loop. (The contrast between those stories where Graves is trying to manipulate people as part of his larger scheme against the Trust, and those where Graves just wants to give someone the opportunity to right a wrong, is one of the more fascinating dimensions of this series.) Azzarello throws Graves’ own moral ambiguity into sharp focus here, and reminds us that there are very few traditional ‘good’ guys here for us to root for.