Trade Review #13--Transmetropolitan Vol.1

I'm hitting the bottom of my final closure stack from my LCS (I get to go to the shop on FRIDAY!!!).  This is another title Jason picked for me, and from the front cover, I was already intrigued.

Transmetropolitan Vol 1. (Vertigo/DC)
​By: Warren Ellis, Darick Robertson, Rodney Ramos, Nathan Eyring

I went through a brief cyber-punk-ish phase when I was in Middle/High School.  I think what did me in, was the original Shadowrun title on the Sega Genesis.  There was just something intriguing...all of the technology, the body modification, the angst were all things that spoke to me.  Opening this first volume brought me back to the "good?" ol'days (and it makes me want to play Shadowrun again...)

Transmetropolitan follows the antics of Spider Jerusalem, who is a reporter.  However, when we meet Spider, he's got long hair, a crazy beard (really what I looked like pre-quarantine) and he's getting yelled at by an editor about missed deadlines for two books.  It turns out Spider had disappeared from the city and lived on a mountain for 5 years, and had to return back to the metropolis to write.

There are several things I loved about this volume.  First, its a newsprint trade!  The first one I own (and you've read me muse about newsprint comics several times now...).  Second, while the story items bounce all over the place in the first arc one thing is constant. Spider's embracing of chaos to prove his point.  From rushing the office of his old newspaper for a job, to reporting on a riot from the top of a strip club, to threatening the president with a "bowel loosening" gun, to dressing like Jesus to argue with the many religious representatives of his town, its wild.  

In short... Spider. Don't. Give. A. Fuck.

This story hit that nostalgic sweet spot, and I couldn't get bored with reading it because of the number of times it changed, constantly engaging the reader.  I loved this so much, my LCS has grabbed the copy of book 2 for me, and snagged an extra book 3 in the next shipment.  Needless to say, there's about to be a lot more Spider here in the Poserverse!