Warren Ellis' "Transmetropolitan" Volumes 3-4

"These are the new streets of this city, where the New Scum try to live. You and me. Here 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."
-Spider Jerusalem



It's election year, the "Year of the Bastard," in volume 3 of Warren Ellis' "Transmetropolitan." The great electoral tradition of having to choose between the deceitful disaster from one party and the conniving catastrophe from the other is alive and well in the future, and Spider Jerusalem finds himself shocked to discover he actually prefers the President, (The Republicanish Beast) against the Incumbent, (The Democraticky Smiler, a.k.a. Gary Callahan). See, the repulsive Beast at least believes in thoroughly fucking the American people, but the Smiler seems to have no beliefs behind a Jokerish smile meant to reassure the voter of whatever it is they want to be reassured about.
This is set in the DISTANT FUTURE? Huh. Darick Robertson's art seems less frenetic and sci-fi in these issues, and even Spider's Carcinoma-Angels-smoking mutated kitten looks totally 2012. There's an actual physical voting booth involved ("for tradition's sake")! Nothing changes.
Well, except Spider's assistant. After Channon departed to join a nunnery, Word editor Mitchell Royce introduces Spider to his niece, Yelena Rossini, who has to carry Spider's drug-stuffed baggage- both literally and metaphorically. Throw a bottle of "Ellis' Sauce" in there, and soon enough the two are doing the extra-nasty. There are pictures, courtesy of Spider's shades!
But Jerusalem's crusty heart is actually oozing for Vita Severn, the one bright thing in the Smiler's campaign. Not that this stops him from printing the news: The Smiler has referred to his constituents as The New Scum and has procured a "clean" cloned VP from neo-Nazi third-party-man Bob Heller, (in exchange for Florida's vote, duh.)
There's tragedy closing the volume.



Volume 4, "The New Scum," intersperses "snapshots" of the City's bizarreries throughout: these monstrous idiots cloned into disease are what keeps Spider moving, his general disgust with them mixed with a protectionist pity as he races to prevent Callahan, (whom he now suspects of murder) from winning the election. Well, not races- Spider's in a bad funk after the events of the previous volume, and some may feel disappointed by seeing the fuckhead in mourning, feeling as helplessly shackled as most people feel watching election turn-outs. On the lighter side, Channon comes back from the transient convent to serve as Spider's bodyguard- and endlessly mock Yelena about her bedding slip:
"What was it like? Did he cough a lot? Big black moist lumpy bits coughed out onto your boobs? Was it like a hail of birdshit drenching the neck of your womb? All Spider's guys on the march, millions of the bastards, all jabbering and smoking as they stomped over your uterus with big hobnailed boots?"

AH, that Ellis, he's a dear treasure. And credit too to Geoff Darrow's intricate, "Where is Waldo"-ish covers.