Channon Yarrow

Channon Yarrow is a fictional character in "Transmetropolitan", a comic book published by the Vertigo imprint of DC Comics. Physically, Channon is quite tall (we are never told how tall, but she is portrayed as a half a head taller than Spider Jerusalem and a full head taller than Yelena Rossini), with long blonde hair and improbably large breasts, such that Spider once described her as looking "like someone nailed two soccerballs to a telephone pole." Per Spider's orders, Channon ingested medication to give her a genetic trait protecting her from cancer, and took up chain smoking.

Character overview

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; at this point she appears to have barcode stripes instead of nipples, but later on, (during the "Dirge" arc) she has normal female nipples. 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 doing a story on stripping) 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 left 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. 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, much like Hunter S. Thompson's assistants Deborah Fuller and his last wife Anita Bejmuk. 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).