Spider Jerusalem (centre) with Filthy Assistants Channon Yarrow (left) and Yelena Rossini
"Filthy assistants! To me!"
Transmetropolitan is Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson's post-
Cyber Punk paean to gonzo journalism, American politics and the
weird-ass future. Well-known outlaw journalist Spider Jerusalem (basically Hunter S Thompson
In Space) begins the series "up a goddamn mountain", free from the constraints of dirty politics, toxic culture and his book deal. Well, not exactly; his old publisher, "The Whorehopper", calls him up, reminding Spider that he still has two more books to turn out. After expressing all kinds of violence, Spider buggers off to
The City, a bastardized future version of New York City. He manages to get his old job back, ends up picking up a filthy assistant or two-- first with Channon Yarrow, his student-turned-nun-turned-bodyguard, and then with Yelena Rossini, his editor's niece-- and wreaks havoc upon The City with a keyboard and a
bowel disruptor.
It's only when Spider gets truly involved in politics that things start to go weird. He can't wait to get the current president, nicknamed "The Beast" by all and sundry thanks to his earlier work, out of office, and to usher his competitor, Gary Callahan, a.k.a. "The Smiler", into office. It's only after Spider finds out how dirty Callahan's willing to get his hands to get into office that Spider realizes just what a monster he's released... and sets out to bring the entire government crashing down.
This comic series contains examples of:
- Bizarre Alien Biology - While the original aliens don't show up, people who have modified their DNA to resemble them do, and once the change is advanced enough, they lose the ability to digest human food.
- Brown Note - Who doesn't want to have a bowel disruptor?
- City Of Adventure - The City
- Crowning Moment Of Awesome Really anytime Spider opens his mouth, as his ability in creative insulting has this troper wishing that Spider was real so he could sit at the Master's feet and learn how to cripple people with insults, but the end of album one, the religious convention and when he throws his wife's head into the river immediately spring to mind as completely awesome even by Spider standards.
- Does This Remind You Of Anything - The City Center police assault on a student protest in the last story arc is pretty evocative of Kent State, right down to the female student crying over the corpse of her classmate.
- Spider overturning tables and chasing the religious leaders out of the shopping mall also brings to mind a certain famous event in the Bible...
- Everyone Calls Him Barkeep - The Beast. He claims that even his kids call him that.
- Extreme Omnivore - Damn near anything is eaten. Heck, there's an entire restaurant chain devoted to cannibalism.
- Human Popsicle - The trope is dealt with poignantly through the "Revivals", people who were awoken from cryogenic sleep only to find that the city treated them like the homeless. Spider ends up befriending Mary Bannister, a 20th-century photojournalist, and helps her get back on her feet.
- Jerk With A Heart Of Gold - Borderline; Spider can be surprisingly humane on a good day -- problem is, he very seldom has one.
- He does have a soft spot for kids (Despite protests to the contrary) and they normally bring out the best in him.
- Kick The Dog - Spider actually goes beyond the call of duty with this trope, at one point collecting dogs in a sack to tie them to festive Christmas bells as "living mufflers".
- Magnificent Bastard - Spider himself.
- Nanomachines - "Makers", matter creating engines that can be powered by trash. There's even a whole community of people who download their entire consciousness into a colony of floating nanobots.
- No New Fashions In The Future - Heavily, heavily subverted, as any look over the art will indicate.
- No Transhumanism Allowed: Thoroughly averted.
- Our Presidents Are Different - The Beast is President Corrupt, The Smiler is President Evil.
- Path Of Inspiration - Several religions are depicted like this, most notably Fred Christ's church (founded so he could gain political power by whoring women out).
- Protection From Editors - Subverted. Royce, the editor at the newspaper Spider writes for, doesn't actually edit Spider's writing, nor does anyone want him to. He does occasionally suggest topics, but mostly he runs interference and protects Spider, finally getting a Crowning Moment Of Awesome for it in the runup to the finale.
- The Radar - Filthy Assistants (and to a lesser degree Royce, although he's Spider's boss) in regards to anything non-journalism related, who lampshade it repeatedly.
- Slasher Smile - The Smiler.
- Smoking Is Cool
- Smug Snake - The Smiler. Clones his own vice president, assassinates his campaign manager to earn polling points, and arranges for the death of his wife and children when they start coming out against him. He even admits to Spider that he wants to be president just so he can fuck with the American people -- but only when he knows Spider won't be able to obtain a record of the conversation. However, he's mentally unstable and Spider takes one potshot after another at him, gradually wearing him down.
- Strawman Political - Averted; there are only the "Ruling" and "Opposition" parties, and they aren't identified so much by policies as by their tendencies to play dirty and screw with the American populace. Makes sense since both of them are based on Nixon.
- Not True: The Smiler is more of a Reagan than a Nixon, if the campaign posters closely resembling Ronald Reagan's smiling face are any indication.
- Twenty Minutes Into The Future - Well, not so much twenty minutes into the future, but a long way forward. In fact, no one in the comic actually knows the current year; they just refer to years by terms like, "The year when..." Particularly interesting was a memorial with a digital display that read the number of years since the event.
- Not quite true; the year is simply never made known to the audience, but there is a reference to Mary Bannister being told what year it was when she was thawed out, which Spider states is a bad thing, psychologically speaking.
- Actually, in one year Spider ruminates on the fact that no one knows what year it is in front of a sign that says an event happened "twenty-six years ago". It's possible that they just told Mary Bannister how many years it has been since she was frozen.
- Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist - Spider treats his assistants like garbage, talks about sterilizing the entire city, and throws his ex-wife's cryogenically frozen head into the bay. He's also a man singularly devoted to exposing the truth, no matter what the cost.
- Villain With Good Publicity - The Smiler
