Transmetropolitan Vol. 1 and 2

Vol. 1: Back on the Street, Vol. 2: Lust for Life

Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson, 1997

(November 2011)

Comics (and let’s be unapologetic and actually call them that, none of your ‘graphic novel’ guff here please, because then you’re no better than the people who bought the Harry Potter novels with the moody grown-up covers in a cravenly transparent attempt to look like they weren’t reading a children’s book. ‘High’ and ‘low’ culture are such false opposites anyway, and can only exist if you actually feel embarrassed enough by your tastes to fork out an extra couple of quid simply for a cover with fewer cartoon owls on it. For fuck’s sake man up and like what you like) are something I’ve only recently got back into.

Not that I was a huge comic geek when I was younger. I liked Asterix, obviously, and for several of my more impressionable years subscribed to the Transformers comic. I can still name all the characters up to and including the Headmasters, which clearly hadn’t been named with the UK market in mind.

The three most harrowing animated movie deaths from my childhood rank, in reverse order of how much bawling and bubbling snot they made me produce, as follows –

3. Any and all of the rabbits from Watership Down.

2. Bambi’s mum, of course.

1. Optimus Prime.

I still don’t want to talk about it. And I also flatly refuse to discuss any of that heretic Bay’s abominations.

Transmetropolitan is very good, by the way.