Transmetropolitan

December 6, 2009 at 12:19 pm (Anything, Humor) (comics, journalism)

Hey bloggers,

Its certainly been a while since you saw me here in Indie-retro, but let me tell you I have not forgoten you all and that’s why I’m coming back to you with a post about one of my favorite comics/graphic novels (it is actually a comic but I’m willing to have a debate over it), Transmetropolitan.

Transmetropolitan -as wikipedia wisely describes- is a post-cyberpunk comic written by Warren Ellis with art by Darick Robertson. Published by DC comics it ran from 1997 to 2002 and its supposed to be a homage to Hunter S. Thompson. But that my friends is all technical rubbish, it really is a comic about a crazy rouge journalist called Spider Jerusalem who writes one column a week in a newspaper called the Word. Ok I admit it, it sounds boring when I say it, but trust me it is the most sarcastic, nasty, and incredibly refreshing comic I’ve read. So here are a few things that made me love the comic:

Spider Jerusalem, He is an incredible character, he makes fun of people, storms into bars, newspapers and pretty much everywhere he wants using bombs, guns and his favorite: the Bowel Disruptor (and that my fellow bloggers is a gun that makes people shit themselves literally).
The filthy assistants: Yelena Rossini and Channon Yarrow, they are Spider’s bodyguards more than they are his assistants but they are incredibly fun. Yelena is a daughter of a rich philanthropist or something similar, and Channon is an ex-stripper.
The culture: ok the city is similar to new york in many ways, and it’s got several details in it that make it awesome. The TV for example has Anthrax Cat, and Sex Puppets (imagine Sesame Street but full of nude girl and sexual imagery). It’s a city in which a new religion is born every hour, and people are able to change their body buying genetic traits from any species known to man, and I could go on for ages talking about this, so I’ll stop now before I embarrass myself.
Th Politics: Yep my friends it is about politics, its not however about the politics in which we live right now but about the politics in which the city dwells. Trust me between police brutality, corrupt presidents and the power of the media it is one interesting piece of fiction.

Those are some of the reasons but you’ll have to read it to get the real feeling of the comic. But I’ve got good news for the ones that I got interested in the comic, you can download for free the first issue in pdf format form DC comics just by clicking here.