Reviewed : Transmetropolitan Vol. 1 - Back on the Street

Transmetropolitan, Vol. 1: Back on the Street by Warren Ellis

(Publisher : DC/Vertigo)

"After years of self imposed exile from a civilisation rife with degradation and indecency, cynical journalist Spider Jerusalem is forced to return to a job he hates and a city he loathes. Working as an investigative reporter for the newspaper The Word, Spider attacks the injustices of his surreal 23rd century surroundings. In this first volume, Spider ventures into the dangerous Angels 8 district, home of the Transients - humans who have decided to become aliens through cosmetic surgery. But Spider's interview with the Transients' leader gets him a scoop he didn't bargain for."

Absolutely frikkin brilliant this is!

This is the book that made me bow my head and acknowledge the genius that is Warren Ellis.
Granted the man is so slow and annoyingly delayed as a writer (especially these days) that you want to pull your scalp off along with you hair but there is no denying that he can create stories and ideas that are beyond amazing and so damn good that you can't help but wait for the next one regardless of how long it takes!

Free-aky Warren Ellis Goodness!!

G'Day folks! Pleasure to see you all again, hope the beginning of this week has not been too hard on you? In the unfortunate event that it has, have no fear – it is wednesday and it's all downhill to the weekend from here.

So site back. Relax. And enjoy the extra awesomeness of what I have for you today.

Im assuming at the start that you all know who Warren Ellis is, he is the snarky, brilliant, painful, mind-bending and one of the most loved writers in comic-dom – known for his techno wizardry and transhuman, extropic, steam-punk and well... generally unconventional narrative styling and concepts.

Still not certain? Well lets see, his more famous works include (but are not limited to): 

- Transmetropolitan

- Planetary

- Lazarus Churchyard

- Gravel

- Desolation Jones

- NextWave: Agents of H.A.T.E.

- Ignition City

- Black Summer

More recently and mainstream he revamped Marvel's Thunderbolts into the incarnation we've known and loved since Civil War, wrote a solid run on Astonishing X-Men after Whedon left the title, revamped Tony Stark with the legendary Extremis arc which gave us the Iron Man we know and love/hate today, he was the brains behind destroying Stormwatch over at Wildstorm and creating The Authority and DV8, the totally bad-ass b*tch-slap to trekkie space adventures Switchblade Honey over at AiT/Planet Lar and even a couple of runs on Hellblazer at DC/Vertigo. Not to mention the vast majority of titles over at Avatar Press.

And believe you me folks, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the number of awesome titles this insane genius has put out over the years. Hell he even wrote G.I.Joe Resolute having never known of the franchise before being asked and the final movie (highly recommend it to all fans!!) was in fact so wicked I wished that had been the story for the live-action rather then that sad-sack 'Rise of Cobra' movie.

One of my personal favourites of all time and an inspiration, he has been producing something for a while now that is yet again a redefining move in comics and THAT is what I am here to bring to you.