by Jamie Delano & Frank Quitely, Warren Pleece, James Romberger, Steve Pugh
(£19-99 Cyberosia)
Old Vertigo project, twelve issues in length, composed of four three-issue story arcs linked by time (the year is 2020, the place US of A) and relatives. First thing to note is that the colour is gone, and in the early gnarled and knobbly Frank Quitely art it's sorely missed, because it really is quite a dry piece with lots of talking heads, and very little for Frank to get his mitts into. The second thing to note is that if you liked Warren Ellis' TRANSMETROPOLITAN for the ideas rather than the humour, this is the closest you'll get. Jamie's on full thrusters here in his 30-years-down-the-line theme (as it was then), where America has defeated communism and found no other unifying enemy (oh, were that one prediction true!), and so turned its hatred inwards on its festering self. The festering bit comes in the form of a plague. Those infected are shipped off to Ellis Island (hmmm), because with the fear of an all-too possible superbug increasingly resistant to antibiotics (which many currently believe is only a matter of clock-ticking time), medical health policy boils down to containment (very much like Cuba with AIDS), not treatment.
Alex (who as we'll see has children and grandchildren) contracts the plague, and has to pawn his old porn (now that the Sisters Of The Revolution have banned booze and erotica) in order to find what he hopes will be medical attention. It's an intelligent disease too: passed on by bodily fluids, it makes you randy. And just when you think Jamie's reached the zenith of cleverness, he hits you again as Alex realises that the virus he's caught makes him a living weapon (comparison: if someone wants to beat you up down a dark alley - and I pray no one ever does - you might tell them you're HIV-positive; if they have a brain cell at all they'll then walk away, and at least some good will have come from such a catastrophic nightmare).
The second story (and I think that's all we have time for today) follows Jack (daughter of Alex) Atlanta into surgical, sculptural S&M hell when she investigates a missing girl, and here you'll learn that a 'snake-biter' isn't a cider'n' black concoction as pronounced by The Fall's Mark E. Smith, but a protection device against rape far more effective than a pepper-gun. I leave you then with a quote which will give you a taste of what's on offer, and please don't say I didn't warn you. Oh, wait, I haven't warned you. I warn you now:
'It was nineteen years ago Jack came down here from Georgia. Bounced out of the F.B.I. Academy for compromising Bureau morality. A rubber had split during an induction gang-rape, and left Jack pregnant. Abortions were outlawed in the south since '98. She was scared, left it late, but finally went up to Chicago. A Christian pro-life cadre snatched her right outside the clinic. A forced Caesarean ripped twin sons from her womb. The Christians dumped her in the parking lot of a public hospital. The doctors saved her life okay... but her wounds stayed raw.'
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