Plot: After the Smilers recent election victory, Spider attempts to get to uncover police negligence and corruption in a brutal murder only to find out its all part of a much larger and more sinister plot.
This book is a reprint of the comics #25-30 and un unfortunate consequence of that is it starts rather disjointedly. When I picked it up I was a little expectant and excited by the prospect of finding out what the repercussions of Smilers election victory were only for the book to start with 2 single issue stories which were more or less irrelevant to that plot thread.
“Here to go” is more or less a mish-mash of different ideas and themes that don’t really lead us anywhere and although the story mentions Smilers victory, it isn’t actually about it, per se and “21 days in the city” is a series of short random Spider Jerusalem columns, which because of there random nature are quite hard going if what you’re really interested in is the main story.
Even so, what follows are the “Monstering” and “Lonely City” storylines, which almost completely redeems this collection from the false start of the prior 2 stories.
“Monstering” follows Spider Jerusalem’s attempts to uncover the corruption of a city senator and is by far the funniest story in this collection, in fact, it’s the funniest thing I’ve read for some time. Its classic Transmetropolitan at its most anarchic and amusing.
“Lonely City” is the real gem of this collection. It is where the plot continues, which is the point I’d been waiting for, and it features all those elements which makes Transmetropolitan such a fantastic comic to read. It is funny, dark, intelligent, concerned, socially aware, violent and it starts to unravel the foul bloated underbelly of the new government and Smiler’s personal vendetta against Spider himself.
The whole collection features persistently brilliant, unusual, and surreally beautiful artwork, which really captures the city and its wildlife in a meaningful way. I’ve never seen a city of the future but I can’t help but suspect that this is what it will look like.
In addition, the art does not want for clarity and you always can be sure of what action is going on, whether it’s a brutal murder or Spider on a rampage with a bowel disrupter gun set to “Shat into Unconsciousness”.
So, despite its dodgy start, this collection still manages to a worthy addition to the Transmetropolitan mythos and I would personally recommend Transmet to everyone.
After, if Jean Luc Picard likes it, it must be good.
