DMZ | Volume 1 | On the Ground
I’ve got to say that this book took me over 6 months to get around to reading. This wasn’t because I was excited about reading it, this wasn’t because I had better things to read (as you’ll understand from the review) but it was mainly because the story content hits far too close to home for my liking. I’m Lebanese and therefore have see the effects of war on my country. I know what it’s like to walk through the streets of your capital and see pure destruction all around. Scorched black buildings, bullet holes the smell of burn and the uneasy nature of the whole experience.
What I thought I wouldn’t have to live through twice in my life I did, during the summer of 2006 as my country got levelled once again. That was around the time that DMZ came about, it’s about the fictional second American Civil war and is set in New York City.
DMZ stands for Demiliterized Zone. Unfortunately for me I didn’t need to go to Wikipedia to find this out as Lebanon used to have one. In layman’s terms it’s a buffer zone that keeps two people away from each other. This story is set in the DMZ of the second American Civil war. The story picks up thick in the middle of things with Matty Roth being taken away on his internship to the DMZ to cover a story. Things don’t go according to plan and Matt’s left stranded in the middle of the war zone. In the first issue he tries to get his employers to get him out and is disgusted by the nature of their rescue attempt which effectively sets the stage for him staying in the DMZ and being the only reporter living there.
The book is written by Brian Wood. I actually rate Brian as a creator, he’s got a certain earthiness that I really enjoy and I have stated before just how much I enjoyed Channel Zero, however I’ve got to say that DMZ is so far his greatest achievement to date and there are many reasons for this. For a start he’s actually got the room to play around with the knowledge that he’s got room to allow his ideas to grow. Let the characters breathe and let the story evolve. In most of his other works there does seem to be a little bit of restriction, this can be attributed to several things. One has always been the length of his stories. They seem to be cut short before he’s really had a chance to explore things a little more. Thankfully he’s better honed is craft to be enable him to do this particular story the justice it deserves.
The story starts to slowly explore the city as it is now. What’s changed, what has stayed the same. What are the new rules? I guess you’d definitely get a bigger kick out of this story if you actually knew New York City, or had the deep affection for the place that Brian has that you could appreciate what he was trying to produce. It’s a strange love story of a writer to a city to be honest. Rather than showing it in all it’s beauty Brian’s effectively destroyed it and showed how people tried to preserve it and tried to keep it relevant. Coming from a country where this fictional story is my reality it’s amazing how close he is in hitting those feelings one feels when his city lies in ruins around him, it’s a feeling I wouldn’t wish on anyone and yet millions of people know exactly how that feels.
The other significant part of the success of this series in my eyes has a great deal with the artist. Riccardo Burchielli’s is a new name to me, however I’m extremely impressed by his style. It oozes with a certain amount of confidence and it really compliments the style that is being driven here. The stories never waver in their detail and their emotion. While his stuff isn’t Akira in their detail, it’s just him (while Akira had like a whole army drawing that stuff) he does definitely pack a lot of stuff in the pages and it’s both raw and polished at the same time. He gives the story that edgy realism while keeping with the Brian Wood sensibilities as established by the writer’s covers (that has got to be a Vertigo first, where the writer actually is the cover artist).
If you’re still on the fence on this series, and I can understand why you might be considering the subject matter, go to the official Vertigo website and download the first issue, not a bad way to spend 10 or 15 minutes of your time I assure you.
February 19th, 2007 at 8:06 am
[...] And, Khaled reviewed DMZ: On the Ground. [...]