Postmodern Doom and "Transmetropolitan" Redemption

Abstract

The analysis of the semiotic relationship between the city and the sciencefiction mode in Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson’s Transmetropolitanallows first of all for a critical introduction that challenges certain canonicalcertainties regarding the science fiction mode as well as the medium ofcomic books, and lead us to refine our terminology to better distinguishliterary genres from narrative modes. Transmetropolitan can be consideredas paradigmatic when it comes to the treatment of the city in the sciencefiction mode for it offers a variety of interpretive layers, which, whenstudied from the particular to the general —from micro to macrostructures— enable us to establish a vast array of connotative levels thatwork complementarily in order to generate a highly coherent narrativesemiosphere. Ultimately, the study of the narrative function of the city astheme and background in the Transmetropolitan saga reveals its politicaland ethical intentionality, which transcends the ideological limitations ofpost-structuralist cultural constructionism and puts forth a hopeful, albeitlucid and godless positivism.