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Underground > Comic Books >

Transmet #60 [contains spoilers] [and a fair bit of distain]

Our Lady of The Two Towers

14:40 / 12.10.02

This morning I had delicate neurological surgery so that, when I encounter something that would have once made me angry, I instead react as if it's incredibly funny.

Then I read Transmet #60.

BWAH-HA-HA-HA!

It's so shit it's funny! Darick keeps the art up to it's usual high standard more or less, though Channon seems to have taken off the wonderbra she was wearing permanently while they were in the City.

As for the story... Do you remember all that stuff about how Spider had a terminal disease and seemed to die at the end of the last issue? Forget it. Wouldn't you know, he's one of the 1% for who the condition isn't terminal after all. And for a super-advanced future society it seems dictation programs were never developed. And Yelena is pregnant too.

So, if Morrison was writing this stuff, we'd chalk it up to being some hyper-dyper super-sigil and start masterbating like good 'ens. What's Ellis' excuse?

Matthew Fluxington

14:53 / 12.10.02

What's Ellis' excuse?

The Warren Ellis Forum. ArtBomb.

yawn - thing's buddy

16:28 / 12.10.02

so Spider doesn't don a trenchcoat, grow his hair, remove that crap tatoo and start saying innit, then?

shame.

01:11 / 13.10.02

This is so tedious, and churlish. Warren Ellis is, in general, an excellent comics writer. Someone seems to have integrated that with his online persona, which I know little (and less good) about. Think about that for a moment.

Okay.

I liked Transmetropolitan #60, as I liked Preacher #66 - both for, ultimately, the emotional impact they (naturally as a finale might) delivered. The ending of both (and indeed, any other limited comic series - remember The Invisibles; I didn't see across the board applause for that, either, but again - I love it)appears to have disappointed a lot of people.

Well, boo hoo - Transmet was a very good, occasionally brilliant (#40 and #42 are my personal highlights) series.

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

02:26 / 13.10.02

i quite liked the transmet series, however i find the last issue a bit of a cop out

and yelena looks silly with a shaved head

03:01 / 13.10.02

Maybe this is common for comics, but with Transmet and Preacher I stopped being interested long before it got to the end. Did these maybe just go on too long? I was more relieved when they ended than anything else.... in the beginning, they were both great of course...

Our Lady of The Two Towers

06:39 / 13.10.02

I liked the first three years, they weren't perfect but built up to something. I think Ellis' decision to experiment with manga-time or whatever the hell that was in year four was as it meant that, apart from the storm, nothing happened in the City for that year. But for year five, apart from the idea of the university riots bringing around the Smiler's fall from grace, there wasn't much good there. I just find it difficult to accept that in a world where Spider can buy babies to eat and people can switch their genome without difficulty, it's a big deal whether the President sleeps with hookers.

Remember when those youths beat the sexgang kid to death? How one of them was dressed smartly and had a huge grin and looked like a young Smiler? What happened to that? And was that megastorm from year four somehow orchestrated or pure chance?

It ended a lot better than the two fingers that was the end of Preacher. A little forethought in the build up would have been a good idea (Yelena hadn't written anything since doing Spider's column for him around issue 47, obvious foreshadowing but getting her to help him in the final year might have been good, and what about Channon's sudden novel-writing direction, where did that come from, issue 8?).

12:48 / 13.10.02

The megastorm was I think, as the government control the weather, fairly explicitly explained along with the 'blue flu' that accompanied it.

I think yer all just curmudgeons that dinna like happy endings.

The Natural Way

16:12 / 13.10.02

Personally, I can't bear the man's writing. Hate his dialogue, pacing and, as an ideas man, he's for shit.

I just can't get into that guy's headv - I don't think there's that much going on in there.

The Natural Way

16:14 / 13.10.02

Oh, but I loved the ending of the Invisibles, Dunc.

Said the previously obsessed one.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

19:22 / 13.10.02

I generally like Ellis, though I've only read 'Transmet', 'Authority' and 'Planetary' and have no interest in any of his other stuff. Someone on r.a.c.d-vertigo complained that it was difficult to have a sense of tension in a world where anything was possible, and I felt the idea of Spider's disease was great, to find something that technology couldn't cure, but that went all wrong in the end. I just hope that with all this other work he's taking on 'Planetary' isn't going to go all wrong.

22:11 / 13.10.02

Well, yeah, I mean - Wizard didn't like the end of The Invisibles. 'Cos it gave them too many kwestyuns. But I'm sure I've seen folk here complaining their heads off about v.3 in general.

I hate Ellis' Authority, incidentally. Far and away the worst, most annoying thing I've read by him.

22:12 / 13.10.02

And is the end of Invisibles 'happy'?

Our Lady of The Two Towers

11:33 / 14.10.02

It's largely positive I'd say...

The Natural Way

12:52 / 14.10.02

Grant's a soppy bastard, for all his "punk" posturing.

But, Duncan, this isn't a thread the Invisibles (and who gives a flying fuck what Wizard think about anything?) - it's a thread about Transmet 60 and how shit it is.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

13:56 / 14.10.02

Although the way things are going I should perhaps retitle this thread as 'Is it shit or am I just crazy?

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:01 / 14.10.02

You're not crazy. It was a weak deus ex machina, probably farted from the same ludicrous overidentification with Spider Jerusalem that lead to that rather embarrassing moment in Planetary with John Constantine, and indeed to most of Invisibles Books 2 and 3. And the emaciated, pointless shaggy-dog plot all happened so-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o slo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-owly.

16:33 / 14.10.02

O Misgendered one, you’re very kind to call it Manga-style pacing.
Padding with pretensions, I’d be inclined to say.

And the end of the series : he really is immune or whatever ? Hmm, maybe I’ll stop buying the TPBs.

Is this why he closed down the WEF ? Fear that everyone'd notice the emperor was butt-nekkid, maybe ?

DBC

16:36 / 14.10.02

Oh...

Well, seeing as I didn't think it was shit (but it did give me a shit-eating smile) I'll say no more.

Apart from this: I hate Wizard, but it is - unfortunately - the biggest 'critical' (ha!) voice in comics. Likely, then, that some do give a fuck what it has to say. It is also irredeemably shit, regressive, etc., etc.

04:26 / 15.10.02

I think that The Comics Journal would be the biggest "critical" voice in comics. Wizard would be the biggest voice, though all it's shouting is "Poo!" and "Titty!".

I have an article written by Warren talking about the evils of "manga pacing" in western comics, so it seemed kinda silly when he started using the term to answer the shouts of "nothing's happening" from fans and critics alike.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

09:26 / 15.10.02

Dave, I'm only calling it 'manga-style pacing' because that's what everyone round here was calling it when it came out. I didn't actually mind it as such, though there were a few daft pictures like a bloke with the bullet hanging in space in front of his forehead, but it slowed the story down at a time when it needed to speed up and looked like it was covering an ideas shortage.

10:20 / 15.10.02

Oh, I appreciate that – just slightly wary, as Ellis was claiming ‘manga pacing’ when I fear the reality was, as you rightly say, a paucity of ideas. And leaning on the artist as Ellis seems to do all too often.
Wasn’t having a go at you, honest.

DBC

Jack The Bodiless

14:30 / 15.10.02

IMRampantlyOnanisticO, same problem as Invisibles, Preacher and fucking Babylon 5, to name but a few... creator far too aware of the idea of himself as a 'creator' loudly proclaims new series to be the distillation of everything he wants to do in the medium (ie, that he wasn't allowed to do before due ot editor-hacks jizzing in hir cornflakes). Also loudly proclaims that entire series is planned and/or plotted entirely in advance, and that it will end on a predetermined issue/year, the former of which is a load of bollocks, as they've only sketched out the first year and a few characters/themes.

This former claim is then revealed to be bollocks when, part way through the self-proclaimed magnum opus, said creator runs our of ideas, momentum and/or ability to give a shit, and slogs hir way through the last couple of years on fumes while putting their actual energies into non-work related 'projects' (drugs/travelling, beer/conventions/trying to become a screenwriter, turning fast-dying 'revolutionary' TV series into a corporation, like the mini-me to George Lucas, and, in Ellis' case, fiddling around with web/multi-media-related shit, starting up Ellis-a-like superhero comics - that aren't actually superhero comics, of course - for Wildstorm which he then leaves to other hacks, and BECOMING HIS OWN ANAL PROBE).

Feel better now...

15:29 / 15.10.02

To some extent, I think you may have a point, Jack.

The only glaring exception that springs to mind would be Cerebus, where it’s all too clear for the first year or so (all right, let’s say up until High Society starts, for the sake of whatsit) that Dave Sim didn’t really have a grand plan or whatever, and only later on did he claim he had a 300 issue, 25 year plan. I’ll freely admit that I don’t read it any more (haven’t since about 115, for reasons which now escape me), and whatever one may think about Dave’s attitudes to things such as sexual politics and the like, he does seem to have pretty much stuck to schedule and focussed on the book, as opposed to letting it slide while he does other stuff. However, I couldn’t say if it looks as if he’s been coasting or not – anyone else ? Does Dave really appear to have had it all planned out for ages ?

I’m sure there are other exceptions too, but I fear that what you say holds a depressing amount of truth; the problem with creators gaining a following, I guess, is that it runs the risk of turning into the cult of personality, with people following regardless of quality (your Lucas comparison is a very good one).

DBC

15:23 / 24.10.02

Very hard to tell with Sim as it's so nuts. The last issue I bought is entitled 'Chasing YAHWEH' and features Cerebus debating the authorship of his world's version of the Torah with a guy who might or then again might not be Woody Allen. The entire second half of the issue is a Sim essay cum rant entitled 'Islam, My Islam'.

So probably "no" would be my opinion as Sim had his religious conversion en route to the destination. In many ways, that's been his WEF.

That said, I'm not sure Sim really put out that he'd had all 300 issues in mind before drawing Cerebus #50, only that he was going to do 300 issues and that the character would die in the last one. This in and of itself was so radical that it revolutionized comics. (Look kids, progress!) The tragedy is in how deeply Cerebus went off the rails starting with (pick your own issue depending on how offended you get my middlebrow mystical misogyny).

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

17:50 / 24.10.02

CEREBUS SPOILERS HO
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Well, and this skidding way past the realm of off-topic, but I'm pretty confident about Sim's planning,it's just that everything that was important to most readers was finished off by 200 (he even pondered stopping there in the Reads text pieces). These are just C's Latter Days (although he has ironically overturned the entire Cirinist empire, sort of accidentally). It's now at least 150 years since Church & State and since there's no chance of Elrod or Henrot-Gutch showing up, many long timers have strayed. There's very little of what made the book what it was back in the day great, but I think it's still a quality read. His politics, however, were always in the book (contrary to popular belief [just see High Society]), and although his religious conversion was recent, it's most likely because of the research he was doing for this portion of the storyline. He didn't include Hemingway because he was a huge fan and loved his work. He read his stuff in research for the portion he had layed out for the "character" of Ham. Because a prototype of a typical gruff male laid low by a meddling and manipulative wife was just what the story needed. I'm guessing a similar thing happened with the Bible, as Cerebus is now a kind of God and Maimonedes (sp?) all in one in Estarcion. Dave's opinions about feminism are just that, and they certainly do nothing to detract from the hilarity of seeing Konigsberg bouncing around in a sleeper.

Benjamin.

01:06 / 25.10.02

Just put a dollar in my computer to post this, after reading the final issue of transmet.

Was SORT OF dissapointed, as I was in the last issue. The dialouge was stunted and the plot sucked throughout. Half of me likes the twist ending, BUT.....Ellis sucks at endings and emotional impact via drama type situations. I think Ellis is a bit sucky. Up to now only Invisibles and Sandman have ended as continuing series should have under Vertigo. I think 100 Bullets will end good too.

But Ellis really copped out with this one. Twart.