It pains me to reject Warren Ellis, but I just don't hate everyone else (or myself) enough to really get behind Spider Jerusalem. It is a more colorful but even less hopeful take on cyberpunk.
This volume collects the first six issues of the comic series Transmetropolitan. Spider Jerusalem is Hunter S. Thompson in a cyberpunk setting. He is called out of retirement and back to The City, where he hates everyone and will bring Truth to their addled skulls.
If you're looking for a stylish version of chanting "hate hate hate hate hate," not quite AM or Kefka style, this does it pretty well. The glimmers of hope are mostly strangled, though, and it does not suggest any direction beyond a series of rants.
The first six issues are mostly episodic. I am told that the second year of the series kicks off a long storyline, so maybe it is just being episodic while establishing the setting and characters. We get a Two Minutes' Hate on each issue's theme of the month. Rants cover trendy social movements and iconoclasm, authoritarianism, government, mass media, and religion.
Basically, Spider Jerusalem is a horrible, depraved person using truth as a weapon against more horrible, depraved hypocrites. It is black-and-gray morality, suitable for cyberpunk but very vivid. Spider takes refuge in audacity: cursing up a storm, blowing up buildings, getting his way by punching and shouting, and wielding a bowel disruptor. He chain-smokes between doses of uppers, spends issues nude or in stolen towels, and has a two-faced cat that also smokes and pees on things. It is unclear how often Spider excretes on things himself, since that is not in-frame.
In The City, the politicians are corrupt, the media is corrupt, the businesses are corrupt, you see the pattern here. People tend to be abusers or victims, vicious or apathetic. The setting is also wacky, with one group splicing themselves with alien DNA, several new religions appearing daily, and the ubiquitous three-eyed smiley face.
Spider's assistant is a breath of fresh air. She is a journalism student, former stripper and bodyguard. She seems still on the surface of the muck that Spider dwells in, or at least she is not showing the psychological scars. Of course, moderate that by the setting: her idealism and love come across through coarse discussions of sex and an unhealthy relationship. She is suitably cynical, just not yet fully jaded. She is also the sane one of the pair.
The other moments of light come from Spider's winning. He is insane, audacious, and hate-filled because he is an idealist, believing in capitalized Truth, and that the truth will set you free. And if that truth sets some people free from the tops of tall buildings, they deserved it. And it works; the truth is sufficiently ugly and shocking to pierce the public consciousness and affect the issue of the month. That month; there is no reason to think that things are getting better, or ever could, but there might be a win along the way.
This becomes problematic when placing them alongside each other. On one page, Spider is decrying oppressive violence, while he is taking a rocket launcher to an unsuspecting bar on another. He is a champion of the downtrodden, when not also stepping on them and cursing their apathy and acceptance of their place at the bottom. Touching moments are alloyed with vomit, urine, and the phrase "balls deep." This could be used for an effectively jarring contrast, but here it is just discordant. Spider Jerusalem can be awesome, but he is not a serious person, so he cannot effectively deliver the moral of the story. Such as it is.
The art is wonderful. It is stylish, richly detailed, and perfectly complementary to the text. At times, it could bear a bit more of the story's weight, but Spider loves the sound of his own voice. Costuming is excellent, and it looks like the artist had fun with the assistant's outfits. The backgrounds are very busy and full of details. Ebola cola!
As a detail, I appreciate that the rocket launcher blew out the passenger window while being fired out the driver's window. That's why it doesn't have recoil, folks. Maybe it should have taken out car in the process, but if we accept the bowel-disrupting gun, I'll accept the relatively mild recoil adjustment.
For a bit of trippiness, Patrick Stewart reportedly wanted to produce a live version and offered to voice an audio version. Patrick Stewart plays a cyberpunk Hunter S. Thompson: can you dig it?
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