Transmetropolitan, the utterly brilliant sf comic created by Darick Robinson and Warren Ellis, has published its penultimate issue, closing the story-arc that’s run since 1997 (1996?).

This is one of the best works of science fiction I’ve ever read, real big ideas stuff with a pathologically gritty perspective. There’s loads of humor, stories that are touching and human, even when they’re about transhumans.

Ellis wrote the story as a series of three-comic short stories — every three issues closed a little story arc and advanced the overall plot. Even though the story came in these little bites, there was always a sense that the story was going somewhere. This wasn’t the story of Peter Parker’s twenty years in costume — this was a story with a beginning, a middle and an end.

When I finished number 59 yesterday, I wanted to leap to my feet and applaud. Ellis is closing out the story with confidence and vigor, bringing together loose ends from the earliest books in the series, doing justice to a plot that I’ve been utterly engrossed in for five years.

There are six Transmet collections for sale today, each collecting six comics. I really hope that DC puts out an omnibus collection with all sixty books in it; this is the most engrossing comic I’ve read since The Watchmen. Link Discuss