DMZ #10

Written by Brian Wood

Pencils by Riccardo Burchelli

Cover by Brian Wood

 

So ends the first true story arc, Body of a Journalist, of the DMZ, and it clears up a couple of important things for us. For starter’s, the DMZ has gone beyond political ambiguity, but it is such good writing and high quality art that most people should enjoy it no matter their politics.

 

The story arc centers on Victor Ferguson being captured by the Free Army (he was supposedly killed in the first issue). Matty was allowed access to Victor in an attempt to negotiate some kind of hostage exchange. During the process of the exchange, the U.S. government killed Victor and attempted to do the same to Matty. Bye, bye ambiguity.

 

Wood at first tried to be vague about his political leanings (and they still might be completely different, this is fiction after-all), but I doubt he could be vague about the comic’s politics anymore. The U.S. government and the military are specifically made out to be the principal villains here, something he was never vague about happening. And the Free Army isn’t entirely made up of cute little bunnies either, but they have yet to execute one of their own. What is clear now is that the comic is anti-war (having the protagonist win by stopping an upcoming conflict), probably part of his impetus in writing DMZ in the first place.

 

Wood has personally said that the series is solely trying to look at the conditions under which war torn people live. He’s set it in the U.S., made the military evil bastards, and had random acts like suicide bombings all serve to help illustrate the main point that living in a war sucks. From this perspective, the story is fine, if not a bit trite at times as Wood is forced to use no ideological, or logical, reasoning behind some of the events going on, like the suicide bombing. Part of this is intentional anyway as it has the reader thinking like many of the people in the DMZ do—they just don’t want to die.

 

I must say that for all my problems with the randomness of it, DMZ is a good story. Like all good stories, the character interaction and dialogue is strong enough to be entertaining all on its own. So while I’d rather have a more tightly written book in terms of such things as the military and so on, I’ll happily take this. (God, I just had extreme déjà vu writing that last sentence—I wonder what other book might be good despite its half-thought out political commentary?)

 

In the end, Matty uses his proof of Victor’s murder as a tool to keep the U.S. from pushing into the DMZ. He also gets out from Liberty’s thumb and now works as a freelance reporter. The story is moving apace, but we still have a lot of two dimensional characters and groups. The U.S. army is ‘all bad,’ Liberty News is ‘all bad’ while I.W.N. is ‘all good.’ The only truly deep groups so far are all the various decent, whacked-out, and starving people of the DMZ itself. Somehow, I think that’s just how Wood wants it.

 

Rating - 7