Broken Frontier

A young photojournalist tries to stay alive in a city that’s been dead for five years. If he makes it, he’ll have an incredible story: the real deal on life inside The DMZ, a.k.a. Manhattan.

Once the pulse of the world, for five years the island of Manhattan has been a dangerous no man’s land between The United States of America and the separatist Free States. Thrown into the middle of it is a network news crew and intern Matthew Roth, the sole survivor when the crew and its security are slaughtered. Things hardly get better for him. Alone and frightened, he’s on the wrong side of a gun barrel when he meets Zee, and faints before learning that she’s the only one who can keep him alive. When the network rings his cellphone and tells him that they’re on their way to rescue him, he heads for the rendezvous point, only to find that his understanding of a "secured" site and the military’s are radically different. And before the day is over he learns that the difference between the manufactured truth of network news and what’s really going down in The DMZ is something he couldn’t have learned without almost dying first.

There’s not a lot of story in DMZ #1, and though Brian Wood’s script offers a "problem" for protagonist Matt Roth (namely, staying alive), the conflict (getting out of The DMZ) is strictly of an interior sort. The issue also ends on an open-ended, almost somber and resigned note, not the gripping cliffhanger that many first issues need to help ensure that readers will return. However, what issue #1 lacks in narrative punch is balanced by the strong characterization found in other Brian Wood titles such as Channel Zero, Demo, and The Couriers.

Matt Roth is neither super-spy, nor crack special forces soldier. Rather, he’s an average guy with a fairly wussy penchant for fainting, caught in circumstances way above his head. Truth be told, by the end of DMZ #1 he shouldn’t be alive, but because he is, we want to see him stay that way. Wood fleshes Zee out with just as much craft—introducing her as a bad-ass, gun-chick stereotype, then revealing something much more mundane but much more interesting about her. The chemistry between Zee and Matt works, too, particularly the feeling that whatever their differences, they’re probably very much alike at bottom.

Along with solid character work, unanswered questions are the main attraction of DMZ #1. Finishing it, I was left wondering exactly how (or why) the most expensive and important piece of real estate in the world was reduced to a wasteland. A second civil war in the U.S. is a huge story, but thus far Wood opts for the very small and very personal. Left out is how the world got this way. Even the year is, as yet, a mystery. Backstory details are mere brush strokes in DMZ #1—just enough to get the story rolling—but Wood adds to the bigger picture by focusing more on the vibe of the city. "Everyday is 9/11," a piece of graffiti says, and every page evokes that feeling: The decimated landscape, the randomness, the sense that death is around any corner, the will to survive and maintain some semblance of order, however improvised. There’s more sensibility than sense in DMZ #1, but it’s a good choice and well-executed, as the reader finds himself right there with Matt—disoriented, on a steep learning curve, and having some idea that a big lie is being told, but no idea what will happen next.

Wood and Italian artist Riccardo Burchielli collaborate on the artwork, and their first two pages are amazing. Like the eye-grabbing cover, these pages have a hard but impressionistic graphic art feel, setting a mood as easily found in "War on Terror" coverage as in The Book of Revelations. The artwork in the rest of DMZ #1 is more comic-oriented, and while not as evocative or experimental, its dynamic, action-oriented linework that builds on the impact of the first two pages remarkably well. Against blacked-out gutters, the framing and detailed panel construction are impressive, particularly our first glimpses of The DMZ, the ambush that follows, and Matt’s first impression of Zee, an excellently rendered homage to Jock, who illustrates The Losers. Like that title, Jeromy Cox uses a palette dominated by secondary oranges, yellows, and earth tones to establish mood. But unlike The Losers, the paper is newsprint instead of glossy, and there are only subtle differences in the prevalent shades and not much contrast. Evoking shifts of emotion or mood in the story, or noting the shift from one scene to another would’ve had a better effect with a wider range of hues. Consequently, some of the punch that Wood and Burchielli’s art could’ve had is wasted. There’s lots of room for improvement in this respect, but on the whole, the artwork does a fine job of keeping the eye moving fluidly and pushing the story forward.

With deft writing, art that reminds us what a dangerous world we live in, plus that buzzworthy something that’s always defined memorable Vertigo titles, DMZ has the potential to be a hit.