Transmetropolitan : The New Scum Book

Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan series has rightly garnered much praise from a number of quarters (Cyberpunk's finest, Bruce Sterling, loves it!). In Spider Jerusalem, Ellis's angry, intelligent, polemical journalist hero, he has found a powerful character through whom to transmit his scepticism around issues of government, power, representation and truth. But this is not a dull and "worthy" comic--it is often funny, beautifully drawn, with great futuristic details, and it contains some of the sparkiest, most authentic writing around.In this part of the series, Spider, the voice of the City's hopeless masses, the New Scum, finds himself living in extreme luxury, with two beautiful women (his assistant Yelena and his bodyguard Channon), wooed to interview the competing criminals in the race to become the new President. Drawn into the race, as the most critical commentator around, Spider realises that the people he supposedly speaks for have no interest in the coming election, perhaps understanding more clearly than he does what a charade it actually is. The trouble with the New Scum, however, is that as a reader you perceive exactly what the masses do: that Spider has got himself involved in a story, the story of the Presidency, which is, in fact, not very interesting. Notwithstanding Spider's constant, and constantly amusing, aggravation with the world, the comic needs more than the fire in his belly to heat up this particular instalment--and never quite manages to do it. The details of the story never really cohere, the suspense is minimal, the action often dull. This is not a bad Transmetropolitan chapter, but it is not a great one. --Mark ThwaiteRead More