List of Transmetropolitan characters

Transmetropolitan is a cyberpunk comic book series written by Warren Ellis with art by Darick Robertson and published by the Vertigo imprint of DC Comics (originally by Helix). It chronicles the battles of Spider Jerusalem, infamous renegade gonzo journalist of the future. Jerusalem dedicates himself to fighting the corruption and abuse of power of two successive United States presidents; he and his assistants strive to keep their world from turning more dystopian than it already is.

Protagonists

The Filthy Assistants

Channon Yarrow

Channon begins the series as one of the dancers at a strip club in the Angels 8 district of the city, which is invaded by Spider Jerusalem during the Transient Riots. Inspired when Spider quells the riots by broadcasting a live bulletin about it directly to the rest of the City via The Word's feedsite, Channon (who turns out to be a journalism student stripping to pay for school) quits the club and is hired by The Word editor Mitchell Royce to be Spider's assistant, a job originally consisting primarily of making sure her boss is supplied with enough brain-enhancing drugs and alcohol to be an effective journalist.

Channon leaves Spider's employ briefly following her boyfriend Ziang's choice to dump her and have his consciousness downloaded into a cloud of floating nanotechnological computers, an experience Spider made her chronicle in his weekly column because he felt that everyone should witness it at least once. During this time away, she became a "Bride of Christ" - Fred Christ, the self-appointed leader of the Transient Movement and half-alien 'love messiah' founder of the Church of Transience.

She rejoined Spider and his new assistant Yelena early in their fight to prevent the election of President Gary Callahan, aka the Smiler, taking on the role of bodyguard. In this new role, Channon is depicted as physically more powerful and imposing than before, regularly fighting off multiple assailants and taking point when strategy is required. Much of the situations she helps fight off comes from the Smiler himself, who has it out for Spider and his assistants. She also demonstrates expertise with a number of small arms, due to her being regularly searched for them at school... to make sure that she was armed.

At the end of the series' run, Channon and Yelena are shown to have retired to the Mountain to care for Spider. The two look after him as live-in assistants. Whilst both are now journalists in their own right, Channon refuses to do weekly journalism after her experiences with Spider focusing instead on books (at the end of the series she has a three-book contract).

Yelena Rossini

Physically, Yelena is quite short (we are never told how tall, but she is portrayed as a half a head shorter than Spider Jerusalem and a full head shorter than Channon Yarrow), with shoulder-length brunette hair and is usually seen in baggy black t-shirts and suits (primarily to obscure her short stature and modest bust—particularly when compared to Channon). Per Spider's orders, as with Channon, she ingested medication to give her a genetic trait protecting her from cancer, and took up chain smoking.

After Channon leaves Spider's employ to become a nun, Mitchell Royce, Spider's editor, assigns her to be Spider's assistant, a job consisting primarily of making sure her boss is supplied with enough drugs and alcohol to be an effective journalist. Initially he claims Yelena is his niece, though she later reveals it was simply a ploy to make sure Spider behaves himself around her. She later refers to him as "Uncle Mitch", however. Of note is that Yelena has quite a different history from that of Channon. About a week after she's hired, she is interviewed by a major broadcaster, and she describes herself as 24 years of age, born and raised in what is presumed to be a high-class section of the City (Old Heath Road), fluent in seven languages, and a recent business school graduate.

One major arc in the story was the relationship between Spider and Yelena. Initially both were frequently at odds with each other, yet stuck together through a combination of pity and camaraderie. Then, after getting drunk one night, the two ended up sleeping together. In the morning Spider, realizing to his horror what must have happened, tried (unsuccessfully) to escape his bed. Upon realizing she slept in the same bed as Spider, Yelena enters a stage of aggressive denial, insisting nothing happened between them. However, Spider's distinctive "live shades", mistaking the sex for a criminal assault, had automatically taken pictures.

Channon rejoins Spider and Yelena early in their fight to prevent the election of President Gary Callahan, aka the Smiler, taking on the role of bodyguard. Whilst Yelena was still officially Spider's assistant, he would refer to them both as 'filthy assistants' throughout the rest of the series. Channon and Yelena become friends, often sneaking away from Spider to have fun.

It wasn't until the night the Smiler won the Presidential election, during the election coverage party at their apartment, and after an argument with Channon, that Yelena finally admitted to herself and everyone else in earshot that not only had she had sex with Spider, but also that she wasn't Royce's niece. Channon had known for a couple of weeks, after emptying the pictures from Spider's live shades and seeing the contents of them (at the time, Yelena had not known that Spider's shades had photographic capabilities). She has teased Yelena about their relationship ever since.

Since her admittance of her one night stand with Spider, Yelena, in part because of her role as assistant, has started to exhibit behaviour similar to Spider, such as his consumption of booze and cigarettes and his colourful vocabulary (Channon said it best when she told Yelena, "You're turning into him."). It is revealed that Yelena has a tattoo identical to the one on Spider's head on her left buttock. Also, on the rare occasions when Spider seems to be truly sorrowful, she instinctively reaches out to comfort him, although she nearly always either stops short or he shrugs it away. However, after Yelena revealed she'd written a crucial column under his name while he was incapacitated for four days, Spider responded, to her surprise, by kissing her on the forehead, followed by the words 'Thank you', and a warm smile.

At the end of the series' run, Channon and Yelena are shown to have retired to the Mountain to care for Spider, now seemingly disabled from a rare affliction and unable to care for himself. The two look after him as live-in assistants, much like Hunter S. Thompson's assistants Deborah Fuller and his last wife Anita Bejmuk. It is briefly hinted by Channon that more goes on between Yelena and Spider than Yelena admits. Yelena appeared to be in the early stage of pregnancy (ostensibly by Spider) but nobody explicitly talked about it. In the same sequence Yelena is also shown to have a spider tattoo on her arm (with the Venus symbol for a body) and is referred to as "the new Spider". She is last seen returning to the City with Spider's old editor to write weekly columns.

Allies

Spider and Royce's antagonistic but fruitful writer-editor relationship goes back many years; at the time of the War of Verbals (a heated exchange between the powerful English-speaking nations (presumably the United States and Britain) and France over keeping French as the first language of France,) Royce was only an assistant editor and Spider was not yet at the peak of his notoriety. However, after Spider became involved in political journalism and released a reportage book called 'Shot in the Face', his popularity reached its peak and his creativity dried up. Unable to write or function in the City and adored by the very people his writing decried, he retreated to the Mountain to escape the pressure to perform.
After five years, however, after a phone-call from the 'whore-hopping editor' of his books, and strapped for cash, Spider returned to the city and contacted his old editor, Royce, in the hope of a steady contract job and the luxuries this would entail until he could sort out the book deal. However, as Spider stumbled from one high profile scoop to the next, he found himself being treated to better and better accommodations and his notoriety returned.
One of the main themes of the series was the relationship between Spider and Royce. Whilst the two share an antagonism that is almost a caricature of modern journalism, the two know how to get the other to co-operate, and Royce has saved Spider's life and reputation several times during the series (most notably in Year Five, in which he provides Spider with key, hard-earned leads to help Spider rebuild his case against Gary "The Smiler" Callahan). In issue #32, Spider mentions Royce in an interview, describing him as "a good man"; high praise by Spider's standards. On leaving The Word, he also tells Royce that he "only ever did right" by him.
Royce is a chain smoker, often seen with an entire pack of cigarettes lit in his mouth at once - typically as a response to Spider's demands or lateness of his column. His favorite pick-up line is "Call me Mitchell Royce, Two-Fisted Editor." He mentions on at least two occasions that whenever he attends a party with Spider, he contracts some form of disease (which, of course, he blames on Spider). He is divorced, and he claims at one point that at least one of his previous wives is a prostitute. His most uttered line is "Where's my fucking column?" to Spider, with varying levels of annoyance and emphasis; so ingrained is the phrase in the context of their relationship that Spider has occasionally pointed out when Royce failed to start their conversation with it, whilst at other times he has to point out that no column is due.

Antagonists

Presidents

Unlike The Smiler, The Beast's real name is mentioned only in passing early on in the series, and it was Spider who gave him the nickname. Apparently, The Beast's supporters and even his own children refer to him by his nickname, for which he despises Spider. Spider explains that the name originated from his mental picture of the man, "a big black animal squatting in the heart of America...the thing in us that votes to fuck other people in the gall bladder, the lizard brain that says nothing but eat-kill-hump-shit."

Other antagonists

Others

Whilst many other journalists in Transmetropolitan are presented as being primarily media personalities uninterested in delivering the truth, McX is depicted as being at least reasonably principled. Whilst his personal politics seems to be moderate conservatism and possibly elements of Objectivism, he has a measure of respect and admiration for Spider, mainly because their purpose is similar. At the end of The Cure it is McX who gets to use Spider's research to publicly accuse the Smiler of having an affair with Liesl, a transient hooker, which he does with a smirk on his face. McX is also one of the leading figures in the journalists' revolt towards the middle of the Martial Law arc (he is the first to openly defy the media blackout), and acts as a catalyst to the consciences of other journalists, leading to the widespread defiance of the media blackout that The Smiler has instituted. He has a secret infestation of intelligent venereal tapeworms, and refers to his life as a series of "horrible days."
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