Transmetropolitan

Let us begin with a history lesson, fellers.

Ever heard of a guy named Hunter S. Thomson? Wrote a bunch of swell books. Most famous one was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. They even made a movie starring Depp and Benicio del Torro out of it.

Anyway, Thomson was famous even in non-fiction-reading-circles (read: tightass prudes) because of his writing style, which is now famous as Gonzo Journalism. It works by putting the reporter in the center of things rather than the peripheri, making him an active participant rather than a mute spectator. This lends Gonzo journalism a personalized touch that helps endear it to the masses (although endear is probably the wrong word in this context).

End of history lesson.

This long-winded monologue leads up to Transmetropolitan, whose narrative and presentation style both pay homage to Thomson and his brainchild. It deals with the (mis)adventures of Spider Jerusalem, a famous reporter who is yanked out of exile by an unfulfilled literary contract. The series follows Spider as he goes about exposing the uglier face of a city that is pretty darn repulsive to begin with.

Oh, and it is set in the 23rd Century. Bring on the cyberpunk!

The comic itself is built around the experiences of Spider, and subsequent entries in the column he writes ("I Hate It Here") for his local newsfeed (The Word). The comic itself reads like an eclectic seizure of outrageous events, punctuated by strangely haunting moments.
"Journalism is just a gun. It's only got one bullet in it, but if you aim right, that's all you need. Aim it right, and you can blow a kneecap off the world."

Spider Jerusalem himself is a Nihilist, an arrogant prick, a junkie, a sadistic asshole. But once he starts writing he becomes the center of his own universe: everything else just falls away. And a deranged man becomes the voice of reason in a dark, dystopic time. That has to be what sets this book apart from all others.

Transmetropolitan was the tour de force of Warren Ellis, the acclaimed comic writer and novelist who'd earlier worked on cult titles such as Hellblazer and The Authority. His friend Garth Ennis claims the series was inspired by Ellis's own frustrations while working on mainstream titles and not being taken seriously. You can certainly see where he's coming from-bizarre issues such as cryogenic revivals and posthuman secessionist movements are used as metaphors for the more familiar themes of alienation and discrimination, to give an example.
Or maybe the writer just enjoys being a complete lunatic.

Either way, Ellis's warped vision is brought to life by the by the stunning wizardry of penciller Darick Robertson, who brings alive the seamy underbelly with his art. The panels are heavily populated with cutaway gags and obscure pop cult references in the style of Bill Elders, although the actual artistic merit is Robertson's own.

At the time of writing I have reached only the fifteenth issue in a run that lasted five years; however, both the comic and the wikipedia page suggest that all issues following the twelfth will tie into the theme of the new presidency campaign and subsequent shenanigans of the Smiler (read the book!) and Spider's attempts to stop him; in which case, I guess this is the right time to give out first impressions-before they'll buried under an avalanche of meta-references and grand story arcs.

Not that I'm complaining, of course: Hunter S. Thomson's most critically-acclaimed book was the non-fiction Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, and I can't wait to see how Ellis tackles the challenge of finding a big enough mirror for modern society.

In conclusion: read Transmetropolitan. If you can buy back-issues of Archie comics or download the Batman/Deadpool bibliographies (wait, that's me), you can spare a few hundred bucks/a little bandwidth to try out something that is at once too moving to be just a comic book and too graphic to be anything else.

"These are the new streets of this city, where the New Scum try to live. You and me. And here in these streets are the things that we want: sex and birth, votes and traits, money and guilt, television and teddy bears.

But all we've actually got is each other.

You decide what that means."