Transmetropolitan/Heartwarming

• Spider Jerusalem is an absolute bastard most of the time. Issue 22 makes such a touching change: Spider buys a homeless minor character from issues ago a modern camera simply because he felt for a fellow journalist.
• Later in the same issue, Spider helping a little girl find her mom:

"I've lost my mommy." "Sssh. Nothing to worry about. No need to cry." "Will you help me?" "'Course I will, sweetheart. Why else d'you think I've stayed here all these years?" She hugs him. He looks shocked for a second, but hugs her in return.

• • Afterwards, he realizes that her favorite doll has been pawned (so that her mom can buy her an appetite trait), and buys it back for her. The last panel of the issue is of the girl grinning and holding her doll.
    • And if you look closely at the doll's price tag, it reads "Redeemed."
• When Spider is incapacitated by information pollen poisoning just before a screamingly important deadline and Yelena writes his column in his stead. When Spider comes to four days later, she confesses and immediately cringes in fear of his reprisal. After a pause, he gently kisses her forehead and says, sincerely, "Thank you." Awww.
• Spider admitting to interviewers that, despite their constant antagonism, he considers Royce to be "a good man". Probably the closest thing to a sincere compliment he utters in the whole series.
  • Spider says to Royce, after getting fired: "You only ever did right by me."
• Spider's column, and the way he looks at Mary, in "Another Cold Morning" (#8).
  • This is one of the (many) truly awe-inspiring works of Ellis' amazing writing career. Imagine Hunter S. Thompson writing "We Didn't Start The Fire" his way. Mary, in her sixty-four years of life as a professional photographer, saw: The war that drove America crazy, the first step offworld, a severed city put back together with sledgehammers, William S. Burroughs and Nelson Mandela and Richard Nixon and The Beatles and Mother Teresa. Amazing and horrifying things, humanity at its best and its worst. She chooses to become a Human Popsicle in the hopes of seeing even more amazing things. Her resurrection is detailed as a miracle made mundane by mature nanotechnology. Her life, death and rebirth are pure wonder... and she wakes up in a world that doesn't give a damn about any of it.
• Oh, and the one he does on the child prostitutes. And the one about the girl whose brother was doing weird sexual stuff to her (not sex, though).
• Actually, there are a whole bunch of really tender moments with Spider, if you really think about them.
• In the issue about Reservations (enclaves of past civilization, kept around for study), the gay escapees who are in love even touch Spider's heart.
• Royce and Spider share a rather vitrolic relationship for most of the series. After Spider goes on the run from the president's forces, an irritated Royce stumbles across his column for the underground newsfeed The Hole. His reaction: an honest grin and a relieved, "Spider." Making it clear that he genuinely does like Spider, despite everything.

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