Transmetropolitan is easiest described as a cyberpunk story of a gonzo journalist called Spider Jerusalem who is a true anti-hero in the purest sense of the world, but who is working towards keeping the world at least a bit more manageable than certain people would like it to be. The interesting thing is that the people who are actually working against him and who are looking for ways to make things worse in order to save their asses are two American presidents, one of whom becomes a president because Spider screws up and helps him get into power. When you read this description, you might think that there is nothing so special about a story like this, but the fact is that Transmetropolitan touches on so many different subjects and deals with them with sophistication and poise of a real work of art that it becomes something more than just a comic – it becomes both a statement and also art.

One of the biggest appeals of Transmetropolitan is its hero, Spider who is made in the image of Hunter S. Thompson and who is a long shot from a hero. He is a drug-addict, a borderline schizophrenic and a person that you would not trust a box of matches with. However, you cannot help but root for him because he shares the viewpoints of the common man and who actually tries to save as many people as he can, people that he hates, by the way.

Another huge selling point of Transmetropolitan is the world it is set in. It is a believable world, a world that does not require too much imagination and stretching of the imagination to believe in. It is very similar to the world today, only cranked up to about a thousand, with anti-cancer drugs being available, mafia-controlled replicator machines that get high on drugs they create themselves and so on. This world is what Spider is trying to save, as well as a few people who become his friends over the course of this incredible story.

Of course, all of this would be completely pointless without a story behind it all and the story of Transmetropolitan was penned out and perfected by one of the best writers in comics history, the incredible man called Warren Ellis, an Englishman with a fast brain and with special kind of love for this horrendous planet. I believe that he was peaking when he wrote Transmetropolitan and the five years in which the comic was first published, between 1997 and 2002 have been some of the happiest of my life, at least as far as comics were concerned.

In conclusion, I would just like to add this – if you haven’t read Transmetropolitan do it now. Go to Amazon straight away and order the entire comic book, you will not be disappointed. On the contrary.

Before anything else, I should perhaps introduce the writer of this incredible comic book series that has, at least as far as I am concerned, proven that comics can be so much more than just entertainment – Mr. Jodorowsky. Mr. Jodorowsky is one of the most important artists of the 20^th and the 21^st century so far. He is a playwright, a film director, a writer of comics, an actor, a tarot master or whatever they are called and an all-round borderline insane person. Luckily, that healthy dose of insanity is also combined with a great deal of genius that has given us such movies like Holy Mountain and El Topo, as well as some of the most important comics of all times, such as Incal which has revolutionized SF.

With Metabarons, at least this is my opinion; Jodorowsky has reached unimaginable levels of artistry in writing comic books. This saga and it truly is a saga that spans centuries if not millennia and that does not have a single main character but follows an entire line of Metabarons, the ultimate warriors in the universe, is such an epic work that I have problems calling anything else epic. Once you close the final pages of Metabarons, you feel like you have just seen ten movies that all last for three hours each and that provide more epicness than Lawrence of Arabia, Lord of the Rings and Apocalypse now combined.

In its core, Metabarons is a pure SF, a space-opera of sorts, in the best sense of the word. Everything is exciting, everything is momentous and you feel that every single square in the comic book is worthy of a separate 20-something page issue. When you think about it afterwards, you cannot wrap your mind around how much has happened and what you have witnessed. It is packed full of the best Jodorowsky moments, such as patricide, incest, space battles, a believable SF universe and plenty of dark humor that never feels clumsy or artificial.

I consider myself a fan of comic books, movies and everything else that can deliver a story. However, I have never encountered a story that is as sweeping as the story of Metabarons and I can never stress enough as to how important this comic is going to be in the future.

It would also be very disrespectful of me not to mention the beautiful art by Gimenez, an Argentinean artist who has really let it go in Metabarons and who has brought to life all the ideas of the crazy Mr. Jodorowsky, no matter how mythical they are and how reality-bending and subversive they might be. This is perhaps one of the very few comics that has all the makings of a classic. It is a myth in form of a comic book and I believe that it is one of the most underrated comic books of all time.

First of all, one of the cornerstones of democracy is that the freedom of speech is guaranteed. And while no one is stopping you from saying what you want in movies or in music, most artists tend to censor themselves in order to sell stuff. They know that people will frown upon opinions and claims that are too controversial. With comics, this is not the same. For some reason, comic writers do not censor themselves.

Another very important reason why comics are so democratic is that you can make a comic without any costs, basically. If we are being entirely basic and bottom line, you can create a comic with nothing more than a surface and something to draw with. When you compare that to making movies, or even making music, it becomes obvious that comics are the most affordable form of entertainment to make, which makes them very democratic.

These low costs, combined with the specific way of expressing your ideas mean that you will have no limitations as to what you will put in your comics. For instance, drawing a single square with nothing more than a tree is no less expensive than putting in a scene that will have two dozen spaceships and giant space squids fighting them. You cannot do this with any other form of entertainment.

Finally, you can enjoy in comics for a fraction of price of any other form of entertainment. For instance, you can get together with few other people and you can buy a comic book together. Once one of you is done with it, they can pass it forward and you all get the same experience for cents.

The first movie, or more precisely a movie franchise that has its core in comics is Superman. It is one of the first really successful comic book adaptations and still a classic in its own rights. I will not go into all the sequels that tarnished the image of Superman, but it can safely be said that you can always sell Superman. Just take a look at Smallville which was on the air for years. Batman is yet another comic book that has seen innumerable adaptations, ranging from TV shows from decades ago, to a string of more or less successful movies and to animated shows that are constantly coming out.

One of my personal favorite adaptations is Hellboy. It is one of my favorite comic book movies and while it is still better than pretty much else that has been made based on comics, it still fails to do complete justice to the source material, which is definitely one of the best comics that I have had pleasure of reading.

Of course, I cannot fail to mention the Avengers and all the movies that preceded it. It seems that the people who adapt comics finally found the perfect solution as to how to do it, stay faithful to the originals and still make great movies.

We have also seen some crappy adaptations as well, such as Green Lantern or Ghost Rider which are better left forgotten. Finally, I have to mention the fact that most anime shows and movies are based on mangas, Japanese comics.

As you would imagine, Japanese comics are a completely different type of thing than our comics. First of all, you need to understand that this is perfectly natural when you consider the fact that we see some of the basic concepts in life differently. All of this has to have an influence on the comics as well, as they have always been one of the best representations of culture in general, not just entertainment. It is therefore not too unimaginable to see mangas that are dealing with subjects that people would find too sensitive to have in comics just a decade ago, not even to mention few decades ago.

French, on the other hand, have that sense of morality that differs from the very basic notion of morality that we have cultivated in our comics for years. For instance, up until very recently, most of our comics have dealt with moral issues with a binary approach. Either someone is good or someone is bad. Either a certain action is moral of immoral.

However, in French comics, the different shades of grey have always been present and that is what makes great stories. For instance, Blueberry, one of the classics of French comics culture, drawn by Jean Giraud who will later become Moebius and who will change SF forever together with Jodorowsky, has always been a crazy rollercoaster ride in which everyone is trying to get ahead by screwing over other people in the comics and you always felt the need to read on as you never knew what was going to happen next.

The good thing is that these beneficial influences have become a part of our own comic book culture over the last few years and we can see how our comics are improving as a result.

It is a comic about a low-to-mid level gangster in the Great Depression era and as far as the setting goes, there is nothing particularly astounding about this comic. However, once you check out a single page of this comic book, you realize that you are reading something that can never be matched. It is so raw, so gritty and so down and dirty that it is impossible to ignore the impact it makes on the readers. I still remember the first time I read it. It was in Spanish and I had my dad’s friend translate it for me, a big Spanish guy who loved translating it for me. It had naked ladies and plenty of curses and it was mesmerizing for the both of us, me a teenager and him an older guy who never really appreciated comics before.

And to this day, the character of Torpedo, or Luca Torelli as is his full name has remained the coolest comics character I have ever encountered. If you thought that Preacher was cool, if you thought that Wolverine is cool, then you are very much mistaken. I am talking about a guy who is a product of a long-time Sicilian vendetta who arranges the murder of his own father before he comes over to the States and starts his career from the bottom.

He is a suave gangster who knows the streets and who knows all the characters that he will come into contact with. He is also merciless, but in a way that you do not get in our comics, no matter how cutting-edge they are. I do not wish to share any of the details about what he does to get things done as it might actually put you off if you read about it out of context. Let’s just say that NOTHING is sacred and that everything that needs to be done in order to achieve something is going to be done.

It is an extremely mature content comic book with plenty of explicit sex scenes, tons of violence and curses that will put to test even those who do not get offended that easily. However, under all of that, it is still written and drawn with apparent love for the character that makes Luca such a memorable person. He truly is one of the greatest comic book characters of all times and I cannot stress enough how much you need to check it out.

The first reason why comics are so exciting is that they have no limitations that other forms of entertainment have. If you have a writer with great ideas and an artist who knows how to put those ideas to paper, you can have whatever you want. In most cases, they will be able to find publishers even if their comics are too controversial, too offensive, too explicit and whatnot. Even the weirdest and the craziest comics will one day most probably see the light of day and people will learn about them.

All of this has a lot to do with the fact that producing comics is so much cheaper than anything else. When you compare the costs of creating a top-shelf comic and the costs of creating an AAA blockbuster or even a fancy TV show, the comparison soon starts to look ridiculous. It is because of this that the publishers and the artists are ready to take significant risks with the comics. For instance, if you had a movie that costs 200 million dollars to make, you do not wish to include stuff that might cause people to avoid seeing the movie. And that is how you get crap like Battleship and some other Hollywood abortions that we have been treated to in the last few years. There was a time when Hollywood had balls, but that time is long behind us.

With comics, the things are much different. In comics, you can tackle issues like gay superheroes, incest, cannibalism, terrorist supervillains, you can address the issue of torturing prisoners of war, using, abusing and overabusing all kinds of drugs and indulging in devious sexual practices. Comics accept all that and they turn it into something that is more than exciting. They turn it into something that needs to be seen in order to be appreciated.

However, it is not only the edginess of the material that makes comics so exciting. It is also the diversity of themes, plots and characters, as well as some of the basic stories that are told in comics. To someone who only knows about Batman, Fantastic Four, Spiderman and other similar DC and Marvel comics, it may seem that it all revolves around superheroes and villains, but the fact is that comics provide us with so much more. This is especially true if you also consider comics made in other countries, most notably France and Japan, two of the comics superpowers besides the US.

Ultimately, the comics are exciting because of the level of freedom that you do not get with any other entertainment form. They have always been on the forefronts of experimentation, tackling particularly sensitive subjects and introducing new and advanced ideas. And the thing is that this is only going to become more and more apparent in the future as business completely takes over the movie industry and we are left with nothing more than sequels of sequels of sequels of sequels of crappy movies to begin with.

For instance, take a look at some of the biggest movies in the last 10 years, such as the new Batman movies, the Spiderman movies, X-Men movies, DC and Marvel comic movies and so on. We are talking about some of the biggest blockbusters in history and movies that are introducing comics to a whole new generation of young people while also reminding the older generations that comics are something more than just fun for the kids. Long gone are the days when comics were nothing more than a collection of pictures that tell a certain story.

When you are talking about comics, it is essential to remember that it is a very complex issue. Deep, deep inside, comics are a way of certain artists to express the marvel at the world that you have when you are a child. We are talking about mainstream comics here, most notably those that have to do with superheroes. We all wanted to have superpowers when we were younger. However, comics are much more than that.

You will often find that the bravest and the most profound ideas can be found in comics, tackling issues that other forms of entertainment cannot for one simple reason – making comics is still immeasurably cheaper than making movies. Basically, all you need is someone to draw a comic and someone to write it. This is why you can have all kinds of ideas in comics, ideas that would turn the producers and the budget away from the project. And that is where the biggest influence of comics can be seen.

Comics shape the modern culture because they introduce certain ideas that other forms of entertainment do not. I could go on for hours in explaining the sophisticated ways in which comics tackle issues like racism, terrorism, minority rights, sexuality, life and death and so on. I could truly write tomes about this, but that it is not the point. The point is that you realize how much comics have contributed to the modern culture and one of the most interesting aspects of this is that this influence is not always that apparent.

However, it is always present and it changes other forms of entertainment, spreading its influence on daily basis.