Week 11: Transmetropolitan


My reading for this week was four issues of Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis Darick Robertson and it’s a romp and a half. When I started reading, I didn’t realize that it was set in the future. One thing to note is that, off the bat, this comic is raunchy as hell. The first line setting the scene is literally “Up a goddamn mountain.” It really sets up the irreverence that this character (and I’m assuming also author) have for this world. Then he blows up a bar because he has a missile launcher and he can get away with that I guess. It’s not until he gets to the tollbooth that I realize it’s a science-fiction future story. With the first shot of the city, Ellis caught my attention and wouldn’t let go.
            This is a world where kitchen appliances can get high on robot drugs and people can change their species to any kind of animal, including Aliens. You can upload your brain into computers and essentially live forever, although I wonder if it really is a whole person being transferred and not just cut-and-pasted, then killing the human body. This comic sort of predicted live-streaming and sharing Google Documents. I was a little confused as to why he was calling his device a “typewriter” instead of a laptop, but that might be partially because they weren’t as common in 1997.
            The protagonist has the coolest name in the history of comics, Spider Jerusalem, and mis-matched glasses (because the machine that made them was high). Spider comes off as pretentious and judgmental, but he’s too much fun to watch. He will threaten, yell, and shoot at anyone and claim it’s in the name of reporting. His unpredictability keeps the reader on their toes: One minute he’s blowing up a bar and the next he adopts a stray kitten with two faces. He doesn’t respect anyone, especially his old friends.
Spider has friends in high places most likely because of his writing career, including Fred Christ, the leader of the “transient” genetic movement who is mainly in it for the money and sex. The genetic movement seems to be looked down on by Spider, but he openly accepts the brain uploading culture. There might be a movement that was popular at the time of the release that the genetic movement is actively paralleling, but if this is a commentary on transgender people I will be upset about it.
Transmetropolitan is bonkers, but in a great way. I want to read more, but I can’t access issue #5 on the share. Maybe I’ll see if it’s in the library, or I’ll buy volume two.

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