When I heard that 100 Bullets writer Brian Azzarello was teaming with his Hellblazer collaborator, Marcelo Frusin, for a new Western series from Vertigo, I was immediately hooked. Not surprisingly, the creators bring the same sort of dark intensity and rough appeal to the Western genre as they did to the crime and horror genres, but unfortunately, there is a lack of clarity in some of the storytelling in this inaugural issue. Like his other characters, Azzarello's protagonist is hardly a hero; he's nasty and acts out of self-interest. But this time around, I think Azzarello takes things too far; Wes Cutter is so unlikable here that he's rotten, and it's going to be hard to cheer him on, even if he's in the right.
The Civil War is over; the North was won, and its values have been forced upon the South. Life as people in the South have known it is over, as U.S. soldiers patrol the countryside, bullying their way across the landscape. Land is expropriated, and gangs of outlaws wander unfettered. One man, a former Confederate soldier long thought to be dead, returns home to Blackwater and is met with stares of disbelief and fear. Cutter is a dangerous man, willing to kill at the drop of a hat, and he's headed home to his land and to rejoin his wife, but the townsfolk try to warn him that his home is no longer his own.
Frusin brings his trademark dark, shadowy style to bear in a new genre, and it's an approach that makes his art such a good match for Azzarello's scripts. The shadows and silhouettes sometimes work against the story, though. The showdown between Cutter and what seems to be his former posse is a bit hard to follow because when we see only outlines, all of the characters look pretty much the same. Furthermore, action takes place later in the book on two homesteads -- the Johnsons' and on Cutter's -- but it takes a couple of readings to differentiate between the two settings. Frusin does an excellent job of keeping the dark rider who's accompanying Cutter off to the side and out of sight. It creates an air of the supernatural around the character, which makes the revelation at the end of the issue so effective.
Having soldiers causing problems on two Blackwater farms certainly causes confusion; it's too bad the script doesn't offer clearly cues as to what's going on and where in those scenes. I get what maeks Cutter an anti-hero in this story -- he's just taking back what is rightly his, no matter what the law or history has decided. It's just that his completely unwielding personality, his willingness to go to the extreme first before exhausting other avenues... it's not a character trait that I found I appreciated much. Basically, Cutter is unreasonable. He likes trouble too much.
Of course, the final scene in the book, in which Azzarello turns his attention to Cutter's relationship with his missing wife, helps to humanize the character. Cutter's focus on his wife goes beyond love and into obsession. Azzarello demonstrates that Cutter brings an edge and even mean streak to that obsession, but the emotion remains the same, allowing us to connect with the character on some level. 6/10
