Absolute Transmetropolitan #1

Perched impossibly above a dizzying canyon of neon-soaked skyscrapers and garish advertisements, a tattooed, shaved-head figure — cigarette dangling from his lips, tinted glasses fixed on his face — hammers away at a laptop with the focused intensity of someone who owns the city below him. Geof Darrow's cover art for this 2021 Absolute edition captures Spider Jerusalem in his element: a chaotic future metropolis packed with glowing signage and ant-like crowds far beneath his feet. Warren Ellis, Darick Robertson, and Rodney Ramos's celebrated series gets the deluxe treatment here, and Darrow's vertiginous, detail-crammed composition makes a genuinely compelling case for why this collection deserves a place on any shelf.