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the_scrivener_named_bartleby 's review for:
Transmetropolitan Book One
by Warren Ellis
Comics are a visual medium. Fiction embodies an inherently fantastic premise where metaphors are represented visually.
The world of Transmetropolitan is a cyberpunk funhouse mirror that catches the things we’ve ignored and warps them into details that are directly in outer space face, at all times. There is no way to better describe Transmetropolitan than as an ugly, garish comic with advertisements for in-universe crap polluting each page. You hate the world every bit as much as Spider Jerusalem — a gonzo journalist with a hell of a catchy name and a foul mouth — because his is the refreshing kind of objective bitterness you wish you could proclaim at the injustice, bigotry, and overall cruelty of the world. Everything is timeless and feels like it could have come out yesterday — the fact it’s been 20 years is astonishing.
However, there are some problems. Now this may just be a personal gripe, but I would prefer Spider to actually interact with a larger story; a grander conspiracy he seeks to undermine, or some corruption that truly makes him sick. Now the stories aren’t bad; an especially powerful one ends with him calling out a convention of religious hucksters, then — dressed mockingly as Jesus — he flips the tables of the bastards while denouncing their cruel manipulation, and oh, get it? It’s like Jesus upending the tables of the moneylenders. That’s the kind of unsubtle, powerful kitsch I love. But without a real throughline or story lasting longer than slight character continuity or 3-5 “issues”, each story becomes more like a slightly longer Calvin and Hobbes strip criticizing sond limpdick promise or another the future claims to hold but that our present vaguely reflects a little. Nonetheless, its points are pretty solid. A great romp through cyberpunk with someone who understands the genre well.
The world of Transmetropolitan is a cyberpunk funhouse mirror that catches the things we’ve ignored and warps them into details that are directly in outer space face, at all times. There is no way to better describe Transmetropolitan than as an ugly, garish comic with advertisements for in-universe crap polluting each page. You hate the world every bit as much as Spider Jerusalem — a gonzo journalist with a hell of a catchy name and a foul mouth — because his is the refreshing kind of objective bitterness you wish you could proclaim at the injustice, bigotry, and overall cruelty of the world. Everything is timeless and feels like it could have come out yesterday — the fact it’s been 20 years is astonishing.
However, there are some problems. Now this may just be a personal gripe, but I would prefer Spider to actually interact with a larger story; a grander conspiracy he seeks to undermine, or some corruption that truly makes him sick. Now the stories aren’t bad; an especially powerful one ends with him calling out a convention of religious hucksters, then — dressed mockingly as Jesus — he flips the tables of the bastards while denouncing their cruel manipulation, and oh, get it? It’s like Jesus upending the tables of the moneylenders. That’s the kind of unsubtle, powerful kitsch I love. But without a real throughline or story lasting longer than slight character continuity or 3-5 “issues”, each story becomes more like a slightly longer Calvin and Hobbes strip criticizing sond limpdick promise or another the future claims to hold but that our present vaguely reflects a little. Nonetheless, its points are pretty solid. A great romp through cyberpunk with someone who understands the genre well.