Reviewed by Michael Tymczyszyn.
TRANSMETROPOLITAN #25-27
"Here To Go", "21 Days In The City", "Monstering!"
Written by Warren Ellis
Illustrated by Darrick Robertson and Rodney Ramos
Published July-Sept. 1999 by DC Comics/Vertigo
TRANSMETROPOLITAN is the story of the far-flung future, as viewed by gonzo journalist Spider Jerusalem. He writes a column called "I Hate It Here" for a paper simply called "The Word". In these three issues you get a clearer portrait of him then almost ever before, and it is a scary fucking picture. Here is a man, who literally hates everything he sees around him, and yet fights tooth and nail for this future world. Not in the usual comic book way, with a macho slug fest, but with words, with a daily column read by seemingly the entire populace of this future society.
It is this odd dichotomy that keeps me reading TRANSMET (as it is affectionately known among it's fans). Seeing how a man who truly detests his world can somehow still harbor hope that there should be more to it. Of course, the non stop violence and humor don't hurt either.
Issues twenty-five through twenty-seven are no exception to this. Spider is at a low point in his life, and as a result is angrier then he has ever been. He has spent the preceding six issues covering the presidential election from his home, "The City", and revealed to the populace that while one of the candidates was a vicious, "might makes right" kind of bastard, the other was a sociopath who murdered the first girl Spider had dated in several years. Guess who the populace voted in?
Twenty-five is a quiet issue, by most standards, with introspective looks at Spider's past, as told by Spider. He is being interviewed by something like a future tabloid news show, this one interested in celebrities thoughts on death. The often tender and horrible stories are in some ways an excellent jumping on point to the book, but in other ways are almost unintelligible to a new reader. TRANSMET is going to be a novel, and in fact is, it's just a novel you can't skip ahead to read the final chapter of yet. And reading these, is much like reading chapter twenty-five of a sixty chapter book; it doesn't connect with you the same way as if you had read all the preceding chapters. Keep this in mind when picking it up. You can follow it, but it'll take some work on your part.
Back to the story. It is an issue about death, and the way that death has affected the character we have all grown to hate and love with the same breath. And in the four short vignettes we are given, we see all forms of death, and all of Spider's varied reactions to it, from horror to amusement to true sorrow. You also meet Spider's assistants in this issue, two women who are almost as deranged as Spider himself.
Issue twenty-six is done entirely in splash pages, beautifully drawn full page spreads, with bits of Spider's column running through the book, connecting the different stories, and separating them. You get a true sense of the majesty and wonder, but also the confusion and disillusionment of this future world in these twenty two pages, ostensibly twenty-one days in the city. Offhand comments about his assistants are the only reference to them in this issue, and near the end we get back to the issues of politics and betrayal that the book seems to be focusing ever tighter on. The new president is mentioned, and also some of the history of the last year of the book. We get muffled references to the death of a woman Spider may or may not have loved, and also the vow that both men have taken to destroy one another. Twenty six is gorgeous, and poignant.
Twenty-seven, the final issue of this review, and the latest issue of the book, is the most direct prelude to the coming storyline. On the surface it is about a Senator accused of funding and, indeed, participating, in pornography. He is hounded throughout the book by Spider and his two assistants, who are conducting a form of journalism called "Monstering". It is near the end of the book that we are given a clear image of Spider as a person, and it is a person that makes us all keep reading. He is a journalist who will betray any confidence, any friendship or integrity, to get at the Truth. This is his sole desire, his sole purpose; to expose the truth, in the hopes that it can make the world a better place.
Perhaps it is because this is so rare in fiction, let alone in real life, to find a character of such singular devotion to an ideal, that readers find Spider so fascinating. But once you read his stories you'll become hooked, if only to see if the Truth really can help the world. It is cynicism to think that that searching of the Truth is an overly simplified ideal, and I think it is Spider's lack of real cynicism and yet outer exterior as the most cynical bastard on the planet that makes the book great. At TRANSMET'S core is the story of one lone writer struggling to free the minds and bodies of the world. He really does hate it there, but he still has hope that one day he might not.
Recommended.
TRANSMETROPOLITAN #25-27 available now as single issues. Earlier issues are collected as BACK ON THE STREETS, LUST FOR LIFE and YEAR OF THE BASTARD.
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