Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson
There are times I look around me and think, "I love living in the future." I mean think about all that we have - even the simplest phones can call anywhere in the world, and the higher end ones are basically backup brains. Surgery that used to require horrible invasion can now be done with a fraction of the time and the pain. We can cure diseases that a century ago would have been thought of as afflictions by God. Our transportation networks have grown to a point where there is practically nowhere on Earth that cannot be reached in twenty-four hours, and advances in communication have provided us with more information than our ancestors could have hoped to see in their (briefer) lifetimes.
We live in an age of wonders, when you really think about it.
Leave it to Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson, then, to show us what living in the future really means.
Transmetropolitan is set in the far, far future - so far ahead that even they don't know what year it is. It's set a in future that can do anything - cure any disease, bring people back from the dead, synthesize consumer goods from blocks of inert matter.... You can turn yourself into a dolphin for a day or into a sentient dust cloud for the rest of eternity. It's a future that defies imagination.
And yet, it is very similar to now. The same problems, the same mistakes and the same short-sightedness that plague us will be around in the future, no matter how good the technology is. Despite being able to have anything you want, there is still greed. Despite being able to reassemble matter on an atomic level, there is still hunger and homelessness. Despite the human form becoming malleable in a thousand different ways, there is still discrimination. This perfect future has a flaw, and like so many perfect things, its flaw is its people.
Our guide to this future is Spider Jerusalem, a celebrated journalist whose love of the truth eclipses his hate of the world he lives in, and he's determined to set the City straight, even if it kills him. He's an analogue of Hunter S. Thompson, with a little H.L. Mencken thrown in for balance, and he's the most awesome character to grace comics in a long time.
Spider is angry because he has to come back to The City, the nameless hypertropolis that both sustains him and drives him mad. He looks around and sees the ugliness under the shiny plastic shell of society and is instantly furious that no one has done anything about it yet. What's more, it's time to vote for President again, and this time it looks like it's a race between an incumbent so horrible that he was nicknamed The Beast and an utterly amoral snake called The Smiler, who wants to be President just because that's what he wants. Spider Jerusalem, whether he wants it or not, holds the keys to power for both of these men, and even his high moral sense isn't able to tell him which of the two villains should get it.
Keen observers of 20th century history will see a lot reflected in this series, deliberately and clearly, and Spider is Ellis' avatar His word is beyond dispute and his decisions are beyond question, which is why Warren Ellis is a kind of internet cult figure these days. He created a character that was a brash loudmouth who could scream the things that we're all thinking, but someone with whom we feel an almost immediate and unshakable sympathy. He's enough to make me want to be a journalist.
The future of Transmetropolitan is a place where Ellis was able to tell us everything that had been bugging him, from the hyper-escalation of technology to corrupt government to social apathy. The first few issues, before the real meat of the story kicks in, are "soapbox" issues, where Ellis rails against everything that's going wrong in our time by making it so much worse in the future. My favorite of these, of course, is the religion issue (#6, God Riding Shotgun) where Spider crashes - and trashes - a convention for new religions. Alien Love Gardeners, the Church of Cobain, and the Church of Release, where trepanation can be practiced as an act of evangelism are excellent examples.
Eventually the story settles down with the arrival of the Presidential Election and Spider's determination to bring down The Smiler no matter what it costs him.
The writing in this story is fantastic, of course, as we would expect nothing less from Warren Ellis. Spider is utterly, completely foul-mouthed, so don't let your children read it unless you want them to shock sailors. But there are touching moments and angry tirades and passionate speeches that dig right into your heart, and whether you love Spider or hate him, you know he's speaking from the core of his soul.
The art, too, is outstanding. It takes great skill to make such ugliness look beautiful, but Darick Robertson certainly has it. The City is a living, breathing place, and it has all of the beauty and horror of a living organism, if you look closely enough. Robertson can render gleaming cityscapes alongside the hollow eyes of child prostitutes with equal care and detail. While you read, be sure to look, because every panel is worth looking at.
Transmetropolitan is a story about truth, really. Or if we want to be specific, The Truth. Spider believes in The Truth, no matter who it hurts, and his mission as a journalist is to discover and promulgate the truth. Whether it's the truth about the alien-human hybrid prostitutes delivered to the presidential suite or the truth about a level of poverty in the City that would shame a third-world nation, Spider's aim is to show people what their world looks like and force them to take action. Unfortunately, he's fighting an uphill battle.
You see, much like in our world, people don't actually like truth. It's uncomfortable and unpleasant, especially because there's a very good chance that the truth could implicate us in some pretty horrible situations. What's worse, there are countless situations where you can have contradictory situations and explanations, and yet both can be considered "true." That's the unfortunate difference between fiction and real life.
Still, I would appreciate Spider Jerusalem today. In this world of instant news, where something that's an hour old is "old news" and where opinion is put side-by-side with fact as if there were some kind of controversy, we need someone to stand for the truth. Someone who doesn't care about what people think of him or the consequences of her quest for herself. Someone fearless enough to push as far as he can and then push farther. Someone to stand up and say, "This is what is true."
We may not listen to this person. In fact, given the way things are going right now, we may even come to hate the one who tells us how we are responsible for the world in which we live. But we need him nonetheless, and if Spider Jerusalem can inspire even a few of us to look at our societies and ourselves with a critical, unblinking, bloodshot eye, then perhaps his spirit lives, even if he doesn't.
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These are the new streets of this city. Where the New Scum try to live. You and me. And here in these streets are the things that we want: sex and birth, votes and traits, money and guilt. Television and teddy bears. But all we've actually got is each other. You decide what that means.
- Spider Jerusalem, Transmetropolitan
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Transmetropolitan on Wikipedia
Warren Ellis on Wikipedia
Darick Robertson on Wikipedia
Warren Ellis' homepage
Darick Robertson's homepage
Transmetropolitan on Wikiquote
Transmetropolitan on Amazon.com
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