Transmetropolitan vol. 4: The New Scum - written by Warren Ellis & penciled by Darick Robertson
A re-read project. Just checking to see how it's aged. And it has aged like milk at an abandoned gas station. The author is incapable of writing about american politics sensibly, much less properly satirically, and (I'll be honest) I'd rather be looking at Darick Robertson's 'Space Beaver'. The Smiler could, if you squint & ignore all the Elliscisms, pass for Elon Musk. I'll grant it. But this book is padded to hell, brimming with full-page spreads containing but a single caption & listless drawings of inactivity which don't warrant full-bleed presentation. Like, Robertson, seriously, pull a reference photo for a cow before attempting to draw one. Gah. Nine more volumes of this to plow through...
Transmet vol. 5: Lonely City - written by Warren Ellis & penciled by Darick Robertson
Even less fun than I anticipated. And I had anticipated hating it.
Transmet vol. 9: The Cure - written by Warren Ellis & penciled by Darick Robertson
Now we're getting to it. I know the stated purpose of devices like Fred Christ's 'Transient' movement was to grub about in the rubbish of transhumanism & culty shit, but there's clearly something else here. I suspect it's partly a shell game. Though this book was written in the late 90s & early 00s, social currents of transgenderism & its terminology were evolving even then-- largely online, in (theoretically) safe spaces like Warren Ellis's message boards, especially in & around the sexpositive movement which Ellis was actively co-opting for purposes of armchair research in addition to being a colossal lech. Not my business, no. But I have heard assertions to the effect that among SoManyOfUs there were non-binary individuals, so...
So, in-story, when a "former" transient named Liesl contacts our rebel junkie journo, seeking to expose a monstrous politician deadset on destroying lives, Spider Jerusalem used her for a story only to forget about her almost minutes later. Liesl reacts by saying something I, as the reader, feel fairly certain was spoken to the author:
"I don't like you anymore. You stopped talking to me. You got what you wanted out of me and you stopped talking to me. You didn't have to treat me like a hooker."
Given what little I've gleaned about Ellis's behaviour, in those sentences I'm predisposed to hear more than a semifleshed fictional character telling the author's fictionsuit he's a cheap hack. Sotto voce, I'm hearing someone who felt used by Ellis telling him, as civilly as possible, to fuck the fuck off, knowing the author will cut & paste every word into his text.
Sorrowful business. The character is summarily fridged, sacrificed to the great god Plot, and she is never mentioned again. The last we see of Liesl is her being kicked to death by cops & her body abandoned in the street. Not a great look for Spider Jerusalem.
But being a bastard works, right?
Transmet vol. 10: One More Time - written by Warren Ellis & penciled by Darick Robertson
Best part of this printing of volume 10 is that it collects 'I Hate It Here' & 'Filth of the City'. Nothing but splash pages & brief narrative boxes. The pinups are a murderer's row of every Big Name in the industry who never got to contribute a cover, alongside several encore performances from those who did. I like to imagine the book if Klaus Janson, Jacen Burrows, or Amanda Conner had been the main artist. Might've been very different. Glimpses of a liminal comic. Hell of a note to end on, and I'm still six volumes from finishing the re-read...
Transmet vol. 2: Lust For Life - written by Warren Ellis & penciled by Darick Robertson
"This book is so ugly," says my husband, looking over my shoulder. "What's wrong with that cat? And why is it smoking?"
I briefly count off Darick Robertson's positive attributes as an artist. His facility with expressing emotion with eyes. His strength with drawing the sinew & joints of the human hand. And close with the fact that he can't draw animals for shit.
But that's not what truly bugs me about this volume. It's the human-brains-retrieved-from-cryo-storage trope. Because I don't care how advanced your nanotech handwave is: you don't "reboot" a human brain after it's died and been frozen and retrieve memories from it. It's NOT A COMPUTER. The brain dies, the memories die. It's that goddamned simple. I've never liked the cryogenics thing, even when I was a tot, poring over dad's issues of OMNI magazine. It's wishful thinking. It's the worst kind of wishful thinking: it's faith in a transparent scam. Idiots in the tens of thousands have paid incredible fees to ice brains like they were fuckin' microwave pizzas, when they could've, I dunno, fed & clothed & housed humanity with all that cash they flushed.
Other than the glaring impossibility of cryogenically storing a brain & cranking it right back up, intact & jolly, 'Another Cold Morning' coulda been one of the best stories in this book. Instead it's just more hack sci-fi. Pisses me off.
Flung Out Of Space (2024) - written by Grace Ellis & illustrated by Hannah Templer
Been eager to read this since I first heard about it, a year ago, on NPR. An entertaining li'l biocomic. I had no idea Patricia Highsmith had been a comix writer. Entertaining, funny, & smartly told. The palette of b&w + gray & orange really soars. More comix by these ladies!
Fell #9 (2008) - written by Warren Ellis & illustrated by Ben Templesmith
This... was a good issue to leave the series hanging fire on. No Nixon nun, but Richard Fell is appraised of his increasing failures to function as an officer of the law, and he does the right thing, for the first time in several issues. And probably the last time, as we will never, ever see a conclusion to this series. But hey. Lose some, win some. This ish was a win, for me.
Scarab #1-8 (1993) - written by John Smith & drawn by Scott Eaton
I was going to say "What did I just read?" but instead, let's just sit here in respectful silence, for Vertigo publishing what have to be THE MOST LYRICAL MENTIONS OF SEMEN IN A 90s COMIC (OUTSIDE OF H-MANGA). There is a fuckovalot of talking about spunk in this book. Shame they couldn't show insteada tell.
Honestly, I'm at a loss. This comic is demanding a re-read. But not right now, honey. I have a headache.
Judge Dredd: Fetish (1997) - written by John Smith & painted by Siku
Dunno why I dug this one out. Some artists simply shouldn't be permitted to use double-page spreads. Siku's Dredd has a chin like a bunch of wet scabs pasted to a wad of clay.
What the fuck, dude.
As I remarked to a friend this morning, prob'ly not THE most racist Dredd story. I mean, surely. I've read like one-hundredth of the Dredd available. So in all probability there's more racist stuff than this Shaft-in-Africa yarn lacking both the charm of Richard Roundtree & any practical knowledge of Africa beyond the bush occultism Smith spent a tiny aeon researching.
Not entirely hyperbole, that last dig: This comic took five years to make. First it was being drawn by Ashley Wood, then he fucked off, because Ashley Wood never completes anything. Some other art-droid took it up and that fizzled, too, so Siku stepped in. You take what you can get, I guess. Weird that this was (I believe) the 3rd appearance of Devlin. The Dredd Megazine spent nearly FOUR YEARS between Waugh appearances.
Not worth the intermission, because...
Devlin Waugh: Swimming In Blood (1992-93) - written by John Smith & illustrated by Sean Phillips
This is platonic ideal of a Canon film in comix form. A smooth 90 minutes in mixed media with the best practical effects one could hope to partner a script with: Sean fuckin' "I love highlights" Phillips. Basically I just crack this book & let myself float away on the familiar fancies of that absolute rotter, Devlin Waugh, the exorcist / occultist / assassin / aesthete with no time for ugliness. First stumbled across this in 2006 or 2007, I forget. I didn't love it then, yet, never having forgotten how charmingly odd Devlin can be, I return to this tale with annual regularity. I quite adore these pages, now. It's neither Smith nor Phillips best work, yet in a certain light-- the warm & merciless light of mortality, perhaps? --perhaps their most iconic?
Also a welcome relief from the near-impenetrability of Siku on Dredd. DROKK to scabby megachins, man!
Super goddamned bizarre to contemplate this book being born even as Scarab is hitting the stands. A pair of works that couldn't be more divergent.
Leatherjack (2005) - written by John Smith & illustrated by Paul Marshall
Loud fun. I believe John Smith was (with some able assistance from Paul Marshall) taking some wild swings at Grant Morrison & Garth Ennis both. (Paul Marshall has Steve Dillon in his blood.) 'Leatherjack' is brandname 2000ad sarcasmachismo, running headlong toward the reader with a malicious grin & one hand in its pants. Will greatly enjoy rereading this in the future. Not as if there's anything to discover, here. It's a total throwaway! But it's clear everyone creating these pages was having a hoot. This is what comix should be about: watching a useless rich fat old entitled bastard broodmared by bugs for fucking up other people's enjoyment of public libraries. That's entertainment.
Transmet vol. 8: Dirge - written by Warren Ellis & penciled by Darick Robertson
Into full skim, here. Impression I have of this book nowadays is that I stayed strictly for the faces. There's a ton of well-acted facial expressions in this slim little volume. The only true neg I have regarding Robertson's art is for the Smiler, whose facial extremes of grin & snarl have always been wildly inconsistent. But he's character whose whole point, I s'pose, is that he looks like an entirely different person for the cameras, so I can't hold it against Darick.
Anyway I barely read any of this because I found everything involving the Smiler to be doldrums. The whole Spider vs. President thing bored my balls like black & decker, I mean it is bargain basement torture to read ish after ish of Spider mugging his "ain't I a rascal" leer every time he makes a clever mess that only strings the story out. Ben Urich would shoot Spider Jerusalem's cock off and stub a cig out in the wound. Fuck this book.
Tyranny Rex: Deus Ex Machina (1993-94) - written by John Smith & illustrated by Mark Buckingham
Yeah, no, I don't like this. At least the second "volume" of these slim collected magazine editions contains an ultra-rare Smith / Phillips jam, 'Danzig's Inferno'. That's about worth the price of admission.
A City Inside (2016) - written & illustrated by Tillie Walden
Perfection. Absolute perfection.
Transmet vol. 3: Year Of The Bastard - written by Warren Edgelord & penciled by Darick Robertson
Robertson does Frank Miller for one page. Ellis does the reader multiple disservices for an entire book. NEXT.
[arriving shortly:]
Revere (1990-1994) - written by John Smith & painted by Simon Harrison
Rork, vol. 5: Capricorne (1990) - written & drawn by Andreas Martens
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