Two-Step isn't the most pointed social commentary Warren Ellis has ever offered his readers, nor is there a warm, fuzzy message or love story hidden behind the violence, madness and carnality of the storytelling here. No, for the most part, Two-Step is just good, old-fashioned, dirty, twisted fun. No, scratch that. There's not much about this book that could be painted as "old-fashioned." Ellis's writing and Conner's pencil artwork fly in the face of the status quo here, striving to offend the easily offended and amuse the rest of us... you know, those of us who can handle it.
Camgirl Rosi wanders the artificially frozen surface of the River Thames, uninterested in the resurrected, traditional fair that has splayed itself out on the chily surface. Having come donw off of the high of her recent bullet-riddled adventure, she's once again bored with life in London. Cue zen gangster Tony Ling, who re-enters her life once again, bringing with them a crew of thugs with murder -- and penis repossession -- on the mind. This time around, Rosi proves she's not slouch in the self-defence and mutilation department herself.
Amanda Conner has crammed every square inch of every panel with detail, demanding the reader to peruse this comic's pages twice, even three times in order to just get a sense of how much is going on within the periphery of the story. The reader is bombarded with little stories and ideas -- all of them weird, perverted and beautifully ugly. Conner captures the sexually charged nature of this future vision of London with seeming ease.
For a long time, our televised entertainment has consisted of watching fictional heroes and villains immersed in visions of violence. Today, in the age of reality TV, we've left behind the fiction and embraced the humiliation of ourselves. Ellis seems to posit here that the natural de-evolution of base media will be a combination of the two, immersing ourselves in the violence. As a camgirl, Rosi is both the audience and the entertainment, and her low attention span is far from the most subtle of symbols. I suppose the next step might be death as the ultimate entertainment.
The recurring visual motif here is ejaculation. While no such events occur literally, everything about this book is an orgasm of pop indulgence. We see revellers vomiting. Smoke shoots out, and flames erupt. Bullets fly and crotches explode. Everything about this story is sexual, from the artificial appendage that serves as its catalyst to the spankings adaministered to Tony Ling. Jesus, even the bad guys' car is an automotive phallus. Two-Step is deliciously naughty, and it's a welcome return to a surreal, extreme future that's bound to delight fans of Ellis's Transmetropolitan.
When it comes right down to it, though, the strength of this comic book can be summed up with one word: "Arsebiscuits."
