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bloodygranuaileIn Transmetropolitan, Vol. 4: The New Scum, Spider and his two “filthy assistants” are still covering the shitshow of an election, doing interviews with Tammany Hall boss-esque incumbent The Beast and empty suit upstart Senator Gary Callahan, aka The Smiler.
Spider also interviews a bunch of other people, including a lady who used to be cryogenically frozen, because the 23rd century is weird like that. But mostly, this volume is entirely about the election.
Everything we’ve heard about the Beast in the past three volumes is awful. The more we learn of the Smiler, though, we start to see that he’s awful too, and of course, as soon as it becomes clear enough that he’s actually going to be more awful than the Beast, he wins the election. Spider and his filthy assistants throw hand grenades off the balcony when they learn this.
The title refers to the most throwaway stratum of city life, those disenfranchised by the Beast as punishment for never voting for him, although the term “new scum” was given to them by their new supposed hero Senator Callahan. The old scum is presumably the Beast’s voting base.
The relentless misery of electoral politics is occasionally broken up by subplots from weird religious sects, a cute section where Spider is actually nice to somebody (in this case, a young girl whose favorite toy had to be pawned), and by the blossoming pain-in-the-ass friendship between Channon and Yelena, Spider’s assistants (technically, his current assistant and his former-assistant-now-bodyguard).
The Hotel Fat also sounds like the futuristic version of Trump Tower, I’m just sayin’.
It’s hard to truly describe just how incisively weird Transmet is without just pointing out the stuff in panels—the cultural detritus (and I use that word for a reason) cluttering up every available surface in each panel is solid gold to read through, from food stands selling reindeerburgers and French people to a stenciled message on a public bench that reads “Warning: This bench becomes red-hot between 1 a.m. and 7 a.m. No sleeping.” I know there’s some cities in the U.S. that would do that if they could figure out how to do so cheaply enough.
Spider also interviews a bunch of other people, including a lady who used to be cryogenically frozen, because the 23rd century is weird like that. But mostly, this volume is entirely about the election.
Everything we’ve heard about the Beast in the past three volumes is awful. The more we learn of the Smiler, though, we start to see that he’s awful too, and of course, as soon as it becomes clear enough that he’s actually going to be more awful than the Beast, he wins the election. Spider and his filthy assistants throw hand grenades off the balcony when they learn this.
The title refers to the most throwaway stratum of city life, those disenfranchised by the Beast as punishment for never voting for him, although the term “new scum” was given to them by their new supposed hero Senator Callahan. The old scum is presumably the Beast’s voting base.
The relentless misery of electoral politics is occasionally broken up by subplots from weird religious sects, a cute section where Spider is actually nice to somebody (in this case, a young girl whose favorite toy had to be pawned), and by the blossoming pain-in-the-ass friendship between Channon and Yelena, Spider’s assistants (technically, his current assistant and his former-assistant-now-bodyguard).
The Hotel Fat also sounds like the futuristic version of Trump Tower, I’m just sayin’.
It’s hard to truly describe just how incisively weird Transmet is without just pointing out the stuff in panels—the cultural detritus (and I use that word for a reason) cluttering up every available surface in each panel is solid gold to read through, from food stands selling reindeerburgers and French people to a stenciled message on a public bench that reads “Warning: This bench becomes red-hot between 1 a.m. and 7 a.m. No sleeping.” I know there’s some cities in the U.S. that would do that if they could figure out how to do so cheaply enough.