Synopsis
After making his presence known in TRANSMETROPOLITAN: BACK ON THE STREETS, renegade columnist Spider Jerusalem targets three of society's most worshipped and warped pillars: politics, religion, and television. When Spider tries to shed light on the atrocities of these institutions, he finds himself fleeing a group of hitmen/kidnappers in possession of his ex-wife's frozen head, a distorted creature alleging to be his son, and a vicious talking police dog.
Lust For Life is the dodgy phallic probe that will defile your nether regions. It is the second volume in the series, and takes on more of the usual flavour the series was renowned for, alternating between one-shot killer-ideas, and developing the dilemma of Spider Jerusalem as a figure hunted for speaking the truth.
It's hard to make us savvy modern readers laugh out loud, but Warren Ellis's script, and Darick Robertson's deliciously cruel artwork manage it frequently, with a vicious aplomb we can only stand in awe of.
Despite having read it intially years ago, this volume contained stories, and ideas, that have stayed with me not just as a comic reader, but as a human being trying to understand what it is to be human, to be truthful or cruel, kind or filled with the need to vent ego. SO it was a pleasure to return and find them as fresh, and more importantly, as utterly relevant to NOW, as I had thought them to be. The longer they remain so, the more prophetic they become, in cataloguing the descent of civilisation into its own badly made bed.
Long live Spider.