Broken Frontier

Brian Wood’s Vertigo series DMZ reaches its one-year mark today.  He stopped by to chat about what has already happened in the series, some possible themes to his work, and maybe tease a little of what is to come.

BROKEN FRONTIER: Since issue #12 is a bit of a jumping on point for new readers, perhaps it would be good to first see if we can catch people up on what has been going on in the book.  Just the basics: who are the characters and what is going on?

BRIAN WOOD: Matty Roth is a journalism intern stranded in the DMZ (Manhattan), during a sort of second American Civil War.  He's got all the equipment and resources he needs to stay in the city and file stories, provided he can stay alive.  It's a pretty rough place, but he's made a few friends, most notably Zee, a doctor turned wartime medic, and Wilson, an elderly guy with his own private security force, a seemingly endless supply of "grandsons". 

Matty frequently finds himself at odds with his employers, a hawkish TV network, and the realities on the ground, which are far more nuanced than anyone thinks.

BF: Matthew is the definition of a kid coming of age and being forced to grow up quickly.  This seems to be a theme throughout most of your books.  Why has that theme become so important to you?  Is there anything that you feel needs to be said about and to the young people of this country?

BW: I wouldn't agree with that assessment 100%.  Matty's an adult, and its not so much that he's forced to grow up as he's forced to expand his worldview beyond the suburban experience he's grown up in and take in new ideas, new cultures and new points of view.  But he's proven to be a surprisingly capable person, a quick leaner and able to cope and adapt pretty quickly, which is probably the only thing that's kept him alive.  As we head into the third arc, which begins with issue #13, we'll see how adaptable and capable he is.

It is a common theme in my work, though, most notably in my more indie books like Demo, Local, and to an extent Supermarket and even Channel Zero, this notion of young people coming to a crucial point in their lives where they have to make a decision and live with it. Everyone's been through that, and the stories tend to have a sort of mass appeal.  I want people to relate on an individual level, which is more important to me than making a declaration about young people in this country.

BF: Matty was seemingly plucked from oblivion for the project to go into the DMZ and then stranded there when everything seemed to be destroyed.  Yet multiple times he turns down opportunities to go home.  Why has that decision become so easy to him?

BW: The city's exciting and the city's where he can make his mark.  Who'd want to go back to the suburbs or back to a cubicle after getting a taste of the action?  Besides, his bosses and his father are assholes, who tried to, in this order, lie to him, manipulate him, use him, and, at the end of the second arc, kill him.

BF: Likewise, another theme throughout your books has been the setting.  You take a "known" setting and turn it on its ear, creating an environment of urban warfare.  Specifically in DMZ, you use the island of Manhattan, which is easily recognizable and just 5 years ago the target of the biggest terrorist attack on the country.  Is there anything specific about NYC that you felt would speak louder than using a generic city? 

Also, what year does this occur in?  There are many topical references (Xbox and the war - assumed to be in the Middle East) but a timeframe is never really given. 

BW: I always keep the timeframe vague with this sort of thing.  Comics can become horribly dated in a matter of months, and I want DMZ to run for years and stay relevant.  I'm reminded of an early issue of The Ultimates, where Freddie Prinze Jr. makes a cameo as the Hollywood heartthrob he (briefly) was.  Reading that now, how lame does that come across?  Freddie Prinze, Jr.?  I'm always mindful not to set anything in stone that won't age well.  DMZ remains set in the "very near future".

And I chose NYC because it’s truly a world city.  Every kind of person, every culture, is represented here.

BF: Finally, in terms of recurring themes, we reach the ideas of government and the media and their relationship and roles towards and within each other.  Part of the "growing up"  is that Matty has become disillusioned with not only his government but with the other side as well.  We, as the youth of America, have often been slapped with the adjectives of "lazy, underinformed, and uncaring" as everything has been simpler for the current generation. 

Part of the reason I think this resonates so loudly now is the facts that we have not had a war that forced young people to get involved since Vietnam, and also that we haven't had a battle on American soil since the Civil War. 

I guess this has become a long-winded way of me asking if these recurring themes are your statement on the government and the fourth estate or are they just repercussions of your statements on the youth of the country?

BW: I'm not sure I would call that a recurring theme, to be honest, not in my work.   Media and government certainly played a role in Channel Zero, and now again almost a decade later in DMZ.  It's a subject that interests me when I read the news, and so from time to time it'll pop up in my work.  It doesn't get the same sort of attention from me as other things, though, such as the idea of youth and change I talked about earlier.

BF: The war between the Free States and the United States has been referred to as an ideological and not a geographical war.  What do the Free States stand for and what caused them to "revolt"?  It's glossed over in the last arc as Matt goes through the issues of the NY Times , but is it really that simple? 

And even though it's considered an "ideological war", there is a demarcation line around the DMZ that shows the Free States controlling New Jersey and the United States controlling the other side of the city.  Are there clear lines of who controls what in the continental US?

BW: It is that simple.  And there is a demarcation around the city because Manhattan is something both sides would very much like to possess, but have hit this stalemate over the years.  But in other parts of the country, it's very much an insurgent sort of war.  Small groups can form and resist, and as we've seen over and over in real life in other parts of the world, all they have to do to win is to not lose.

So, no, no clear lines like you'd see in old-style warfare, no armies lining up in uniform to shoot at each other.  And you call it being "glossed over", but the details of the history of the start of the war were never, nor will be the main focus of the book.  The book's about life in the DMZ, now.  By intentionally putting everything else second, we keep the reader's focus where it needs to be.

BF: The last arc had Matty realize just how much of a symbol he had become both to the United States and to those in the DMZ. He also saw how easily he could be used and bargained his freedom from his Liberty News contract and the renewed ceasefire in the DMZ.  However, he agreed to keep a very big bargaining chip silent. 

Why make that decision when simply showing the footage could probably have been the final nail in the coffin of the United States and all those who had been using him?

BW: Releasing the footage would have caused a problem for Liberty and the US, sure, but the final nail in the coffin?  One dead journalist? Probably not.  We've seen this administration, the Bush Administration weather far, far worse than that.  If Matty aired the footage, he would have lost his bargaining chip and there would be nothing left to protect him, no reason for Liberty to not have him killed since the damage was done. That footage kept him alive. This continues to play a role, as you'll see in issue #13.

BF: In re-reading the issues, I noticed that he was initially called an "anonymous reporter" but at the end of issue #5, the FS Armies know his name.  When did his name officially become released?

BW: Matty became a known in the second arc, when he was being used to secure Viktor's release.

BF: You've introduced some interesting and unique side characters for Matt to interact with.  His initial guide through the city was Zee – a relationship that in the year there he has destroyed and seemingly rebuilt – the ghosts of Central Park, the "army of grandsons", and most recently the reporter for Independent World News.  Meanwhile, it seems like everyone else in the city has gone kill-crazy. 

Why is there such a disparity between the "sane/normal" people (or at least as sane and normal as they can be) and the others who seem to attack for no good reason?

BW: Well, I'm not sure I understand.  There are always sane people and crazy people, war or no war.  I see them when I walk down the street.  The same is true in the DMZ, except that the crazy ones would probably be more visible, while the sane ones probably keep a lower profile.

That said, it’s still incredibly early in the series, and we've only begun to introduce the key players.

BF: Artistically, thus far you have used your own artwork to display the photos that Matt takes and Ricardo Burchielli as the main illustrator on the book.  Can you discuss the decision to split the art chores that way?

BW: I had originally pitched DMZ to Vertigo as a miniseries that I would both write and draw.  They saw potential in the concept far, far beyond the limited story I had and so asked me to turn it into an ongoing series.  That took me out of the running as artist for reasons of time and sanity.  But I didn't want to completely miss out on doing art for the book, so Vertigo kindly offered me the covers and some of the interior pages. 

It worked out well for the first five issues until I decided it would probably be more fun for me and interesting to the readers if I traded the monthly pages for an entire fill-in issue at some point down the road.

BF: Vertigo has a penchant for matching American writers with European and South American artists.  This is a bit of a double edged sword sometimes…

When I interviewed him, Matt Fraction expressed how it was great working with Gabriel Bá (on Cassanova for Image) because he did not have the American comic influences that a good number of artists fall back on; however, the downside is that these artists sometimes don't get the references (as evidenced by Eduardo Risso's incorrect Philadelphia skyline in 100 Bullets ). 

Was the decision to use Riccardo Burchielli yours?  And how much reference material did you need to prepare for him to work on this book?

BW: Vertigo suggested Riccardo initially, and I loved his work and agreed to work with him. It’s that simple.  I haven't noticed any negative aspects of working with him, so far everything's worked out well.  I can't speak to anyone else's experience, although I will say that Risso is an incredible artist and no one is above the occasional slip-up, no matter where they live.

BF: Of course, and Risso is talented enough to get away with it.  Actually, the only reason that stands out is because at a signing in the Philadelphia area a few years ago a number of people brought that issue specifically for him to sign because of the skyline.

BW: As far as reference material goes, I had a lot of it to share, and I either scanned it in or boxed it up and shipped it over to Italy.  I'm also on-hand to take photos for Riccardo of anything specific he needs, like buildings or streets.  But he rarely needs it.

BF: Finally, issue #12 will be done completely by you and basically gives an overview of the city.  Why did you wait almost a year into the book's publishing to put together what is essentially a handbook to the DMZ?

BW: I didn't.  It's not so much a handbook as it is a "year one" recap, Matty's personal guide to the DMZ based on what's happened to him over the last year.  It makes sense to have this come out after a few arc so we have things, like The Ghosts, to check back in on.  Putting it at the start of the series, there wouldn't be any context and it wouldn't have made a single bit of sense.

BF: Well, Brian, I look forward to the issue and thank you greatly for your time.

For a sneak peek at DMZ #12, have a look at yesterday’s Guiding Lines.