Fell

“None of you are nothing to me.”

Strange even by Ellis’ usual standards, Fell (Image Comics) comes with the creepy artwork of Ben Templesmith (30 Days of Night), who had one condition: “No vampires.” Like Planetary, each issue is self-contained, telling a complete story but with pieces of the overall puzzle scattered throughout. So far unfinished, after a hard drive crash wiped Ellis’ computer, this is a creepy, unsettling story that ultimately ends on one of the most positive notes in any comic series. Fell is nominated for two Eisner Awards.

Snowtown is crawling with murderers, thieves, rapists, packs of wild dogs and a nun in a Richard Nixon mask. It is a crumbling, hopeless inner city fraught with every sort of degenerate problem that comes with anarchy and decay. There are only three and a half police officers to try to keep control. Things have become so bad that many people have turned to magic to try to protect themselves, tagging giant S’s all over the city. It is into the chaos of this decaying inner city that detective Richard Fell is transferred as punishment. Armed with only his quick wits and a digital camera, he is determined try to bring order to the feral city and make it a better place.

Transmetropolitan

“[T]he world is, generally and on balance, a better place to live this year than it was last year. For instance: I didn’t have this gun last year.”

Transmetropolitan is Ellis at his futuristic best. It is a cyberpunk comic series (DC Comics) with superb art by Darick Robertson. Ellis examines body modification, the future impact on human rights, corruption, the rise of a monoculture and so much more. Each story arc typically covers three issues, with longer running stories constantly recurring and single issue stories scattered throughout, all full of ideas that demand you use your brain. It is smart, funny, and utterly ruthless. Ellis denies rumours that a film adaptation of Transmetropolitan has been under consideration with Tim Roth rumoured to possibly play Spider.

Set in the far flung future, in a city known only as The City, Spider Jerusalem sweats over his latest column. Based on Hunter S. Thompson, Spider is a journalist with a wife who was cryogenically frozen until after his death, a kitchen that’s on drugs, and a lot of people who want him dead including two presidents and his editor. He’s our tour guide in The City, showing the best and worst that humanity and science have to offer. Police allow people be beaten to death for having the wrong DNA, while humans blur the genetic line between human and animal.