3 out of 5

A good concept, with some fun ideas. Certainly rough around the edges, belying its indie nature, but a solid effort overall.

Wild Bullets is a murder mystery, though it’s rather light on the “mystery” part, just sort of filling in randomish story details until we get to a conclusion. But that’s fine: while Greg Wright’s dialogue is plucked from pretty generic bits and pieces for his various narrators – a detective type, a mad scientist, etc. – that seems partially purposeful, leaning into the different pulp varieties, and the narrative actually escalates in a rather unpredictable fashion to counter that.

Our narrators are the various children of the Bullet family – four in total, with each of their parts of the story getting a different illustrator. When the maid shows up dead in the family home, we cycle through their POVs to get the whole story. Again, though, this isn’t really actually compiling clues or anything – there’s not a mystery, and those POVs don’t necessarily add anything that couldn’t have come from anyone else’s POV – but it’s an effective way to give Wright the opportunity to try out those varying styles, and with the various artists. That said, besides the first section – the detective – the art and tone don’t differ greatly in the subsequent sections, but you could go either way with opinions on that: that it’d be better to choose artists with more drastic differences in their style, and pushing more on a specific “voice” for each section; or maybe it actually is beneficial to have a more streamlined flow throughout the book.

Either way, Wild Bullets – if maybe lacking in definition – is an enjoyable, actiony romp.