Transmetropolitan
Transmetropolitan is a postcyberpunk comic book series by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson about the battles of Spider Jerusalem, infamous renegade gonzo journalist of the future. Jerusalem dedicates himself to fighting the corruption and abuse of power of two successive United States presidents; he and his assistants strive to keep their world from turning more dystopian than it already is.
The series of individual comics ended after five years in publication with the sixtieth issue and is reprinted in ten-volume graphic novel format. Two collections of short vignettes illustrated by different artists have also been published, I Hate It Here and Filth of the City.
Story
Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.
Spider Jerusalem begins the story as a long-haired private estate dweller who has retired from the City life, and from writing for a living. When he runs out of money, he is forced to pack his car and drive south back into the City —a twisted amalgam of pervasive consumerism, sex, violence, and drugs. The City (never named, but the Statue of Liberty appears to give it away as New York) is the largest in the world, and the center of the political and social culture. Jerusalem returns to working for his old partner Mitchell Royce, who now edits The Word, the City's largest newspaper.
The first of the two main storylines centers around Jerusalem's relationship to the current president, the man whose common nickname "The Beast" is among one of the various reasons he has for hating Spider. Spider soon picks up two sidekicks, Yelena Rossini and Channon Yarrow, who become his full-time partners in his journalistic battles.
The second storyline involves the election and corrupt presidency of Gary Callahan, nicknamed "The Smiler," soon revealed to be even worse than The Beast, whom Spider had badly wanted to see leave office. Jerusalem's investigations delve into the new president's well-cleansed background, immoral campaign tactics, and the assassination of Vita Severn—the Smiler's campaign manager, to whom Spider had taken a rare liking.
Politics
The comic is reported to be an expression of Ellis' views on politics and consumerism. Ellis has described it as the comic where he can finally get a few things off his chest.
Some of the characters and events in Transmetropolitan seem loosely based on reality. Spider Jerusalem (named after science fiction author Spider Robinson) himself is clearly a futuristic incarnation of Hunter S. Thompson (as well as an alter ego for Warren Ellis). In this respect, Jerusalem is a literary half-brother to Uncle Duke from Trudeau's Doonesbury. Similarly, the Smiler is identified with Thompson's nemesis, President Richard Nixon through caricatures of key moments in Nixon's career, such as the Checkers speech and his helicopter departure from the White House. Indeed, both the Beast and the Smiler paraphrase Nixon's comment, "When the President does it, that means it's not illegal." With his fixed grin, penchant for spin and self conscious 'man of the people' image, the Smiler also bears a passing resemblance to Tony Blair, Ellis' own Prime Minister. The mass uprisings and clashes with police forces that occur in the series may be inspired by the social unrest of the sixties and early seventies.
Publishing
Originally published under DC Comics's now-defunct Helix sub-label, Transmetropolitan moved to the fairly popular Vertigo imprint from issue #13 onwards.
Continuity
As perhaps befits a story involving so much psychedelic drug use, Transmetropolitan contains a number of continuity errors. The most noticeable (and the hardest to explain away) occurs near the conclusion of the second story arc, when the photographer Mary produces a picture supposedly taken with a camera which she did not receive until well after the event she had photographed. Other "glitches" include the name of a hotel, originally reported as the Hotel Fat and later changed to the Hotel Avalon--even in a speech repeated otherwise word-for-word from an earlier issue.
