The Truth of the Word, the Falsity of the Image: Transmetropolitan's Critique of the Society of the Spectacle

In this article, Warren Ellis’s and Darrick Roberts’s science fiction comic book Transmetropolitan is shown to be a critique of the society of the spectacle, a warning against visual culture’s media saturation. Being at the same time both rebellious and nostalgic, the comic book reacts strongly against what it sees as the hyperreality of images, a condition which destroys meaning and empties the subject until humans are mere commodities. Using a cultural semiotics approach, I show how the comic book uses words to control the image, and to present strategies for opposition to dominant culture.