There's perhaps no other writer in comics that has more of a cult around him than Warren Ellis, and no character with more of a following than Spider Jerusalem. Ellis's most celebrated character is the star of Transmetropolitan, a radical work of satirical science fiction with the dystopian Hunter S Thompson analogue as the readers' guide to a ridiculous and over-the-top future world. If that sounds like Transmetropolitan doesn't have any sort of story, plot, or anything besides some neat ideas and colourful characters, well...it's because that's very much the case. Don't get us wrong, Ellis and Jerusalem have earned their cult status to a degree. Each gleefully barrel through wild and occasionally lucid moments, and so long as you've never read Ed Regis's book Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition: Science Slightly over the Edge (on which the series draws heavily), you'll get a kick out of all the nutty near-future technology and concepts that Transmetropolitan skips across on its merry way towards nothing. Like Arkham Asylum, Transmetropolitan is heavy on visuals (whatever other quibbles we have, Darick Robertson's jam-packed future City is a treat for the eyes) and ideas (even if they're not particularly original), but cares not for such trivial, unenlightened concepts as "story" or "plot". Which is all well and good, but it's asking a bit for a reader to sit through sixty issues of your comic book that's running solely on the vapours of cynical technological and sociological predictions and Uncle Duke. For a series that positions itself as a revolutionary alternative, none of its ideas are particularly original, and as the series progresses it begins to run out of steam and realise that it hasn't got much in the way of direction and, like Wile E Coyote realising that he's standing in mid-air, the quality plummets until the comic comes to violent end. It was fun while it lasted, but it's by no means the epoch for modern graphic novels many claim it to be.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
