Books

Transmetropolitan: Vol. 1

By Andy Frisk
March 17, 2009 - 06:45

Garth Ennis, who will forever be renown as the mad genius who gave us PREACHER, refers to TRANSMETROPOLITAN as “…the finest, blackest humor, and the purest hate, and a sense of justice hissed through gritted teeth,” in his introduction to this newly printed volume of Warren Ellis’ first six issues of his Vertigo classic.   No one could have said it better.

 

Perhaps the best way to grab one’s attention and give you a feel for this insanely good, provocative and thoughtful work is to hit one over the head with a list of Ellis’ mad future world concepts, gadgets, societies and religions.   Hold onto your seats, each and every one of these wacky ideas embody what SPIN Magazine referred to as “Brilliant future-shock commentary” on the back cover of this collected volume.

 

We have: human/alien hybrid “transients” ( trans-species to be exact-by choice no less) who wanna revolution or at least their former music manager turned sex freak pedophile does (don’t worry he gets his); voice-keyed physical cleaning units (no soap or water needed-it even flash burns off all body hair if not careful); “makers” (think STAR TREK replicators) that can produce anything, are the key appliance in every home and can get hooked on drugs (particularly “Tripwire 7.0…a hallucinogen simulator for live machinery”); Revivals (“our city’s slow time travelers, brought by cryogenics to a future world they cannot understand”); a two headed cigarette smoking cat (which Spider makes his pet), a Nazi Gestapo like police force; speaking apartment doors; illegal bowel disruptor pistols; a U.S. President with any number of venereal diseases who has to hire private security; human implants and wiring which allows for the accomplishment of any cyber-punk or enhanced bodily action; “air Jesus” sports shoes that allow you to walk on water; “buy bombs” which are burst of commercials that, once viewed, play back as commercials in your dreams while you sleep; Ebola Cola; and, literally , a number of religions for everyone and anyone, promising anything (oh, and a religion-capping movement to stop the rapid growth of religions-hundreds a day- that “just won’t work”).

 

In all this mass information overload and super scientifically advanced future world we get one voice of reason, or at least truth, journalist and two books behind contracted author, Spider Jerusalem.   He is at once a manic and maniacally perverse purveyor of what is, after digging through the craziness of his appearance, speech and drug fuelled rants, very biting religious and socio-political commentary that reeks of the truth.   It seems all Spider wanted to continue to do was live in his mountain retreat in a drug induced stupor but his pesky book contract, yet unfulfilled, calls him back to “The City: and all its future-shock insanity.   Spider is destined to be The City’s voice of truth and reason though, because there really seems to be few others even capable of comprehending the concept of “truth” (with the possible exception of his former stripper/bodyguard, current grad student female assistant).  

 

Spider, in the first six issues alone, stops a murderous Gestapo-like crack down on Transients who were set up by The City’s police force to look like dangerous rioters instead of demonstrators, destroys, mentally, emotionally, and commercially a number of self serving, lying talk show hosts and guests and, very Jesus-like, cleanses a convention hall of fake self promoting, also self serving, and worse yet, potentially destructive, bigoted and abusive religious leaders AND their religions (in a manner that would cause Bill Maher to pale with admiration) by typing, phoning in, yelling and exposing (along with other things) the TRUTH.   Spider truly is the only person in The City who even seems capable of standing up and, as clichéd as it is, yelling that the emperor has no clothes.   Once we begin to realize this fact, the weight of Spider’s explosions of verbiage, actions, and quirks are revealed to be the ravings of a mad man who has been driven to the brink (and is attempting to return) by the lack of substance and honesty in a society in love with its forms of escapism from cyber drugs to insane religions that thinly veil acts of perverseness as sacraments.   Spider himself though is unwittingly playing the role of leader and messiah of his own type of religion, or so it seems.   His religion is the TRUTH and its must be told.   As Spider rants from the roof of a taxi dressed while he’s dressed in a tinfoil halo, his “air Jesus” sneakers and priestly robes, “I am sick of The City’s loose change and spare sanity sucked up and lived off by an ever increasing pile of parasitical (expletive deleted)-ticks incapable standing up and dealing with the world on their own.”   Aren’t we all from time to time?

 

Overall, TRANSMETROPOLITAN is a biting social and political satire that makes you think while doing its best to fake you into believing you’re not.   It truly is a classic of its own type in the world of sequential art that comes along only once in a while and needs to be savored for gracing us with its presence.    

Rating: 10 /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12