i cannot say enough, just how much i am loving this series. dystopian, paranoid, contemporary. curious to see how it all turns out...

Thus begins the final arc of this series and after a bit of a lull in the middle volumes we get to the point in the hero's journey where he has lost everything and must now rise up. I think my problem with the middle volumes is (because of the tone set in the first volumes) I wasn't sure where Ellis was going with the President Smiler story line - if it would be something he followed up on or not. Turns out the President vs Spider story line is what this series is ALL about. And thus begins Spid...

Spider's Thrash doesn't depart much from the established Transmet formula: gruesome violence, corrupt authorities, lengthy wanderings through decrepit streets, with Spider Jerusalem waxing poetic about the decline of the city and the simultaneous futility and necessity of human hope...But the present volume also finds, for the very first time, Spider's mortality coming to the fore. I'm interested to see where Warren Ellis and company go with this.

"Something's not right. I can feel it in my left testicle." So speaketh rogue journalist and truth-terrorist Spider Jerusalem. Banished from the mainstream media for his lacerating attacks on the President, Spider goes full-on underground to take down the White House. This volume breaks down into three interconnected story arcs: Spider's investigation of child prostitution, the mishandling of the treatment of the mentally ill and the general hell that the City has fallen into. These all tie toge...

Spider is on the run, and free to say whatever he wants. He feels free but his frail human body is catching up with him. Great volume setting up the next sets.

President Callahan's psychotic hounding of Spider Jerusalem continues with the murders of all witnesses who witnessed Callahan's misdemeanours while on the campaign trail. Except this time the murderers stop by to pay Spider a visit too. Spider also finds out there's something wrong with him, and it's not any of the things his filthy assistants would attest to. Confronting his mortality, he sets out anew, posting his "I Hate It Here" columns via rogue site "The Hole".There's also a serious strip...

“My city changes by the second, but the history of the place is never erased. Cities wear scars deep.” I’ve lost the thread on this one; it might have been a good idea to revisit the first six volumes, but as anyone who has been to the City knows, it’s a tough place to be. Besides, you can always rely on Spider to delve out some harsh truths, even if you’ve forgotten the finer details of the plot. Plot is merely an excuse for Ellis to give us his searing insights on our dystopian hell

This series is freakin' frustrating sometimes. It's been established like, two issues ago, that Spider would wage war to president Callahan and all there was to issue 7 is how Spider saying over and over again how he's going to take down president Callahan. It offered very little in terms of development and even less in terms of Spider's superpower: writing. There is a great opportunity lost in SPIDER'S TRASH as he discusses the lazy and corrupted mental health support system and yet doesn't eve...

Spider as underground journalist makes even more sense than his turn as toast of the town celebrity journalist. Best of all, he hasn't forgotten things other than his vendetta against Callahan. This, I think, is the really interesting thing about Spider: he's so furiously angry because he actually does care, hard as that can be to see sometimes. And the stories that show that side of him are some of the best in the series. Not much forward momentum, when I think about it, but I don't think there...

Spider and his filthy assistants are still hiding from The Smiler, the police and their assassins. He has found a new news outlet willing to publish his pieces after being fired by The Word in the previous volume. Not one of the best volumes. It is satire, but what makes it remarkable is that this volume was published in 2010, the individual issues were published 10 years before that and the satire still feels fresh when applied to the current political situation.

Given the poignant and plainly fucked-up stories in this folume, it's strange - even surreal - how hopeful I find this future setting.It's full of all this crazy shit, true enough, and all the new and bizarre future tech and social norms that never would have flown in the present day. Yet for all of it, the people are still fundamentally people: the exact same ordinary stupid brilliant people as always. None of it, when you get right down to it, feels that much worse as in the present. Hell, eve...

It gets more and more accurate the more I read, which is terrifying. Still crude, still great!

I've said it in previous reviews but this series just gets better and better. This book I think has more and more short story like chapters, but despite this you can see Warren Ellis building towards a climax that is gonna leave the reader spellbound.

Taking away Spider Jerusalem's print outlet just means he has nothing left to lose, and everything to gain. Here is where Ellis starts really going for the gut-punches, with the first few issues devoted to Jerusalem finding a new outlet, which is pretty par for the series. But he follows it up with a couple of absolutely brutal issues covering child prostitution, mental illness, and gentrification, and there are no punches pulled - even putting the events in a fictional city doesn't do much to d...

This volume feels like someone is thrashing about looking for a hook to hang a story on, and I can't tell if that someone is the protagonist or the author. There are a lot of good pieces here, but it all feels a bit disjointed when read as a whole. There's also a sense of a lack of movement in the underlying plot. For all that, there were parts of this story that were really good, and at least there are a few hints about where it will go next. The fact that this direction may turn out to be "dow...

actual rating: 3.5On the one hand this volume is ...well maybe not necessarily an 'enjoyable' read all the time because it deals with a lot of serious and depressing subject matter, but it does at least keep my attention fairly well. Unfortunately not a lot actually HAPPENS here and we seem to just be kind of aimlessly drifting around while Ellis repeats a bunch of shit we already know. This series has always been a pretty transparent power fantasy, but at this point it seems downright masturbat...

Don't get me wrong, Transmetropolitan reeks of truth and I am quite in awe that what Ellis "revealed" more than a decade ago still applies nowadays, well in fact, nothing has really ever changed. The city is ugly, the poor being oppressed and the governement doesn't care.But from a narrative point of view, Transmetropolitan has dragged me for quite some time. Save for some action scenes, hasn't there been anything new, something that wasn't established in the previous volumes?Spider and his filt...

So glad to be reading these again! Freaking hilarious!

The enthralling battle between Spider Jerusalem and the psychotic smiling president goes on in amusing levels. Deprived of all the best amenities and comforts, Spider Jerusalem and his filthy assistants are jobless. The classic antihero finds his own way to spread his truth through "The Hole", an indie news channel. Spider and his filthy assistants will gather information from witnesses of the streets. This volume brings another level of humour. The social satire is once again remarkable, Warren...