My Comic Book of the Moment: Transmetropolitan

I HATE IT HERE.

That is the title of a newsfeed column, written by Spider Jerusalem, outlaw journalist of the future. And it is a very, very strange future, depicted in a comic book by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson entitled Transmetropolitan. (Warren Ellis also writes my 2nd favorite webcomic, Freakangels, which I’ll write about some other time.)

Among the burning questions of Spider’s day: Laws to cap the number of new religions founded every day, rights for transients (people who’ve opted to rapidly mutate into gray aliens but are stuck in the transition, hence the name), new bizarre sub-classes for sexual preference are invented all the time (new fetish: Russian werewolves), and whether it really matters who wins the presidential race, especially if they both want you dead.

In short, a future like our present, even if (or especially because) it was written in our past — for instance, the ‘newsfeed’ concept predicts the emergence of what we now call ‘blogs’, and the fragmentation of culture into the proliferation of the bizarre.

Of the weird.

Spider Jerusalem is really a man of this weird time — a shrieking livewire of rage, drugs, sexual frustration, misanthropy, self-loathing, righteous indignation, and the most brilliant journalistic writing of this strange new future, and he gets it written and sent out and people LOVE him for it.

And he HATES IT.

It takes both of his ‘filthy assistants’, an ex-stripper Amazon who used to be a pay-dacoit, and a petite, privileged rich-girl-turned-chain-smoking-journalist, to make sure that he doesn’t get himself killed at least long enough so his editor gets his article on time. And there are many ways that Spider could die: from overdoing the drugs –

“I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today. I want Vasopressin, Washed Caffeine, Jumpstart, Ginko Biloba, Guarana, and any intelligence enhancer produced in the last five years.”

– to rogue-cop-eunuch-bulldogs, ex-wives, and incumbent presidents.

All because despite all his flaws, he believes in a simple thing, to the death: The truth. Ewwwwww. Something like that grates in this post-postmodern age because we like to believe that truth is relative.

Not Spider.

Spider believes in the public’s right to know so deeply that he puts his life at risk to uncover and expose the truth.

(Sometimes though, he just takes a dump in a christening font. He’s pretty adaptable that way.)

Spider is not an objective journalist by any means of the word, and owes a great deal of his character from the real-life Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, but he is impartial: He hates the corrupt oppressors and the apatehtic oppressed equally.

And the art? Oh God. UGLY. But GOOD. Can’t ugly art be good? Especially when it’s how we view the dirty, noisy, vertigo-inducing City, or Spider’s scowling face?

So why Transmet? And why now?

I remembered Spider Jerusalem today because I said something on this blog recently that caused a bit of a stir, just because I spoke my mind. Now I want red-and-green shades.

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There is an unspoken, implied addendum to Spider Jerusalem’s column title, and it is the reason why Spider persists, even if he hates everyone and everything in his City with a vengeance. It is the reason he gives a crap.

I HATE IT HERE.

But things don’t have to be this way.

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