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100 Things #6
100 Things: 100 favorite scenes from anything (books, movies, TV, fanfic, etc)
Scene #6: The final page-turn in "Transmetropolitan"
If you haven't read it, Transmetropolitan (Transmet for short) is a series of comics by Warren Ellis that is basically about a not-even-thinly-disguised version of Hunter S. Thompson in a dystopic sci-fi future. If you have a high tolerance for (very funny) vulgarity, if you appreciate (or at least can tolerate) political satire, if you like complicated and layered stories that can switch from hilarious to shockingly dark in the course of a single page, then you should at least check out the first book.
And if you haven't read it and plan to, unless you are a total spoiler aficionado, you REALLY should NOT read what's under the cut! In some ways, the whole series is building to the last issue and the last couple pages of that issue. It's still one of my favorite endings of anything ever, in part because it's so unexpected and yet so well set up by what went before.
TRIGGER WARNING: SUICIDE IMAGERY
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I still remember reading this issue. I first started reading the series by way of a random issue that I'd picked up some 15 issues or so before the end, and it quickly became one of the very few series that I absolutely COULD NOT WAIT to pick up on new comics day. Knowing it had a built-in ending, I had been both anticipating and dreading the last issue. I picked it up, walked back to the bike path behind the comic store, sat down on a bench in the sunshine and started reading; I couldn't even wait to get home. I had to know how it ended. It wasn't a matter of wondering if the series was going to break my heart; I already knew that. It was only a matter of how badly.
And I hit that next-to-last page, where Spider has the gun under his chin -- and I just knew I did not want to turn the page. Because if ever there was a writer who would end a series with his main character, for good reason, graphically blowing his brains out, Warren Ellis is that writer.
And then I turned the page.
And I started laughing in sheer delight, right there on the bike path.
BEST. TWIST. EVER. CLEVER SPIDER, YOU ARE THE CLEVEREST AND SNEAKIEST TRICKSTER BASTARD.
I don't care that it's kind of sappy and perhaps more than a little unrealistic. This series has enough dark to more than make up for it, and I needed that bit of sappy and unrealistic at the end. This was a series that put its characters through such hell, and had me so thoroughly believing that things could not possibly work out for them, that finding out they had really been that clever, that canny, and beaten all the odds, and that they were happy and together at the end of it all, made me love the series more than I would have thought possible.
"One percent."
OH SPIDER. YES. You really are one in a million ... literally. And I love you that way.
Scene #6: The final page-turn in "Transmetropolitan"
If you haven't read it, Transmetropolitan (Transmet for short) is a series of comics by Warren Ellis that is basically about a not-even-thinly-disguised version of Hunter S. Thompson in a dystopic sci-fi future. If you have a high tolerance for (very funny) vulgarity, if you appreciate (or at least can tolerate) political satire, if you like complicated and layered stories that can switch from hilarious to shockingly dark in the course of a single page, then you should at least check out the first book.
And if you haven't read it and plan to, unless you are a total spoiler aficionado, you REALLY should NOT read what's under the cut! In some ways, the whole series is building to the last issue and the last couple pages of that issue. It's still one of my favorite endings of anything ever, in part because it's so unexpected and yet so well set up by what went before.
TRIGGER WARNING: SUICIDE IMAGERY
.
.
.
I still remember reading this issue. I first started reading the series by way of a random issue that I'd picked up some 15 issues or so before the end, and it quickly became one of the very few series that I absolutely COULD NOT WAIT to pick up on new comics day. Knowing it had a built-in ending, I had been both anticipating and dreading the last issue. I picked it up, walked back to the bike path behind the comic store, sat down on a bench in the sunshine and started reading; I couldn't even wait to get home. I had to know how it ended. It wasn't a matter of wondering if the series was going to break my heart; I already knew that. It was only a matter of how badly.
And I hit that next-to-last page, where Spider has the gun under his chin -- and I just knew I did not want to turn the page. Because if ever there was a writer who would end a series with his main character, for good reason, graphically blowing his brains out, Warren Ellis is that writer.
And then I turned the page.
And I started laughing in sheer delight, right there on the bike path.
BEST. TWIST. EVER. CLEVER SPIDER, YOU ARE THE CLEVEREST AND SNEAKIEST TRICKSTER BASTARD.
I don't care that it's kind of sappy and perhaps more than a little unrealistic. This series has enough dark to more than make up for it, and I needed that bit of sappy and unrealistic at the end. This was a series that put its characters through such hell, and had me so thoroughly believing that things could not possibly work out for them, that finding out they had really been that clever, that canny, and beaten all the odds, and that they were happy and together at the end of it all, made me love the series more than I would have thought possible.
"One percent."
OH SPIDER. YES. You really are one in a million ... literally. And I love you that way.
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Anyways, you don't ever actually spoiler what happens on the last page, just say that it's completely surprising, so I'm very curious (spoilerphile that I am): how does it end?
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Explaining the ending is going to require giving you
somea lot of context. Over the course of the series, Spider Jerusalem (the main character/Hunter S. Thompson stand-in) contracts a handwavy sci-fi disease -- IIRC, it's a side effect of communication nanobots -- that causes neurological degeneration, seizures, brain damage, etc. A teeny tiny percentage of people escape with their faculties intact. The vast majority degenerate, Alzheimer's-style, until they die. And Spider, as a journalist, works with his brain, so it's basically the worst thing that could possibly happen to him.After the final battle is won, Spider vanishes off to a little house in the wilderness (and at this point, he has MORE than enough reason to hide, since he's made some powerful enemies and he's managed to accidentally become one of the most notorious people in the world; he's going to be running for the rest of his life). Eventually his editor/friend tracks him down and they have a final conversation during which the general impression is that Spider has gone off to the wilderness to die. He's lost so much that he has little functional memory left, and his hands shake so badly that he can't even light a cigarette. So his editor goes off and leaves him there, and after he's all alone, he puts an unlit cigarette in his mouth and then he pulls out a gun and aims it at his chin.
Pageturn.
... and the gun turns out to be a cigarette lighter. He lights the cigarette, spins the gun around playfully and puts it away, and says "One percent", i.e. he's one of the ones who got off with minimal brain damage. And that's the end. Basically he (more or less) saved the world, thus painting a giant target on his back, and then found a way to dodge his enemies by making himself appear completely harmless. No point in either killing him or hounding him for an autograph if the whole world thinks he's so brain-damaged he can't even tie his shoes. Meanwhile, he gets exactly what he's always wanted throughout the entire series: a little house in the country where he can write in privacy.
I'm not sure if I would have accepted such a perfect bow-tie on the plot under most other circumstances. But the series was SO dark and put the characters through fifty kinds of hell, and Spider is totally a character who would pull that kind of dodge, so I was more than happy to take my happy ending and run off with it. He got one get-out-of-jail-free card in the whole series, and he's using it to full advantage, so sure, I'll give him that. :D
It's interesting to compare my reaction to that ending with my cheated/annoyed reaction to the not-entirely-dissimilar original ending of "Blade Runner", in which all replicants have a built-in self-destruct, so they only live a couple of years, except that Rachel (the main character's love interest) turns out -- in the last minute of the movie -- to not have the self-destruct for ... no reason except that I guess the other ending tested poorly with audiences, so they slapped a happy ending on it. And it didn't feel organic to the movie at all.
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(I still think the most hilariously inappropriate happy ending EVER was in a fantasy novel I read a loooong time ago. Inasmuch as I can remember the plot, it centered around two lovers from warring kingdoms and their people getting involved in a battle with each other. And at the end of the epic battle ... a unicorn brought all the dead back to life and made them not want to fight anymore. DDDDD: And it wasn't YA; up to that point it had looked like fairly standard, middle-of-the-road pseudo-European fantasy. And then MAGIC AGGRESSION-REMOVING UNICORN VIBES. So. Annoyed.)
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I have always found Warren Ellis to be one of those writers who has to fit his characters to his voice, rather than being able to change his narrative voice for different characters. Which means his work is very hit-or-miss for me, even within the same comic. But Spider Jerusalem was basically a perfect match between Ellis-voice and character.