A True American Character

As we wait for Pynchon's next caper, or Murakami's, or Flanagan's, or any other post-modern author we love, I try to pass the time. Having an infant around makes it kind of interesting when it comes to reading words.

The Boy has been enjoying both Leaves of Grass and a book ma sent me, Rise of the Rocket Girls, the untold history of the women who worked for JPL and NASA for the last six decades. It's a pretty interesting story.

Leaves of Grass is a national treasure, of course.

I tried a little of Gravity's Rainbow, but he liked it a little less. Maybe he was just hungry.

In the mean time, I got into a now-defunct comic series created by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson. It's called Transmetropolitan, and it was originally published by Helix Comics, a sci-fi imprint published by DC Comics. Helix folded after a few years, and Transmet moved over to their Veritgo line. It lasted for five years and sixty issues, with two specials with art by other people.

The main character is named Spider Jerusalem, and he's fully based on Hunter S. Thompson. Take a look:

The series is set in a future that looks surprisingly similar to now. The title ran from 1997 to 2002 when the Internet was in its infancy. The future depicted is a few centuries ahead of our own, but they've lost track of the year. You can go by any number of fast-food places and buy dog or human or whatever to eat, lizards have replaced rats as infestation vermin, and any number of weird things can happen.

You can download your memories and personality into a billion atomic-sized robots and become a "Foglet". One of Spider's old acquaintances is now a religious leader of the Transient movement. His name is Fred Christ and he's taken the traits to be half-human and half-alien:

Spider is a journalist fighting to bring down corruption and end ignorance. His drug intake borders on the archetype of "heroic." He dislikes people, but only because they're too connected to each other, willfully and happily ignorant, and too self involved. He has two helpers he calls his "filthy assistants," both ladies, and his first directive to each, separately, is to "take the anti-cancer trait on the counter, grab a pack of smokes and start chain smoking." His signature glasses can take pictures and came from a replicator. Replicators here are sentient and like to get high.

Beyond his bowel disruptor pistol, his only real weapon is the truth. He uses it to go after two corrupt presidents.

In the America depicted in this universe, there's the City (to where he must return at the beginning of the first issue), which is a MEGA-megalopolis, and the rest of the country. The City is an amalgam of many US cities, but is probably the natural outgrowth of the Bos-Wash Corridor; it seems like the Great Lakes are now called the Western Lakes.

Anyway, I love the idea that the persona that Hunter Thompson cultivated---the truth-searcher and truth-sayer, the hero-journalist, the method-performer with the drugs---is so original and, dare I say, so American that it would justify a half-decade of loving tribute comic series.

This is certainly not your super-hero comic.

If you ever feel like you want to look at graphic novel material in between the literature, this would be worth your time.

I mean, seriously...