Before I go off to find fireworks and some sort of food on a stick (which I maintain is truly American) I’m going to give a quick shout to my favorite patriotic comic book.
It’s not Captain America. It’s certainly not any of the opportunistic Barack Obama comics to hit in the last few months.
It’s Transmetropolitan.
Yes, it’s filthy-mouthed sci-fi written by the British master of filthy-mouthed sci-fi, Warren Ellis. Even so, Transmet is indisputably American the same way Watchmen is. It’s a rough-and-tumble take on American politics, through the lens of a loathsome yet idealistic journalist and his slightly less loathsome Filthy Assistants.
And it’s the only comic I can think of that actually embodies some of the good things about America (and our politics).
Sure, Spider Jerusalem’s real loyalty is to the Truth, rendered in caps to make sure you understand that there is a truth and Spider’s telling it, but he also believes in democracy, free speech, and several other things that certainly aren’t uniquely American values. So why set the comic in the USA instead of in England?
The villains, if anything, seem more American–vile presidential candidates who want to slash at the Constitution or shit on poor people. And what could be more American than taking them on headlong with little backup and nothing more than a hunch that they’re the bad guy–and ultimately succeeding? That’s really the American dream, right?
Maybe it’s just me, but I see dissent as a value to be upheld. We were founded on it, weren’t we? And so for the Fourth of July, I’ll celebrate the right of journalists everywhere to make public officials lives’ hell for fun and righteousness.
And I swear I’m not going to inject heroin into my eyeballs.
July 4th, 2009 at 11:43 pm
Speaking as a former Ellis fanatic who owns everything Transmet-related that has ever been published, had Transmetropolitan ended with issue #24 it would have been the best political comic ever written. Instead it continued for 4 more years and devolved into an embarrassing Mary-Sue version of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72.
Had he not made the Smiler so cartoonishly awful and Spider so immaculately perfect as a bastion of idealism, the series might have worked, but as it stands there’s no way to take it seriously outside of the context of a high school student screaming “FUCK THE MAN AND FUCK YOU TOO DAD!”
July 5th, 2009 at 9:09 am
Great pick, Sarah. That was an amazing series, though maybe just the first 24 issues are America - the rest was Spider figuring out how to “bring about change”.
Cheers,
B