Nobody ever accused Warren Ellis of lacking imagination. The latest collection of the Spider Jerusalem saga, Transmetropolitan: Lonely City, is packed with laser-guided satire and neo-adolescent wish fulfillment in the form of a bowel disruptor. Sliding his story of government manipulation and counter-manipulation between moments of reflection and observation makes Ellis's downbeat ending a bit less nihilistic than it could have been. Despite the gulf separating us from Jerusalem's City, it's not hard to draw parallels between his milieu of police-run riots and state-maintained misery and our own less colorful environment. Lonely City drags the man who's more -anti- than -hero- out into the world he professes to hate and forces him to do something about it, while never descending into the boring comic-book morality he fights daily. --Rob Lightner
