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I Wanna Be Spider Jerusalem!

By Andy Frisk
March 16, 2010 - 19:47

(Advisory: A few minor wordy dirties (mostly quoted) are contained herein. It’s an essay about a Warren Ellis work! What else did you expect?)

For those of you who have read Warren Ellis’ insanely brilliant Transmetropolitan, you know all about one of the greatest comic book characters ever created, Spider Jerusalem. For those of you who haven’t…well, what’s wrong with you! Quit reading this and read the trades, then come back and read this! (That was a spoiler alert by the way…) Transmetropolitan’s “hero” is the mega city of the future’s most read, revered, and reviled columnist. He’s Hunter S. Thompson taken to the nth degree. He’s foul mouthed, biased, outspoken, slightly deranged, drug and information addicted, heavily tattooed, anti-media, anti-politics and kind (almost saintly) toward children and the innocent, but most of all he’s a truth addict. (Don’t let the drug addiction worry you-in Spider’s future world drugs are mostly harmless and you can vaccinate yourself against cancer with a pill). If there’s one thing he can’t stand, its lies. As he writes his way through the mega city of tomorrow, exposing sex-addicted trans-species cult leaders, fascistic presidents and presidential candidates, Christian fundamentalist murder gangs (more on this joyous bunch later), and advertising conglomerates as the reprobate scum that they are, he really just wants to get at the truth behind it all. The best way to do this is to void the above mentioned evil doers of what they are so full of that they’re up to their eyeballs in it…bullshit (I warned you, gentle reader, that there were a few minor wordy dirties herein…) His greatest weapon is his mind and his gift for words (as well as his straightforward bluntness), but Ellis supplied Spider with what is perhaps one of the greatest metaphoric weapons of all time to ever appear in a comic book, the Bowel Disruptor.

The Bowel Disruptor is a non-lethal weapon of the future. With settings that range from “loose” to “watery” to “prolapse” and a name like Bowel Disruptor…well, I really don’t have to spell it out for you, do I? You can figure out what this devilishly hilarious device does. What it does metaphorically is even more devilishly hilarious, especially when one sees just who (and under what circumstances) Spider decides to blast with his trusty, uh…sidearm.

Granted, as I stated, Spider’s greatest weapons are his words, but when confronted with an evil doer he can’t help but use his other weapon. One of his first targets is The Beast. The Beast is the name Spider has given to the current President of The United States of the world of Transmetropolitan. This president has been fined by The Supreme Court “over an assault and battery charge,” had “political donations ruled as personal gifts” and “pissed in the economy…shat on the law and wiped (his) ass on the truth” (according to Spider via direct quote). When The Beast is run into by Spider in a restroom before he is to give a major donation speech, and has a bit of a war of words with Spider…well, it’s good for The Beast that he is already in the restroom.

Another of Spider’s victims, who were totally deserving of a dose of diarrhea, is a group of futuristic Christian fundamentalists who call themselves members of Rechristianity. They’re a group of holier than thou types who are “returning to the fundamental precepts of the Christian faith and its original cultural milieu” since “our president does favor a ‘back to basics’ approach in all things…” They’re getting back to basics by stoning (yes, literally stoning) sinners to death since “executions should be community projects…” And what, pray tell, are sins and sinners that warrant death by stoning? “Homosexuality, heresy, unchastity before marriage, cursing one’s parents…women who get abortions, (and) people who advise them to do so…” are. Spider, after interrupting one of their stonings and listening to their diarrhea of the mouth, provides them with another type of…well, again you get the picture. As Spider draws his trusty Disruptor, he asks, “Do you know what this is? It’s a Bowel Disruptor, and you are just full of shit.” (Please note, shocked reader, that I have nothing against Jesus. I love Jesus. Seriously, he was a truly radical man. “Love thy enemies. Do well to those who wish you ill.” What is more radical than these ideas, especially in today’s hyper-contentious world? Jesus rocked. It was the St. Pauls, Jimmy Swaggarts, Pat Robertsons, and Jerry Falwells that came along later that really screwed things up).

Sadly, there are many real life groups who border on the fanaticism that Warren Ellis portrays with his Rechristian characters, and they are in desperate need of some disruptive displacement of their bullshit metaphorically via a blast of Spider’s favorite sidearm. If Spider were a real character walking the streets today, crashing press conferences, doing interviews, and actually possessing a futuristic non-lethal weapon such as his fictional Bowel Disruptor, I think we can imagine who Spider would love to…disrupt. He’d probably start with the likes of Glen Beck and Bill O’Reilly (setting: “prolapse”), then work his way down the fanatic extremist chain to…well, I’m trying to think of a centrist or moderate, but there doesn’t seem to be many of those left does there…? (if there were Spider would set the Disruptor to “watery” for them, I’m sure), He’d end his run of disruptive disasters with the likes of Keith Olbermann (setting: “loose”). After the talking heads are relieved, then he’d probably love to take on Congress…but if he’s smart he’d disrupt his own bowels once and again, for who isn’t full of it sometimes? (Including columnists and pundits-especially those who claim to be one-yours truly not excluded).

As fun as this little thought exercise might be, and harmless (like Tyler Durden said, we’re not killing anyone, just setting them free), once we’re all voided of all the bullshit, what will we talk about? How will we interact? Stand up for our principles? Maintain our social contract? Laugh? We might finally have reached and gotten at the “truth,” but unfortunately, the truth is often a very ugly thing, and not very funny. Without the incessant talking heads, and their political and legal bullshit that makes the world go around, we’d probably all devolve into a state of anarchistic chaos. (Example: Puritan leaders in 1600’s Colonial America encouraged citizens to sue one another and higher lawyers, so as to keep them from beating each other to death when a cow wandered across the field into the wrong pasture and ate all their neighbor’s cows’ grass). So, is a little bullshit worth a little relative peace and stability? Is this the truth that Spider finally gets at near the end of Transmetropolitan’s run? Spider prided himself on ridding the world of bullshit and getting at the truth, except the truth ended up being an insanity. A little bullshit goes a long way to maintaining a little order, and at least a relative modicum of peace. Perhaps this is why Spider feigns his degenerative brain disorder. The only sane reaction to an insane world is insanity (or maybe just a little fake brain deterioration). Warren Ellis is anything but a happy ending kinda guy, but all might not appear as bleak as it seems. After all, Spider, while seeking his truth and attempting to flush some of the bullshit out of his fellow metropolitan’s lives, actually ends up contributing to the bullshit that makes the world go around, thusly preserving the relative stability of a rapidly destabilizing world. When he can’t do it anymore, he grooms a successor, and the “all singing, all dancing crap of the world” sings and dances on (thanks again Tyler, you rule).

So, no, I do not want to be Spider Jerusalem because I don’t want to carry that kind of burden. I’m not that guy. Who is? But wouldn’t it be great to have a metaphoric Bowel Disruptor though? Oh wait...I just might. I write. So do many of you. If you don’t, then you do at least talk, discuss, debate, state, and sometimes scream what you gotta say in some way. Do it. Just remember: we’re ALL a little heavy on the bullshit at times, so remember to flush.      

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12