he WTF Comics Club is a monthly reading group for Women, Trans, and Femme-identified fans in Minneapolis. In its second year, the club is taking a look at some of the major comic book “must reads” and asking: Must we really read this?
Warren Ellis and Darrick Robertson’s Transmetropolitan is a loud, obnoxious firehose to the face. Love it or hate it, it’s a book with something to say, and it says it at maximum volume, using some pretty creative expletives. Transmet isn’t for everyone, but we have to wonder who it actually is for.
Published monthly from 1997 to 2002, Transmetropolitan chronicles the weird life and insane times of gonzo journalist Spider Jerusalem as he pontificates the Truth About Things to the confused, disenfranchised masses of a topsy-turvy dystopian City. For its first year, the book ran under DC Comics’ short-lived Helix imprint and was the only series to survive the dissolution of Helix, at which point it was moved to DC’s Vertigo line.
There are two things we should get clear before diving into the glorious filth of Transmet’s city streets. First, the WTF Comics Club read only as far as volume one. Given that the entire series spans a staggering 60 issues and is Ellis’s longest work to date, I think we’ll be forgiven for taking a sample instead of the whole damn thing. Second, in the interest of full disclosure, I love this book. Without irony or exaggeration, I will tell you that the third issue of Transmetropolitan changed my life and is one of the reasons you now get to enjoy my contributions to the world of comics journalism. Warren Ellis says, “You’re welcome.”
On the other hand, several of the WTF readers started the meeting by declaring that they hated it, and their distaste is absolutely warranted.
#transmetropolitan is one of the first books discussed that has the club split in opinion. We agree it’s good art and worth discussing.
— WTF Comics Club (@WTFComicsClub) February 21, 2016
There’s a case to be made for Transmetropolitan as a subversion of of the grimdark comic book antiheroes that were popular throughout the preceding decade. Spider is arguably a “good guy,” since exposing corruption and stopping exploitation are at least items on his agenda, but he’s far from a “nice guy,” even in a disparaging sense, ethically sound and personally repulsive. Likewise, The City is a messy urban labyrinth, reminiscent of the media-saturated dystopias of The Dark Knight Returns and the works of Philip K. Dick, the difference being that Transmet makes no pretense to realism or prediction.
Robertson eschews the grey-toned, “realistic” color scheme of similar settings and instead lets neon run rampant, lighting the pages like a daytime television commercial, and Spider Jerusalem is so obnoxiously amoral and unlikeable that he becomes a parody of a critique of an archetype.
The comic cheerfully lampoons some of its notable forebears, especially Alan Moore’s Watchmen, going so far as to feature a crowd scene in which a red-headed vagrant carries a sign declaring “THE END IS STILL NIGH,” and Spider’s first appearance in the book bears a remarkable resemblance to Moore himself, not to mention the infamous smiley face logo.
Where Transmetropolitan lost some of our readers was falling into another trope, one that it’s less intent on questioning.
Thoughts from new readers: Spider is a hard character to access. “A white male writer writing about a white male writer = 😒” -Bren
— WTF Comics Club (@WTFComicsClub) February 21, 2016
The book has a lot of complex, pointed things to say about sociopolitical power structures and the role that media plays in both reinforcing and deconstructing those structures. We just wish those things could be said by a character other than “another shouty angry man,” who literally comes down from the mountain in order to show society the truth about itself. As much as we want to focus on the message, not the messenger, it can be grating to endure an entire book about a guy who sounds like a 4Chan forum come to life.
We like how we get several diff facets of Spider’s character: monologues, interactions, articles, to express his outlook. #transmetropolitan
— WTF Comics Club (@WTFComicsClub) February 21, 2016
As dynamic and multi-faceted as Spider is, and even though we appreciate the fact that he’s the first political liveblogger, he’s still an obnoxious white dude loudly insisting that he has all the answers. Not exactly a novel concept.
Now, how have I managed to get all the way through what is ostensibly a feminist review without mentioning any of the women in the story? The answer, no one will be surprised to learn, is that there aren’t any—rather, there’s exactly one” the stunningly tall, tough, and blonde Channon Yarrow, who’s introduced in issue three as a stripper and later appears as Spider’s new assistant. To be fair, the book is about Spider, so other principal characters are thin on the ground to begin with, but all the major players introduced by the end of volume one—a news editor, a cult leader, and a political official—are white men. Three to one isn’t a great ratio, even if it’s what we expect.
As a character, Channon is just as well-developed and interesting as Spider, with the added bonus of actually being likeable and relatable. Given that being unlikeable is often a capital offense for female characters in popular media, that’s not altogether groundbreaking. Channon is also exactly the kind of female counterpart a character like Spider would want: smart, but not as brilliant as he is; sickly funny, but not as demented as he is; able to keep up, but not to lead; and attractive, but not unattainably attractive. The saving grace in their dynamic is that there’s exactly zero romance or sexual tension anywhere in sight.
Overall, Transmetropolitan is a smart, entertaining comic and a brightly-colored broadsword hacking gleefully away at every social more in sight—lots of fun and genuinely meaningful if you can ignore who’s doing the hacking.
Title: Transmetropolitan, vol.1
Creators: Writer: Warren Ellis; Art: Darrick Roberts
Publisher: DC/Vertigo
Popular Rating: ✩✩✩✩✩
WTF Rating: 🐒🐒🐒
Must read? Not for everyone.
The books for WTF Reads were determined by cross-referencing recommendation lists from four online publications: Forbidden Planet, Empire, BuzzFeed, and Complex . Titles were then selected based on a number of criteria, including popularity, importance, accessibility, and thematic continuity. Popular Ratings are on a five-star scale, averaged from ratings across Comixology, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble. WTF Ratings are on a five-monkey scale, based on responses from club and community members. Only books that receive five monkeys will be preserved after the gender apocalypse.
(via WTF Comics Club, images via DC/Vertigo)
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