Transmetropolitan Is Your Handbook For Living in 2017 America

“I hate people more than anything. And I’m going to be president…I want to be president because I hate you… I want to be president because I think I should be.” You’d be forgiven for thinking that quote is from the latest leaked documents coming for our current Presidential Administration. It actually comes from Senator Gary “The Smiler” Callahan in writer Warren Ellis’ seminal comic series Transmetropolitan. Callahan is a sadistic sociopath who masks his true nature by literally presenting a beaming, toothy smile to the public. Callahan becomes President of the United States in a landslide, certainly through lies, deceit, and corruption, but most significantly because, whether we intend to or not, people so often vote for what we deserve and not what we need. Set over 200 years in the future, and first published 20 years ago this year, Transmetropolitan is a story reflective of us, today, told through a gonzo, cyberpunk lens that strangely makes the stories feel all the more plausible. In Transmetropolitan new religions are created on a daily basis, people who crossbreed their DNA with aliens are subjected to militarized police brutality, and 3D printers make food out of recycled trash…all things that are sounding less and less far fetched in a time when your phone can answer any question you have and a portion of the population has convinced itself the Earth is flat.

In the pages of Transmetropolitan, technology and transhumanism have boiled Civil Rights down to a sc…