Transmetropolitan

AUTHOR: Ellis, Warren

ARTIST: Darick Robertson (illustrator); Rodney Ramos (inker); Nathan Eyring (colorist); Clem Robbins (letterer); Geoff Darrow (cover artist); Dave Gibbons (cover artist); Moebius (cover artist); Frank Quitely (cover artist)

PUBLISHER: DC Comics

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION: 1997-2002

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 1998

Publication History

Transmetropolitan was first published in 1997 by the DC Comics science-fiction imprint Helix, which lasted from 1996 to 1998. The series continued from issue 13 with Vertigo, another DC Comics imprint. Author Warren Ellis and illustrator Darick Robertson had both worked for DC Comics independently and met working on a project for Acclaim Comics. They later collaborated on The Boys (2006- ) for DC Comics. Ellis was part of the wave of comics authors from Great Britain entering the American mainstream at this time; others included Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, and Garth Ennis.

Robertson did the artwork throughout Transmetropolitan except for issue 31 (“Nobody Loves Me”), which was drawn by Lea Hernandez, Kieron Dwyer, Bryan Hitch, Frank Quitely, and Eduardo Risso. The issue shows various pop-cultural versions of main character Spider Jerusalem and depicts a couple of nightmare sequences. Quitely, Dave Gibbons, and Moebius contributed cover art to the series.

Transmetropolitan was published in trade paperback from 1998 to 2004, and a second edition appeared in 2008, with a few differences from the first printing. Volume 1 in the newer edition contains issues 1-6; Volume 2 consists of issues 7-12; Volume 4 collects the Winter’s Edge special issues. In the new printing, there is no issue 0, and the two specials from that collection are included in Volume 10.

Plot

Transmetropolitan is a humorous cyberpunk classic for the politically aware. The sixty issues have an overarching narrative that follows the continued battle between outlaw journalist Spider Jerusalem and the powers that be. Jerusalem attacks those that abuse power, and he continues to cause great mischief among the police and politicians. This action-fueled game of cat and mouse between Jerusalem and the authorities is interspersed with individual issues that read like Jerusalem’s illustrated newspaper columns, in which he addresses social problems. These moments allow Jerusalem to discuss the technologies of the futuristic America in which he lives and give the reader a sense of the city that is so important to his writings.

The story begins when Jerusalem is called back from his mountain refuge to honor a contract for two books. Needing money and a place to live, he goes to his former editor, Mitchell Royce, to get a job writing a column for his paper, The Word. His first column, “I Hate It Here,” describes a riot by the “transient” population (species changers). Jerusalem is the only one who covers the police brutality during the riot, and this reportage skyrockets him to fame, providing him with an assistant, Channon Yarrow.

Jerusalem then exposes the various religious groups in the city and takes his assistant to see her boyfriend’s “download,” a process in which his body is evaporated but his mind remains. A pattern emerges: Although popular, Jerusalem’s uncompromising writing style has made him numerous enemies, including the president (known as “the Beast”), Jerusalem’s former wife, and the French secret service—the latter two even try to assassinate him.

Being back in the city escalates Jerusalem’s drug abuse, and he is forced by Royce to return to the political arena to report on the election of the president’s opponent. This puts Jerusalem in contact with winner and later president Gary Callahan (“the Smiler”), who threatens him. Jerusalem also befriends the Smiler’s campaign manager, Vita Severin, who is later assassinated on live television.

While stressing out a pedophiliac senator, Jerusalem and assistants Channon Yarrow and Yelena Rossini are interrupted by the news that police have been negligent in the death of a minority. When Jerusalem and his assistants decide to take on the city police department, the latter stages a riot, hoping to kill the annoying reporter. When that fails, the Smiler censors Jerusalem. Frustrated by the restraints put upon him, Jerusalem decides to fight back. He contacts a pirate news feed channel, “The Hole,” which agrees to print his censored column.

Now even more in the searchlight of the authorities, Jerusalem decides to investigate the assassination of Severin, which he suspects originates either directly from the Smiler or from someone close to him. He then attacks the Smiler in print. The president reacts by canceling all of Jerusalem’s credit cards, having him fired, and raiding his home, but the journalist and his assistants have already evacuated.

In hiding and publishing through The Hole, Jerusalem decides to take down the presidency. He interviews all the down-and-out people of the city—from the child prostitutes to the lunatics—to tell their story and gather evidence against the Smiler. However, he begins to show signs of an illness that affects his ability to write and remember.

Jerusalem investigates the fact that police officers are conveniently on sick leave the day a sniper takes out key witnesses and a devastating storm hits the inner city. The catastrophe wipes out all the archival material at the news stations. With his demential symptoms, Jerusalem is fighting against both time and the president’s fierce resistance, which includes declaring martial law in the city and silencing all other media.

Jerusalem gets help from Royce and Rossini’s father and uses force to get the information he needs. After a massacre in which the police shoot at unarmed students, the rest of the media finally decides to follow Jerusalem and report his findings. The president desperately tries to kill Jerusalem, but he fails. After completing his task, Jerusalem can finally go back to his mountain.

Volumes

•Transmetropolitan: Back on the Street (1998). Collects issues 1-3. Introduces Spider Jerusalem and the city that he covers and includes his first column.

•Transmetropolitan: Lust for Life (1998). Collects issues 4-12. Conveys Jerusalem’s view on journalism.

•Transmetropolitan: Year of the Bastard (1999). Collects issues 13-18 and Winter’s Edge, issue 1. Engages with the corruption in politics, particularly presidential campaigns.

•Transmetropolitan: The New Scum (2000). Collects issues 19-24 and Winter’s Edge, issues 2-3. Exposes the laziness of the current president and the evil core of the president-to-be.

•Transmetropolitan: Lonely City (2001). Collects issues 25-30. Focuses in on the incompetence of the police and the injustice done to the population of the city.

•Transmetropolitan: Gouge Away (2002). Collects issues 31-36. Further depicts Jerusalem’s methods and the response from the presidency.

•Transmetropolitan: Spider’s Trash (2002). Collects issues 37-42. Shows how physical presence on the streets is the only way to get information.

•Transmetropolitan: Dirge (2002). Collects issues 43-48. Jerusalem’s deteriorating health parallels the demise in law and order in the city.

•Transmetropolitan: The Cure (2003). Collects issues 49-54. In a scene that makes a veiled reference to Bill Clinton’s sex scandal, evidence that can bring about the downfall of the president is uncovered.

•Transmetropolitan: One More Time (2004). Collects issues 55-60. The Smiler’s bizarre tactics of killing someone close to him for sympathy when he is under pressure are brought to light, and Jerusalem stands victorious.

•Transmetropolitan: Tales of Human Waste (2004). Collects specials I Hate It Here and Filth of the City. Features newspaper columns with Spider Jerusalem’s many rants.

Characters

•Spider Jerusalem is a bald, chain-smoking, heavily tattooed, antihero journalist with red-and-green mismatched glasses. He often wears a black suit or just boxer shorts. Underneath his sometimes violent, drug-crazed, and egotistical demeanor beats a valiant heart. He believes in such values as truth, justice, and freedom of speech; distrusts politicians, the media, the public, and the police; and strives to uncover the truth no matter what the cost. He needs to be on the streets and engage with the city both to feel alive and to write, and his many columns advance the story, as he continuously discovers and publishes new outrageous facts about the people in power.

•Channon Yarrow is a tall, busty blond who works for Jerusalem as assistant and bodyguard after failed attempts at being a stripper and, at another time, a nun.

•Yelena Rossini has short, purple-black hair and is Spider Jerusalem’s assistant. She experiences an intense love-hate relationship with Jerusalem and is his most likely successor. She writes for Jerusalem when he is unable to do so himself.

•Gary Callahan, a.k.a. the Smiler, is Jerusalem’s main adversary. He is a slim man with brown hair and a big, uncanny smile. He wants to be president because he hates all the “scum” in the city. The only thing he hates more is Spider Jerusalem, because Jerusalem humiliated him in public and suspects his bad intentions. Once in office, he comes down hard on Jerusalem and pursues him relentlessly in order to maintain power.

•Mitchell Royce, a large man with dark brown hair who wears a suit, is Jerusalem’s boss. He constantly presses Jerusalem for his column and forces him to cover politics. When Jerusalem decides to take on the president, Royce remains loyal and supportive; he loves the money Jerusalem gets his paper but also genuinely supports investigative journalism.

Artistic Style

Robertson’s artwork is integral to making the futuristic world of Transmetropolitan come alive on the page. He is a true co-creator. His ingenuity is apparent in the many technological devices that he makes plausible through inventive design and in the reinforcement from inking and the use of color.

Robertson’s line is clear without much cross-hatching, and he alternates between showing large, empty backgrounds and thoroughly detailed cityscapes. Shadows are used for emotional effect, such as when he places Jerusalem in the dark when he is depressed. Jerusalem is the central character and dominates the stories, which is conveyed with many close-ups of his distorted face.

The layout constantly changes the point of view, using “frog” perspective to convey a sense of the imposing city or people that are high in the power hierarchy while employing bird’s-eye perspective to depict the disenfranchised that are humbled by authorities. The page layout further supports the narrative by using oddly shaped panels and breaking the frames in action scenes, whereas the more contemplative moments are shown in full-page panels with voice-over captions from Jerusalem’s column. The visual appearance of the series distinguishes Jerusalem’s writing by putting it in yellow captions with a typewriter-like font. Robertson effectively takes advantage of this series’ focus on the media by drawing panels as television screens, complete with visual static and by having the characters’ faces lit up by the greenish light. Sentences and people glow with the unreal light of the electronically transmitted image. The drawings also often have visual “Easter eggs” (inside jokes) hidden on many of the pages, true to the spirit of the text’s place in pop culture.

Themes

Transmetropolitan’s biggest preoccupation is with the truth. Its protagonist is clearly a reference to New Journalism hero and gonzo writer Hunter S. Thompson, and its plot has similarities to his untraditional coverage of the Democratic Party in the primaries leading up to the 1972 American presidential election in Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72 (1973).

Jerusalem is constantly looking for truths that are buried deeper than most people are prepared to look. Transmetropolitan discusses how the truth is often intentionally hidden or distorted by the people in power and explicitly criticizes the way the media is often complicit in this by focusing too passively on entertainment or simply regurgitating what politicians say.

In this search for the truth, Transmetropolitan emphasizes the power of the written word and the idea that one man can make a difference, if he is pure at heart and refuses to be caught up in the power games and lies that penetrate upper levels of society. Jerusalem is an antihero who, with a few trustworthy assistants, manages to stand up against impossible odds and induces change by insisting on writing the truth, no matter how ugly it is or who might be behind it.

When Jerusalem succeeds, it is because he understands the nature of media and its consumers. Inherent in the series is also a criticism of the way people have become mindless consumers that take everything the media reports at face value. The irony is spelled out as this futuristic society’s massive information overload does not educate or enlighten its people but instead buries the truth in piles of information static, commercials, and choreographed political discussions. The criticism aimed at the media and politicians is also intended for the general public that often turns a blind eye and deaf ear to the problems of society and of fellow citizens and is bored with politics and the democratic process.

Abuse of power is another theme that is connected to the search for the truth, as politicians and police go to great lengths to stay in power, even if that means lying, obscuring justice, and killing innocent people. When no one is interested in the truth and nobody wants to know what is really happening, the rich get richer and their power grows.

Transmetropolitan debates these themes through the lens of Jerusalem’s journalistic ramblings, which often single out the various groups of people and individuals that fall victim to these abuses of power, uncritical media coverage, and consumerism. Incidentally, Jerusalem becomes the point of identification when his uncompromising search for the truth and compulsive need to tell it puts him at the victim’s end of the power balance.

Impact

Transmetropolitan is one of few cyberpunk comic book series and, as such, stands alone in some ways. Although it gathered a cult following, it did not result in a revival of the genre within the medium. The series excels in making intertextual pop-culture references and draws much of its humor from its heavy investment with films, television series, and comic books. This postmodern wink at the reader becomes even more apparent as Transmetropolitan continues to explicitly criticize the amount of media culture being digested in the world of the comic.

Transmetropolitan is also influenced by contemporary politics and the New Journalism style and celebrates the kind of investigatory journalism practiced by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein during the Watergate scandal. The series shows inspiration from Bruce Sterling’s and William Gibson’s cyberpunk novels, and until DC Comics canceled their letters pages, Ellis would recommend books for the audience to read each month. Some of them were books that inspired the Transmetropolitan series, such as Norman Spinrad’s Bug Jack Barron (1969) or David Kerekes and David Slater’s Killing for Culture (1995). He would also encourage the fans to seek out his own science-fiction and cyberpunk inspirations, such as Michael Moorcock, Iain Banks, or Richard Kadrey.

Further Reading

Ellis, Warren, and John Cassady. Planetary (1998-2009).

Ellis, Warren, and Cully Hamner. Red (2003).

Ellis, Warren, and Brian Hitch. The Authority (1999- ).

Ellis, Warren, and Darick Robertson. The Boys (2006- ).

Bibliography

Christiansen, Steen. “The Truth of the Word, the Falsity of the Image: Transmetropolitan’s Critique of the Society of the Spectacle.” In Elective Affinities: Testing Word and Image Relationships, edited by Catriona MacLeod, Véronique Plesch, and Charlotte Schoell-Glass. New York: Rodopi, 2009.

Ellis, Warren. Come in Alone. San Francisco: AiT/Planet Lar, 2001.

Salisbury, Mark. “Warren Ellis.” In Writers on Comic Book Script Writing. London: Titan, 1999.