Transmetropolitan

If ever there was a right time

What a superb collection of vicious bile. Transmetropolitan ranks up amongst two or three others as my favourite comic series of all time. Given the dark shadow of fear and exploitation that seems to be engulfing the world following the re-election of monkey-spawn Bush it was wonderful to read something that had the resolution to take all the shit in the world and spew it onto the page. Walking home today past a group of seven police shouting at a distressed and mentally ill woman whilst she cried and tried to grab back the stuffed toy she called her baby only made me think of that view that all great science fiction isn't set in the future but in a more real version of the present.

Warren Ellis lives in Southend, a place I used to work with the mental ill, and his episode about 'community care' struck home with the force of a ten ton truck driven by a mad prophet. The depiction of a world where the ill are left to fend for themselves on the streets is Lord Street, not the future, but your home town, your own city. It's just one part of a 60 issue masterwork but it's an example of how the book takes an everyday situation, dresses it in the trappings of Max Headroom, Blade Runner and Hunter S. Thompson then unleashes it at a breath-taking pace. The result is reality made impossible to ignore. If there is one thing I took from the story it was the realisation that I cared more when things happened to these fictional characters than I did when they happen to the people in my own town. It was a sad moment, but one that also made a great book into genius.

The comparison between Hunter S. Thompson and Transmetropolitan is clear, Spider looks like Hunter and ends up like Hunter, but as a piece of fiction Ellis is able to take the path of reporter and turn him into a successful revolutionary, one hand highlighting the present's problems and on the other delivering the wonderful wank fantasy of single man bringing down the whole system. When the corrupt government we have watched grow into power finally falls at the hands of Spider (who in no small way was responsible for some of the madness at its core) it's the moment you always wanted to see at on any picket line or demonstration.

When I think back over the hundreds of pages I've read it's some of the stunning single moments that stick in my mind. The wonderful suicide protection pornography, 'fuck you G.I!', the first use of 'filthy assistant', the teddy bear, and finally through it all; Spider, who seems filled with hate but who actually cares too much for his own health to bear.

If you can get it, any of it, then do. It's a dog dick masterpiece

coming up: Atlantis shit and Akira gold