Okay, so after this (and his cool-as-heeeell Adam Strange story in Wednesday Comics), I think I finally get Paul Pope. What's more, I want to make work like Paul Pope (me and everyone else ever.) Not that I want to make his books, or clones of his books (although I couldn't say I'd mind if that came out of my pen one day) -- simply that there's an energy, a fluidity to his work that's rare in comics. I feel like he drew this book faster than it took me to read it. It feels like it just...happene...

Perhaps not as solid (or heavy) as Heavy Liquid, but in some ways it is more ambitious. It interweaves various stories together in a thematic way. This is made all the more impressive by the fact that, according to Pope, this book's genesis was primarily a series of shorter pieces that he had planned on publishing separately, but then DC asked him to string them together into a larger narrative. The theme of going for life or your ideas, 100%, runs throughout.

Post-modern yet inextricably rooted in the present for better or worse, 100% mascarades as not-too-distant-future sci-fi when really it’s love story. While the characters play on tropes, they just slightly succeed to be more than those. The grayscale artwork is vivid and hallucinatory but often function is sacrificed for form, making it unreadable. Fascinating but ultimately I’m left wanting more from story and artwork.

Despite the gritty, futuristic-noir setting of this graphic novel, it’s essentially the intertwining of three love stories. The story opens on the corpse of a dancer found in an alleyway. I thought this was going to be part of the story’s inciting incident or foreshadow it, but -- in reality -- it just served to establish that we’re on the wrong side of the tracks. The same might be said of a scene involving the purchasing of a gun. [I’ll let the reader figure out whether it was a “Chekov’s gun....

Had to get this through ILL, glad I didn't just buy it. Paul Pope did a very good Batman elseworlds story called Batman Year 100 so I figured I'd see what else he'd done.This story, set in the future for no discernible reason, features a cast of characters who aren't happy with their lives. One is an academic turned drifter, one fears for her safety in a world without guns, another runs a strip club but dreams of pouring her life savings into a coffee shop. They're joined by a cutting edge artis...

A comic you can make into a movie. It's really not that hard to see what comics are movie material and what ones should be left alone. One of my favorites. Although I kinda jock Pope so....call me bias?

imperfect future !!!!!!!

An episodic look at the lives of people connected to the same strip club, in a near-future world where the latest porn is to have sensors that show you people's insides, because everything else has been seen and done before. That and a unified American police force using flying cars will cause it to be labelled sci-fi, but there's no genre for this really. It just shows people with their own ideas of success – art, boxing, surviving a shift at the club – and an overall lack of human companionshi...

100% swerves between the experimental and the artist (still) trying to find his style. With obvious resemblances to Heavy Liquid, from the predecessor we can see significant improvements that are continually built upon in the successor. This story is far more coherent and there is much (more) ado about the characters.Harsh peltings of pencil-work fiercely paint a story that is engaging as it is dazzling. Harsh depictions of an equally uncaring city revel in a density that is as turgid as it is u...

This review was originally published on IdentityTheory.Com on July 1st, 2009100% is a love story, after a fashion. Or, more accurately, three loosely connected love stories, all told without so much as a drop of sentimental syrup. Make no mistake, it’s still science fiction, but it’s a very near future–2038–in a still-very-recognizable New York City. The indie sensibility is more immediate than any far-fetched futurology, and while the setting is very present in the story, it never quite overtak...

I’ve never read anything quite like it. Gritty, sexy, grotesque, and overwhelming. It’s like Jack Kirby spliced with Philip K. Dick.

Paul Pope’s 100% is made up of three love stories, interweaving with one another, against an ominous backdrop of a futuristic New York. Daisy/Dollar Bill is a gastro dancer where she dances in clubs that project her insides as giant 3D holograms for punters to get off on with busboy John as her star-crossed lover. Strel and her estranged gastro-boxing husband Haitous slowly rekindle their relationship while Strel’s friend Kim falls for Eloy, a performance artist, whose work consists of collectin...

To refer to Paul Pope as the rockstar of comic book artists is something of an understatement since he actually is a DJ and multimedia artist on the side, lives in NY, collaborates with fashion houses, and dates burlesque dancers. I’m not ashamed, even at my age, to admit I wish I was Paul Pope. His style is a wonderful combination of European and Japanese influences—equal parts manga, Moebius and punk brush splatter. Pope has managed to create a unique marriage of ligne claire refinement and ma...

I expected a grimy dystopia, maybe with some crime elements ala Sin City or Blade Runner. Instead, 100% provided a trio of unlikely love stories. They still take place in a bleak, sex-obsessed future, but it's not quite as grim as you might expect.The book opens with a dead woman in an alleyway, but that plot point is quickly shuffled aside. Instead, we focus on the lives of two young women and a young man working in a gastro parlor (gastro = strip club, except you can see a woman's insides). Th...

Paul Pope....there really isn't that much to be said about this guy. He got nominated for Eisner, worked for big guys like DC and indies like Dark Horse, grew up in America, his landscapes are typically American and his characters reek of Tarantino. Pope's drawings, on the other hand, is unconventional for mainstream comics. There's a heavy, beastly quality to the inkling and the lines are so messy it's similar to lino prints. Most of the time it feels like I'm reading individual art panels rath...

Synthesizing romance comics with the sexy global dystopias popular since the early 1980s, this 2005 graphic novel was aptly described by one Goodreads reviewer as "a cyberpunk Love, Actually." 100% charts three love stories through a future New York City. The action centers on a strip club where the women dance "gastro"—that is, they not only take off their clothes, but display to the throng a digital projection of their throbbing innards as well. A nomadic sex worker named Daisy gets a job ther...

I gotta admit, when I was reading this I could feel all of the feels at once. You have a genuine love for these characters because they all seem to go through some sort of depression. They're always looking for some kind of breakthrough or high. With the futuristic technology of one dancer that's a given. But what about when things get real? It's all to easy to push things away and live in the fantasy until you're shaken out of it. But what about getting sucked into another fantasy? How long can...

Impressively different from Paul Pope's other works. The artwork is dangerously similar--however, in my opinion, this is the opposite of a complaint. Very intriguing storylines about humans, philosophy and psychology. I greatly enjoyed this book, although I couldn't be trusted to give Paul Pope anything less than 5 stars.My only complaint is that it isn't in color, because Pope uses color like no one else... But I suppose it works for this book!

Touching story of searching for personal connections in a world where objectification has reached a whole new level. Paul Pope is one of my top 5 favorite artists so the story could have sucked and I'd be fine with it! But it didn't so this is a great book!

I know a lot of people were disappointed by the story in 100%, but I think that is because there was no grandeur, no meta-narrative, no world claiming story that affected things on a large scale and had some larger meaning. Paul pope instead chooses to narrate the things that generally tend to complicate our lives, the smaller things that occur in our more intimate relationships with other people and work places etc. and don't concern the rest of the global population. In this, I feel he was e