Transmetropolitan

Written by: Warren Ellis
Illustrated by: Darrick Robertson
Released by: Vertigo

"I want to eat a swan…..is that wrong of me?”              – Spider Jerusalem 

Cue-Bald, lewd, crude, tattooed, chain-smoking, pissed off, and hot (yeah women can objectify too). Can you think of any other way you’d want your anti-hero? Well you’d be wrong. I picked up the first volume, and he wasn’t staring at me, flexing his man-tits, or posing with some lame ass weapon of justice, a symbol of who gives a four-eyed, flying, shit. He was just lighting a cigarette, minding his own business. He didn’t give a fuck that I was about to read his story, that I was about to discover my favorite series. That’s Spider Jerusalem. He doesn’t give a fuck what you think. So much that he moved to the mountain to escape people, and their cities. He thinks everyone’s an asshole. And who wants to be knee-deep in asshole. Problem was… while he escaped the rat’s nest of the cities he also escaped his ability to write, a real issue for a journalist.

You can’t write about the trash of the world if you’re not immersed in its cesspools. When his agent and meal-ticket finds out he hasn’t even started book one of a two book deal after 5 years, Spider is called back from the mountain to the traffic-choked streets, and the billboard cluttered skylines, of a city sucked up its own ass, to cover the new presidential election. So it’s back to the grind, back to the bowel disruptions, drug-addicted machines, dream commercials, plastic surgery alien junkies, all balanced with a diet of Eskimo take-out.

It's cyberpunk personified. Its reality exaggerated at a thousand miles an hour. It’s pissed-off on paper. It’s the truth walking on water in a pair of Air Jesus’ with a trash bag full of puppies for the children’s hospital. I love Spider. As my buddy Gord told me “If you could ‘Weird Science’, one person it would be Spider”. His wit is as sharp as nails hammered into a baseball bat. One he slammed right into my heart. He sees through the users, the liars, the fakes, the swindlers, and all the old & new scum. Spider is the foul-mouthed salty-dog spitting strings of venom into a cyberpunk city gone haywire, and you love every twisted moment of him. He’s torn. Complex and conflicted, he despises people, but wants them to stand up, and fight like demons for their rights even if it means taking the lesser of two assholes.

Picture a tattooed, pissed off Hunter S. Thompson with a dual edge! Darrick Robertson’s art captures Jerusalem’s fevered fucked-up, cluttered reality. Every character no matter how minor is perfectly detailed. You can stare for hours. Not to mention this series has some of the coolest covers since the cucumber got sliced bread. We’re talking “sleeve” material here. If you pick this up, and don’t love it right away, it’s simply because you just don’t get it. A healthy hearty meaty mix of social political satire that keeps its action balls to the wall. In a world where even machines are drug addicts, and transplants go far past cosmetic; Spider is the gorilla-journalist god!!

                                                                                                                                                     This is my favorite comic series of all time, the one that will stay with me forever. So if you’re looking for a gonzo ride straight into the lower intestine of a futuristic metropolis, this graphic grenade will blow the lead clean out of your pencil!! It’s just plain fucking awesome!