I usually despise those “my 10 favorite” (or relevant) lists where you have to choose between completely different creations the ones you prefer, but if someone asked me to mention my 10 favorite comics, Transmetropolitan would be very close to the top of the list (although not it the first place, that spot is long ago taken by Sandman). It’s a work of genius, a masterpiece so funny, visionary, perceptive and utterly delightful you don’t ever want it to end! Well, the bad news are its already ended some years ago but fear not, it’s always available in bookstores all over the world in trade paperbacks albums.
Spider Jerusalem is a troubled man, a journalist once famous for his two best selling books and currently self-banished in a little house in the mountains, alone and almost crazy. But Spider is also a big city man, he needs the crowd, the confrontations, he needs the news, so he returns to the City, a futuristic amalgam of technology, corrupted politics, high tech drugs and religious manipulation. Along with his two filthy assistants he will look for the truth in places no one else dares to go, he will enrage presidents, degrade public figures, beat the crap out of those pulling the strings and if everything else fails use his bowel disruptor! He’s Spider Jerusalem and he hates it here but no matter what you do you won’t make him go away, the live consciousness of the future
Transmetropolitan, written by Warren Ellis and drawn by Darick Robertson, is a work as beautiful and enjoyable as it is harsh, cruel and prophetic. The beliefs expressed in it by Ellis might seem extravagant and distant but take a moment to wonder how far our society is to this dark vision, and how possible is for us to find hope if even Spider and the other characters of this superb comic managed to. Stories like this make us better people…
