Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Transmet 59; "So very tired..."

Our Lady of The Two Towers

09:35 / 16.08.02

I'm really in two minds about this. Half of me thinks it's an adequate enough end to the series (I know there's one issue to go, but that's going to be a coda to this), half of me wants to join the WEF just to say "Warren, next time you're doing one of your comedy rants and telling people how to make comics better, could you emphasise the importance of a good ending?" Taking half the issue to get Spider to meet the President does not inspire confidence that you have anything to say.
Still think the issue when Spider interviewed the Beast before the Election was a better issue.

DaveBCooper

13:44 / 16.08.02

Are you suggesting there’s padding ?
I think you’ll find it’s actually manga-style pacing.

DBC
(who hasn’t actually read this book yet because he only reads Transmet in TPB because of the interminable number of pages of Spider Jerusalem walking down the street, title pages, and the like, which suggest that someone might be attempting to reap financial rewards whilst merely offering, in exchange, an antiquated piece of material suitable for the tying of knots)

Our Lady of The Two Towers

16:49 / 16.08.02

If 'manga-style pacing' means replacing and dialogue with lots of shots of Spider walking round the city (amd it's not like we haven't had many of them over the years) rather than talking to the man who has had people killed and fucked over for his own personal pleasure, then you can stuff it.

Still, as I half-expected Ellis to produce an issue where it took Spider the entire issue to reach the Smiler and nothing would be said at all before he was shot, this is an improvement.

Utopia

06:28 / 18.08.02

i have been so very patient of Transmet, and have been so very forgiving of the last 30 issues or so (compared to how fucking great the early ones were), but...source gas? give me a fucking break! how predictable. in fact, i was turning each page hoping for it not to be something of that sort... i dunno.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

08:42 / 18.08.02

I quite liked that element, but after the third year it just went wrong. Spider has twice now dealt serious blows to the Smiler's campaign yet apart from a half-arsed assasination attempt the Smiler seems happy to let Spider do what he wants.

Oh right, whatever the President says, goes. Oh well, that's all right then.

DaveBCooper

09:15 / 19.08.02

Yep, Lada, apparently Manga-style pacing means just that. That’s been Ellis’s angle, I believe…

Which is why I won’t buy individual issues anymore – when about 30% of it is just Spider walking or sitting down or whatever else it is that he can do to get Darick Robertson to do all the work, I feel my £2 would be better spent elsewhere…Such as on Lone Wolf and Cub, which has 300-odd pages for £7.50.

And includes some pacing in the story sense of the word, and not just padding with pretensions.

DBC

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

02:42 / 20.08.02

I liked this issue, and to be honest, that's the first time since around #36 I can say that. The ending wasn't a BIG as it shoudl have been (I would have liked to see the uprising a lot more and less of Spider dying as he sets it all up), but I also wonder if Ellis felt he needed to do a "Big Ending" because Sandman did one.

Nice wrap-up tho. I'll miss this series, as now Vertigo has nothing I will say "Oh cool" when it shows up in my pull box.

adamswish

13:24 / 20.08.02

Yet to read this issue. But Warren better have made up for the huge cock-ups in the previous few issues.

Now I could take the mix up of the two hotels (and apologies if we've covered this in another thread, just got back from six months in a shit job) that the smiler and the beast stopped in.

But, how exactly could Mary take a photo of the assasin of Vita with the camera Spider gave her (big breath) WHEN HE DIDN'T HAND IT OVER UNTIL AN ISSUE AFTER THE WOMAN WAS SHOT. The killing happens at the end of "Year of the Bastard" and the camera is handed over half way through "The New Scum".

I expect more from my professional writers.

Do we have any theories (kind of like the no-awards Marvel used to do when fans wrote in and picked holes in the on-going stories, back in the 1980's or earlier)

Refos Gun

16:00 / 23.08.02

Now that this series is coming to an end, I can safely say that the title, for the most part, was a let down. I am one of the largest Hunter S. Thompson fans out there and the notion of a ranting, Thompson-like protagonist in the future could have been really good. He spent the first half of the series developing the setting, the city, the future and all it's weirdness (cool) and the rest of it building up the scandal (got old after 20 issues or so).

This could have been great, but instead it got really old rather quickly. I expect Yelena will be picking up the "Spider" roll (like we didn't see that coming) and the series will end with a very well developed setting, but a very poor storyline.

Seems like Elis got sick of his own project. It had lots of steam and gusto in the early stages, but fizzled out at the end.

rizla mission

10:20 / 24.08.02

(just like all his other series really.. Ellis always seems to start off really good and then .. kinda give up - see Planetary)

This was an .. adequate ending I suppose. Did exactly what was expected. Which is OK - I can't really think of any way they could have done it that wouldn't have been an anti-climax..

So file this beside the several other big Vertigo series that didn't so much reach a climax as just run down and stop..

uncle retrospective

11:20 / 24.08.02

The Camera was handed over to Mary in the revivals issue 6 I think. (Don't have the books handy)

As for the ending, well yea, Blah describes it well. We knew it had to happen but it was really a whimper of an issue, Transmet will be lumped in with Preacher for starting so well and then grinding to a halt long after anyone cares.
Which is a shame.

Add Your Reply