Transmetropolitan Vol. 5 and 6

Vol. 5: Lonely City, Vol. 6: Gouge Away

Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson, 1999-2000

(February 2012)

The adventures of Spider Jerusalem continue. They’re about as subtle as a headbutt, but they rattle along at a fair old pace and are entertaining to read. Plus, violence is funny (not really kids! Remember to brush your teeth before bedtime).

My usual habit of buying these collected editions in pairs has come back to bite me in the arse here somewhat, as volume six leaves off halfway through a story-arc. I guess I’ll just have to be patient until my next order. It does give me a chance to expand on my theory about ‘Box-set Syndrome’.

Continuing series, be they for TV, comics, books or whatever, have a built in dosing system. You watch a series as it airs for the first time and you have no choice but to watch one episode per week. Likewise monthly comic releases, or even yearly installments of a series of novels. You’re forced to pace yourself, and the writers are likewise. If they’re any good, then they’ll factor this in and use the enforced pacing to improve the end result.

Box sets wipe this out completely. Cliffhangers are useless if all you have to do it hit ‘next scene’. The unit of critical judgment expands from the episode to the entire series, and this exposes faults you might otherwise not notice as well as smothering strengths which would otherwise be obvious. You only need watch a few episodes of House to realize that if the timer on your DVD player reads less than 35 minutes, then whatever diagnosis they’ve reached is wrong. 24 is, somewhat ironically, a significantly poorer viewing experience when viewed entirely in a single day, even allowing for fatigue and eye-strain.

Box-set Syndrome, then, is the death of anticipation and tension. My mother called it ‘too much of a good thing’, but this is the 21^st Century so it’s practically compulsory that I make reference to the pace of technological change and how it alters our consumption and thought patterns, and then make up some vaguely scientific term to describe it. I toyed with ‘Previously, this bit was still redundant’, but it didn’t sound medicalized enough, so ‘Box-set Syndrome’ it is.