godking's Full Review: Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson - Transmetropoli...
Transmetropolitan (Year of the Bastard is the third collection thus far -- the first two are Back On the Street and Lust For Life) is written by Warren Ellis. Ellis, for those not in the know, is the current hot genius writer de joeur in the comics world. They come and go. Chris Claremont (X-Men) was the big name up until the mid-Eighties, then Alan Moore wrote Watchmen in 1986 and took over the title, which he held until about 1989 when Frank Miller stole it away from him with his various Batman works. Miller dropped it to Neil Gaiman in 1992 or thereabouts, who held it for for a long time thanks to his work on Sandman, and only when that title was retired did the Hot Genius appellation change hands -- only it didn't, because it was promptly divided between Grant Morrison and Garth Ennis, whose Invisibles and Preacher respectively have since wound down.
That brings us to Warren Ellis, who, according to www.warrenellis.com, is a crusty bastard who hates everybody except possibly his family. How much of this is roleplaying is of course up to judgement (my own estimation runs it at about fifty percent truth). Ellis grabbed the title of Hot Genius sometime in 1999 after writing better and better stuff progressively from 1994 onwards, and what really got him the title was the debut of ... yes, you guessed it, Transmetropolitan.
Transmetropolitan has been suggested by a good many people to defy summarization or categorization, which is flatly untrue. "The adventures of Hunter S. Thompson in the far future" sums it up rather nicely. No, Spider Jerusalem -- the main character, a journalist/columnist by trade -- isn't exactly Hunter S. Thompson, but god knows he's close enough for basic purposes.
Ellis' main strength as a writer is his manic creativity. In every issue of Transmetropolitan -- which is after all set in a familar-yet-vastly-different far future Earth -- there are ideas, ideas running rampant, ideas many a lesser writer would kill to have, and Ellis happily discards them for use as nothing more than background material or one-liners, because he can. Ellis realized some time ago that his work is strong enough not to have to go for novelty value, and so avoids the near-spastic delivery that other imaginative writers (like Grant Morrison's "throw it all at the wall and see what sticks" approach on JLA) have let themselves use. Only when a wild idea (dogs with human brains, the "Sex Puppets" kiddie cartoon show, bowel-destablizing guns) is actually vital to the plot does it receive the necessary exposition to justify its use later onwards and so avoid a deus ex machina solution to the plot at hand. Ellis's ingenuity, however, is that he manages to make the really important plot elements merely part of the story -- they don't stand out with bright neon lights saying "plot element", but neither do they fade into obscurity. It's a delicate high-wire act, but he pulls it off.
Another thing to know about Transmetropolitan is that this is a story with a beginning and end. Ellis himself has said on several occasions that it is a "1300-page graphic novel, serialized monthly". To some, this might sound like bombast, but they would be unfamiliar with the comic book scene these days -- with Dave Sim's 300-issue Cerebus winding down to its final issues, and with hallmark works like The Sandman and The Invisibles having marked off their definite end points, the idea of a long closed-end work is more than ever before not just acceptable but indeed, to some, preferable.
As for Spider Jerusalem himself, he's a fascinating character indeed -- he is the driving force of this long story and that's no small praise given the numerous and exciting characters that support his mad endeavours. He's not exactly the good guy, he's not merely a catchphrase-shouting madman, he's certainly not nice -- but he's undeniably compelling in his awfulness and righteousness. The mere fact that Jerusalem is an undeniably bad person on the side of the angels (more or less) is a note of complexity most "serious" novels never approach.
So, I can recommend Transmetropolitan itself, to be certain, but how about this individual collection? Well, Year of the Bastard is one of the high points of the series, to be sure -- Jerusalem's quest against not one but both of the Presidential candidates rings all the more true in this year of people disgusted with the choice of Bush and McCain.
That having been said, Year of the Bastard isn't the best introduction point for new readers. Pick up Back On the Street first and give that a go. Regardless, Year of the Bastard is high art and some of the best literature -- in any form -- out there today, so I have no qualms about giving this my highest recommendation.
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