- Paperback: 144 pages
- Publisher: Titan Books Ltd; New edition edition (29 May 2009)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1845765222
- ISBN-13: 978-1845765224
- Product Dimensions: 25.8 x 16.8 x 1 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
187,872 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #12 in Books > Comics & Graphic Novels > Characters & Series > Transmetropolitan
- #50 in Books > Comics & Graphic Novels > Authors > Ellis, Warren
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Warren Ellis (whose recent work includes the excellent The Authority) is a fine comics writer. Spider Jerusalem, his tortured journalist protagonist, is a wonderful creation. Back on the Street is the first in the Transmetropolitan series and essential as an introduction to Spider and his world. Preacher's Garth Ennis introduces the book, rightly praising "the finest, blackest humour, and the purest hate, and a sense of justice hissed through gritted teeth". If the message is sometimes a little heavily, a little clumsily overbearing, this does not detract too much from a great story. Ellis has produced a fine comic series in Transmetropolitan. This is a future classic.
The scenario goes something like this. Spider Jerusalem left the City ages ago and grew an awful lot of hair up on a mountain. The City was just too corrupt, too sinful, too unbearable a place for a journalist with a heightened, if awry, sense of what's right, what's wrong. Then his editor calls. Spider still owes him two books. A contract from way back when. And if he doesn't come up with the goods there will be consequences. Trouble is, Spider can only write when he's in the City, hasn't written a thing since he left. He doesn't want to go back but he has to write, has to go back. So he returns to the trouble and the turmoil, back to the mess that feeds him as a writer and gets himself a story. A punk he used to know, Fred Christ, is causing trouble. Fred is the leader of the Transients (humans knowingly infused with alien genes) and he wants them to have their own land and is ready to lead a rebellion to achieve that end. The authorities, obviously, see things differently. And Spider sees through both group's hypocrisies... --Mark Thwaite --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Review
Ellis's dystopic narrative, with its full-color tale of a gonzo journalist, shares with mainstream superhero comics a macho ethos that undermines the otherwise cool Watchmen-like script. Spider Jerusalem, a hip reporter of the Hunter Thompson mode, breaks a five-year drug binge on a mountaintop to replenish his resources. The city he returns to resembles the post-apocalyptic Blade Runner and all its funky visual progeny, and Jerusalem soon uncovers a government plot involving a staged rebellion by half-aliens. Two pages at the end (done by a different artist?) suggest how much better this would have looked in a style like Moebius, instead of the conventional DC-house graphics. Still, lots of background gags and some sharp cross-cutting panels make for a compelling read. (Kirkus Reviews)
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
You like political satire? Buy this. Like sci-fi? Buy this. Like black humour? Buy this. Like comics in any way? BUY THIS.
Transmetropolitan is a brilliant example of comic work, and at equal times hilarious, thought-provoking and rage-inducing. As our hero, embittered junkie ultra-violent journalist Spider Jerusalem, returns to the futurities City and covers the Transient movement (humans turning themselves into aliens who want more civil liberties), you will see corruption from both the authorities and the movement leaders, and you will see Spider dealing with it... by reporting the truth.
And the truth, as he puts it, "can blow the knee-cap off the world".
Now freaking buy it.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Back on the Street is a great introduction into the world of Transmetropolitan. A place that mirrors our own world almost too close for comfort. Warren Ellis' story telling, sharp wit and cynicism, coupled with Darrick Robertson's art (which shows the enormity of Transmetropolitan in glorious detail), make it a captivating setting for the voice of Spider Jerusalem, the best character I have seen in comics in a long while. After I started reading this book I couldn't put it down (yes it's that good!) and it also made me crave for the subsiqent installments to the Transmetropolitan world more than any comic has before. I can't recommend this highly enough, it's a must for fans of Preacher and 100 Bullets alike.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
"The money had long gone, and most of the goods and weaponry it bought had long since been bartered away for drugs, food and cable TV... I decided to be depressed for a while"
One of very few truly indispensible graphic novel series starts here. Spider Jerusalem - an amalgam of Hunter S Thompson and John Pilger in a Philip K Dick universe - is forced to give up his self-imposed hermitry to keep the wolves from the door.
Ellis is a magnificent writer (although you'd probably steer clear if you met him in a bar) with an almost grudging social conscience. If you told him he was a caring liberal he might well beat you up - or at least laugh at you - but read these books and I defy you to say he isn't commenting about life today...
Wonderful. Even non-graphic novelistas should read this.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Hilarious, thorught-provoking and unique
Transmetropolitan seems to serve two purposes.
The first is a cultural satire, a glance into where the western world is headed. Read more
The first is a cultural satire, a glance into where the western world is headed. Read more
Published 1 month ago by CrashBang
If you really love me, read my bloody review!
I would describe this book as f**king awsome.Its brimmed with politics , bad language and characters so iratingly evil that you want strangle'em all to death. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Doctor polical nerd
Set bowel disrupters to "prolapse"
I read the Transmetropolitan series a few years ago but loved it so much I decided to go back and give them a re-read and see if they hold up the second time around. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Sam Quixote
Gonzo No NO.....
I have no idea why others have given this 5 stars. Does that mean that Watchmen gets 10 stars out of 5? Read more
Published 10 months ago by D. Mackay
Brilliant story, great art, inferior printing - buy the older edition
Transmetropolitan is a thing of greatness, for many reasons which are described in other reviews. This is purely a review of the print quality of this edition, which is not as good... Read more
Published on 24 Dec 2009 by Elizabeth Pedley
Spider, don't you just love him?
I don't think I can say anything about this graphic which hasn't already been said. It's pretty old now, but Spider Jerusalem still hits home with his honest gonzo journalism,... Read more
Published on 18 Jun 2009 by Sally Barrett
Transmetropolitan is one of the truly great series
I love Transmetroploitan. It was a breath of fresh air after reading so many overly colourful superhero books and dark moody gritty vigilante titles. Read more
Published on 6 April 2009 by J Witts
fantasticly emotive
i must admit when this graphic novel first arrived throgh the small hole in my door; i was somewhat disserpointed. Read more
Published on 25 July 2006 by D. Womersley
Dire Satire
I have to admit having high hopes for this book, especially after reading the rave reviews that it has recieved from both critics and the public, but upon reading the first three... Read more
Published on 18 April 2003 by J P BULL
Fresh and Nice approach
Yep, there are many stories to tell in the big city. Not that I'd care, and quite frankly I believe that if I had been living in Spider's future I'd rather have changed the... Read more
Published on 29 Oct 2000
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